ECONOMY IN THE USE OF OIL AS FUEL FOR HARBOR 
VESSELS. 
By ENGINEER-IN-CHIEF C. A. McALLISTER, MEMBER. 
{Read at the eighteenth general meeting of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, held in 
New York, November 16 and 17, 1911.] 
Heretofore it has not been usual to look for economical methods in the 
expenditure of public moneys, either Federal, State or municipal. Of late, 
however, it is quite pleasing to note that great attention is being paid to 
economy in all branches of the Federal Government. In none of these 
has better results been attained than in the Treasury Department, presided 
over by Secretary MacVeagh. Himself a successful business man before 
becoming a member of the Cabinet, he has brought with him and in an 
unostentatiousmanner hasimbued his subordinates with the spirit of economy 
without impairment of efficiency. 
A good example of an economy of this kind is the oil fuel apparatus 
recently installed on board the harbor tug Golden Gate, doing revenue 
cutter boarding duty at San Francisco, California. Some preliminary 
reports of the efficiency of this apparatus have already appeared in the daily 
press and in various technical journals. So many favorable comments 
have been received of these reports that the writer has taken the liberty of 
presenting the following more extended account to the members of this 
Society, in the hope that the data herein presented may be of value in the 
possible extension of this system to other harbor vessels. 
An investment paying over one hundred per cent. in annual dividends 
would naturally appeal to any business man, and the data herein given will 
show how it has been accomplished in this particular instance. 
The Golden Gate is a vessel of the ordinary harbor tug type, 110 feet 
long over all, 100 feet between perpendiculars, 20 feet 6 inches beam moulded, 
and a moulded depth of 12 feet $ inch amidships; the normal displacement 
being 220 tons. She is built of mild open-hearth steel throughout, and was 
completed in 1896 at a total cost of $50,000. Her propelling machinery 
consists of a water-tube boiler and a vertical, inverted, triple-expansion 
engine with cylinders of 13 inches, 21 inches, and 32% inches diameter, 
respectively, and a common stroke of 24 inches. Under maximum conditions 
it is capable of developing 550 indicated horse-power. 
She is provided with two ordinary fore-and-aft coal bunkers in the 
boiler space, with a total capacity of thirty tons. The question of fitting 
this vessel for using oil fuel naturally arose several years ago upon the 
