14 Economical Steam Boats. 



Art. III. — A description of an Economical Steam Boat. 



PROFESSOR SILiLIMAN. 



Sir — In a branch of navigation so extensive as that employing 

 steam power, cheapness and durability are qualities of the hull by no 

 means unimportant, either as regards public or private economy, 

 since whatever the amount of the investment, its compensation must 

 be levied on the business donp. If vessels can be made to last twen- 

 ty instead of ten years, one tenth of the whole value of any number 

 of them would be saved every year. 



There is reason to think that ship building, as an art, has not ad- 

 vanced equally with others. Prejudice may have seconded the interest 

 of carpenters to oppose the introduction of evident improvements in it. 

 This is to be easily accounted for without imputing blame to that re- 

 spectable class of mechanics. The number of master builders is al- 

 ways small compared with the number in the other trades. They 

 have no motive to economize in construction, as the merchant owner is 

 forbidden, by calculation, to try an experiment in principle, that might, 

 from the prejudice or doubt of an inspector from an insurance office, 

 affect unfavorably his insurance. These inspectors who are com- 

 monly respectable retired ship-masters, are thus incidentally the de- 

 positaries of much power of obstructing, but not of advancing im- 

 provement. Thus no essential change in ship building can be intro- 

 duced but by some ship-builder himself, who ventures from confi- 

 dence in his new method to build on his own account, in a manner 

 more accordant with principles of mechanical science. Such were 

 the Messrs. Brindleys of Rochester, in Kent, on the Medway. 



These gentlemen, one of whom is now resident near New York, 

 may be considered as at the head of their profession ; having built 

 forty or fifty ships of war for government. 



These experienced builders say in a publication which appeared in 

 1824, in London, in reference to their invented method which is de- 

 scribed in the Repertory of Arts, August, 1823, that " among the 

 numerous improvements that have attended the arts and sciences, 

 there is perhaps no one that has made so little progress as ship- 

 building" — that " if any one tolerably acquainted with the first prin- 

 ciples of mechanics Vi^ere to examine the various parts of a ship, as 

 now built in the ordinary way, he would be struck with surprise at 

 the huge masses of timber so disproportionably arranged, and so in- 

 adequately connected together." 



