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New Ore Machinery at Conneaut. Ore handling facilities at Conneaut, the lake terminal of the Pittsburg, Bessemer & Lake Erie Ry. (Carnegie ore and coal road), are illustrated on this and the opposite page. The latest feature of improvement at Con- neaut is the plant of new McMyler machines for direct loading from ships to cars. Since the docks at Conneaut became the property of the Bes- semer road, a slip 160 feet wide and 1,000 feet long has been dredged, materially increasing the harbor facilities. The dock improvements have been going on for two years. The old storage docks, which extend back 325 feet from the water and are 2,000 feet long, are now spanned by fifteen ore conveyors. Six of these were built by the King Bridge Co. of Cleve- land, and nine by the Brown Hoisting & Conveying Machine Co., All have been in use for two years. The notable new features of the dock equipment, however, are the rapid ore unloading machines, installed in the past winter by the Mce- Myler Mfg. Co. of Cleveland. Something of their efficiency will be gath- ered from the statement that 800 tons of ore per hour can be unloaded by them, and that the largest steel freighters of today can be unloaded in seven hours, as against fourteen hours and upwara under ordinary methods, for boats of average capacity. The plant is for direct loading into cars and hence is located on the recently dredged slip. It consists of twelve legs, divided into four separate groups of three machines each, running on a 20-foot track. By means of a rack and pinion, the outer legs of each group of three may be moved from a 21-foot center to a 36- MARINE REVIEW. ---- ae Primitive Steam Vessels of the United States.* ---- REMINISCENCES OF MARINE STEAM ENGINE CONSTRUOTION AND STEAM Nayy. GATION IN THE UNITED STATES, FROM 1807 TO 1850. " ---- By OHARLES H. HASWELL, M. I. N. A., ete., ete. Marine steam engines of primitive construction, and down to 199 were of the vertical cross-head type, connected with sliding clutches di. rectly to the water-wheel shafts, and geared also to a shaft with a fly-whee| at each end of it. The object of the connection was to enable the water. wheels to be disconnected, and the engine operated independently, so as to feed the boiler and operate the bilge pump when the vessel was at q pier or anchored, as independent steam feed, bilge and fire pumps were then unknown. The steam and exhaust valves, if puppet, were operated by the hand gear of Beighton; when otherwise, the long slide valve was used, This type of engine, with the cross-head, connecting rods, cranks and shafts of cast iron, the key, crank and pin holes cwred and cast in, was wholly used until about 1822, when the vertical overhead beam was introduced. Up to this period (1822), and for several years after, the yer. tical engine only was constructed, and when the horizontal or inclined engine was introduced the short slide was resorted to, except in southern and western waters where the lever puppet valve, operated by a cam, was wholly used. : ¥ The boilers, with the exception of the very first few, which were plain cylindrical set in masonry, were of copper plates of design termed "D and ° MACHINES FOR UNLOADING ORE INTO CARS, CONNEAUT, 0.--BUILT BY MCMYLER MNFG, CO. foot center, thus accommodating the legs to any difference between hatches. The four groups move on the track by means of a bevel gear working on the side of the wheels. Each leg spans five railroad tracks, two being under the machine and three under its cantilever. On the water side of the machine the boom extends to the farther side of the vessel, which permits more than one bucket to operate in the same hatch, and at the same time makes it possible to lift the buckets perpendieularly rather than at an angle. 'The power for operating each machine is located in its central leg. The boiler and one engine are on one side and the two engines for the other legs are on the other side of the central leg, thus permitting the operator to see the bucket in every position when not in the thatch. The 'hoisting will be done direct from the crank shaft, no gearing being used. This insures less vibration and friction and the high- est speed possible. into a lock, at any point over the vessel's hatch. The buckets dump au- tomatically at any height above the cars on any of the five tracks. Steel cars will be used largely in connection with this plant. By June 1 the Schoen Pressed Steel Co. of Pittsburg will have built for the Bessemer road 1,000 of these cars. Each car weighs 34,000 pounds and will carry 100,000 pounds. With the monster mogul engines included, the average train load will be 1,500 tons. Quite recently a train of thirty- five steel cars pulled out of Conneaut carrying 1,528 gross tons of ore. The total weight of the cars was 535 tons, or only 26 per cent. of the total load of 2,063 gross tons, making the 1,528 gross tons of ore carried 74 per cent. of the total load. On the east side of the new slip at Conneaut, opposite the fast ore plant described above, will be located a car-dumping machine for the transfer of coal from and to vessels. This machine is now under construc- tion at the works of the McMyler company and will soon be erected. It will also be a modern plant in every particular. We are indebted to the Iron Trade Review for the engravings. Subscribers who wish to have the Marine Review delivered to them through the marine postoffice, Detroit, will please notify us at once. The trolley can be stopped and lowered without going Kidney Flue," having but one furnace, full width of inner space of front, the flame and gases of combustion leading through a flue of about two- thirds width of furnace into a back connection, and from thence into 4 return flue, which from the outlines of its transverse section was termed a "kidney flue;' and from thence to a short vertical flue at the back of the furnace, and then extending up to the shell of the boiler, in a short shoul- der of which the base of the smoke pipe was set. This convexity to the inner side of the main flue, and the indentation given to the inner side of the other, was due to the fact that the curved surfaces rendered socket bolts unnecessary with the limited steam pressure of 15 pounds or less per square inch. On southern and western waters, where non-condensing engines alone were resorted to, in consequence of the waters of the rivers being too turbid for the continuous operation of a condenser, wrought iron cylindrical boilers alone were used. They were generally internally flued, in some cases externally fired, and it was not until about 1820 that marine boilers were constructed of iron in eastern waters. Boiler plates were punched manually by the aid of a long wooden lever, on which four men exerted their force, and as the location for the punch was directed only by the eye of the operator, the spaces were fre- quently irregular, involving pinning, in order to bring the holes as neary Opposite as practicable, and hence the plates were frequently strane and the rivets set at an inclination; all of which were hand made. Blow-offs were not attached to boilers until steam navigation was well advanced; the exact period is not now ascertainable, probably about 1% Steamboats on the bay and river routes, with low pressure steam ae consequent temperature of it, did not involve the necessity of frequen blowing off of saturated water from their boilers, as the water was. e out at the end of each passage, and they were refilled with fresh water. In consequence of this neglect of blowing off, and the tmperfect manner *Charles H. Haswell of New York was the first engineer-in-chief of the wa States navy. He is over eighty years of age and has been in close touch from hood with everything pertaining to the development of the marine engine | chi: paper was prepared for the thirty-ninth session of the Institution of Naval tects, held in London a few days ago, oi pe