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MARINE REVIEW. 17 Experimental Acetylene Gas Buoy. _ The Day of the Clipper Past. Lieut.-Col. D. P. Heap of the United States engineer corps has been " ; co eee at : making experiments at 'New York, under direction of the light--house ousl ea one fashion) ee CMO aie as ee pitied einer board, with an acetylene gas buoy which he thas designed for river and Pee ie nee pie ae i ee been around the Horn almost as harbior service. If this kind of buoy proves successful, the light-house y a8) MS TO MIGR ell, they may be; but it is because financial economy has abolished them on American ships. However, an old ship- mate of mine, who is a bit of a crank, and left this port the other day, still carries a topmast stunsail. It may be for'sentimental reasons, just as a Confederate veteran might display the flag under which he went to battle. But stunsails are just as practical today as ever. 'Studding sail,' you say? Oh, yes; studding sail may be literally correct, but Jack says 'stunsail.' He objects to mouthing participles and words with long endings. He wants brevity all the time. The corruption 'of language by 'sailors is pro- verbial. Stunsail may be a corruption of studding sail; but studding sail itself is a corruption of steaidying sail, or steering sail, which, in my opin- von, was the original term. . The stunsail, although used only in moderate . weather, was a driving sail. Our yachts carry stunsails today in the service expects to derive advantage from reduction in first cost of gas- lighted buoys and also a large increase in the power of the light. Alike to the Pintsch gas buoy, this new type of buoy will, of course, be more reliable than electrically-lighted buoys. If one of a chain of the latter goes wrong, all the others are affected; whereas the acetylene buoy, being an independent and self-contained unit, will not affect any other buoys by its failure. Col. Heap has given tthe Scientific 'American an account of experi- ments thus far made with his buoy. In order to save expense in carrying out these experiments, a first-class can buoy was pressed into service and modified for the tests. A cylinder C C of boiler iron, closed at the bottom . els form of the immense side sail that is called the spinnaker. % } "Tt costs to fit a ship with a suit of stunsails. Their use means extra o = =< labor for the crew, or a larger crew, and their storage takes valuable cargo ae room. 'This means expense for the ship, which her earnings in these days ( of railroads and tramp 'ships do not warrant. The 'cargoes that sailing vessels carry today do not demand quick transportation, with its high freight rates. The modern sailing ship is little better than a floating ware- | house. It is not driven; spars and canvas are not pressed as they were before the advent of the steamship. Sailing a ship to make a short passage W is one of the lost arts. There is no demand for auxiliary canvas such as stunsails. The Yankee clipper is out of it--defunct. Away back in the middle of the century the stars and stripes floated over ships that were : really clippers, below and aloft. In competition with one another and with foreign craft our clippers carried valuable cargoes--tea from China, coffee from Rio and fancy merchandise to San Francisco. Tihe steamships do the tea and coffee carrying now. It was not in those days a go-as-you- -- C please run. Tihe clippers were under orders to get there to catch the top of the market. Hours saved on their voyages, long though they were, meant many dollars for all concerned. Ships were driven then with canvas ¢ that fairly smothered them in fair weather and foul, and Yankee seaman- ship, with its characteristic judgment and nerve, was recognized and rewarded. But all this is merely a memory now. I can fancy the clipper of the fifties coming head-on, irising against the clear sky of the lower latitudes, her sails mounting above the blue horizon, tier upon tier--sky- ~ scrapers, moonrakers, cloudcleaners--a 'snow-white pyramid, an angel's eS : footstool, as Jack says. Did they carry stunsails? Aye, up to the royal SECTION THROUGH ©) yerTIcaAL AXIS yards!"--New York Sun. Curious Accident to Engines. A curious accident to the engines of a steamer belonging to an En- glish line has come to our knowledge. On the voyage out the high pres- sure cylinder of a set of triple expansion engines developed a peculiar and most pronounced knock. The engineer had the covers removed twice, but failed to discover the cause. Nothing was found in the cylinder, and the piston, piston rings and rods were found to be intact. On starting again, the knock was pronounced, and continued to get worse, until, after some hours of steaming, a crash was heard inside the cylinder, and the engines were entirely disabled. The removal of the cover a third time revealed a different state of things, for a portion of the piston was broken clean off. A minute examination of the engine showed that the pounding in the first place had been caused by the cylinder liner which was secured at the top end by counter-sunk bolts inserted from the inside. A slight amount of vertical play of the liner seems to have gradually grown into an appreciable movement, which eventually sheared off one of the bolts. This coming into contact with the cover on the upward stroke caused a fracture of the latter, the broken piece falling to the bot- tom, with the result above stated. The engineer was held responsible for the accident for not shutting down the high pressure cylinder, as the en- gine might have been run temporarily as a compound by working the in- ELEVATION OF ACETYLENE - HORIZONTAL SECTION ABOVE termediate and low pressure cylinders only.--Engineer, London. - GAS BUOY TANKS. ooo | but open at the top, was attached to the diaphragm D of the awe ane The Yantic in Lachine Canal, -- | faanin _ In this cylinder were placed an a Bat eee ae 7 ae Sa ees fanke oT coucnne "each about 20 pounds of ih ne Asche pave eee Suen ee By . a . eae | : y 4 sure of 600 pounds to the square inch. in the accompanying engraving, w was made from a photograph | liquefied acetylene gas under a pres taken in the Lachine canal, Nov. 22, and for which the Review is indebted These three tanks are connected by piping to the regulator R, which reduces the pressure to thiat of a 2-inch water column. From the feet | pie eee °\ eee oe | ot } lator a pipe leads to a Naphey burner, so placed that the flame will be in the focus of a lens lantern provided with cut glass prisms, so as to con- | | | | centrate the light in a horizontal plane. The candle power of the burner oe : : is twenty-five. This fis increased by the lens lantern so that the emer- : ; gent beam is about 230 candle power. 'One pound of liquefied acemiens | will expand to 15 cubic feet of gas; so the charge in this buoy equals 900 ctbic feet. As the burner consumes a little less than 1 cubic foot per hour, the buoy should burn continuously for at least nine hundred Hours: On Oct. 30 the buoy was lighted and placed _in the water near the | north dock at the New York light4house depot. It burned continuously | until Nov. 10, when it was taken up and placed next day near Bay Ridge | for convenience of examination by the light-house board. On the ae it was replaced in its former position and continued to burn brilliant < until Nov. 26, when the light began to grow less bright. The Boy was taken up, and an examination of the burner showed that carbon had epos- ited at the orifice. This was probably due to the burner being defective, as other burners of the same type had given far better results. The cost of the gas consumed in this trial was about one cent per now ee fe : remarkably low figure, especially in view of the brilliance of the ere Experiments have also been carried out with liquefied sete gas for beacon lights, and it gives promise of equally good results oe a paca The light-house board considers these tests so successtul t i addi- tional and more severe experiments are to be made with an acetylene gas , 1 and with an acety- s ' : buoy moored near the entrance to Gedney ins ee buoy will be He to Mr. F. E. Dunbar. The Yantic, dismantled and lifted on pontoons lene gas-lighted beacon on Romer shoal. Bay Rid for her journey through the Canadian canals from Montreal, is being such ee being made as have been suggested by the Bay Ridge towed beeen Fee experiments.