DEEP-SEA EXPLORATION. 
281 
laird’s ash elevator and phute. 
A midship section of the vessel is shown throngh line of live-room, and Baird’s 
ash-hoisting apparatus, including hoisting engine and clinte, is seen on the port, or left 
side. The object of this machinery is to hoist the ashes and dump tliem overboard 
with the least manual labor and to avoid carrying them across the deck. Tlie \ ertical 
chute through the ship’s bottom has been tried and abandoned, as the ashes soon 
scoured through the bottom plates of the ship, in the wake of the cliute. The steam 
ejectors, tried in the Navy were abandoned for the reason that the ashes, blown at 
such a high velocity, very quickly scoured thi'ough a 2-inch-thick cast-iron pipe; (’-hief 
Engineer George W. Baird, IT. H. N., designed the diagonal tube h (a 10-inch wrought- 
iron boiler flue), surmounted by a hopper, and the engine g referred to. A stream of 
water (I7I inches in diameter) is projected into the hopper while ashes are being dumped, 
and the velocity of the descending cinders, though not great, is sufficient to project 
them quite clear of the ship’s side. The hopper and elbow are of cast iron. 
Out 21 shows several views and sections of the hoisting engine. 
The principle of the engine is very old, it belonging to that class Avhich is rever.sed 
by “changing the ports,” i. e., by having an arrangement by which the steam and 
exhaust ports are changed, the one for the other. For simiilicity and fewness of parts 
the crank shaft and hoisting drum are one and the same piece of cast iron; the cylin- 
ders are oscillating, their ports being on trunnions, the motion of the cylinders o]»ening 
and closing the ports; the steam chest between the two cylinders is common to both. 
