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1899.] - MARINE REVIEW. 21 which are such a small percentage of the maximum is very much reduced. In some of our ships we have tried to solve this by arranging two sets of engines on one shatt, so that at the moderate powers the forward set can be uncoupled. The ill-fated Maine had an arrangement whereby the large cylinders of her triple expansion engines could be disconnected, leaving the engines to run as smaller compounds at cruising speeds. A somewhat similar arrangement is in use on the Nashville, where the large cylinder of a quadruple expansion engine can be thrown out, leaving a triple expansion for lower powers. The objection to all of these is, that if it becomes necessary in an emergency to get full power, it is often im- possible to stop to couple up. This was exemplified in a marked way in the case of the Brooklyn during the fight at Santiago. She was cruising with her after engines only when Cervera's fleet came out, and it was felt that there was not time to stop to couple up, which would have neces- sitated from twenty minutes to half an hour. The distribution of the power among more than two shafts offers another solution, which was used on the Columbia and Minneapolis. Personally, I believe that this system, if properly carried out, would be entirely satisfactory, but it would involve the use of the center screw only for ordinary cruising, and aship, as you doubtless know, is not so handy with one screw as with two. LATEST DESIGNS OF ENGINES FOR ORUISING SPEEDS. Our latest design to meet the desire to use two screws and still get relatively small engines for cruising speeds, is to use three screws but make the engine driving the center one-half the total power, leaving each of the wing screws to develop only a quarter of the full power. We have not as yet built any vessels on this plan, so that, while theoretically we have every reason to anticipate entire success, it has not as yet been tried in practice. : A very interesting illustration of the application of ingenuity and scientific knowledge is the method adopted for balancing the engines so as to avoid vibration of the hull. As engine speeds and hull dimensions in- creased, there came a combination of circumstances causing excessive vibration of the hull, due to unbalanced inertia stresses of the reciprocat- ing parts of the engines. The solution is a very simple adaptation of a type of engine desirable for other reasons with a special arrangement of crank angles and weights of reciprocating parts. The adoption of the steam turbine has also been suggested to accomplish this same object, and turbines have been employed on some torpedo boats. 'With certain very promising features, there are, however, some great disadvantages, and before the steam turbine becomes a formidable rival of the ordinary type of engine an enormous amount of skill and ingenuity must be exercised, and the lines along which they can act are not yet apparent. I have already referred to the three vital elements in warship design as offense, defense and mobility, and the best combinations of these feat- ures tO secure maximum results tax the judgment and experience of the designer, as well as his skill and ingenuity. If time permitted it would be of the greatest interest to show how the necessity of maximum results in particular items has given us special classes of vessels. Thus in the battleship which must take and give heavy blows, mobility or speed has been sacrificed, while in the armored cruiser 'both guns and armor have been reduced to secure high speed. 1n the torpedo boat, speed is abso- lutely vital and everything else is sacrificed to it. The tendency just now seems to be along the line of having only one class of armored vessels which will be very powerful armored cruisers with good armor protec- tion and high speed. This means a vessel of about 12,000 to 14,000 tons displacement, with 8 to 10 inches of Krupp armor, a battery of 10-inch rapid-fire guns, and a speed of about 20 to 21 knots. We have now given a hasty glance at the principal elements of the modern war vessel, although I regret that the limited time at my com- mand has forbidden the consideration of many features which could not have failed to be of interest to you, such as the workshops on board where the necessary routine repairs are made to keep the great machine in working order; the electric installation for lighting the various portions of the ship and providing the searchlights; the elaborate drainage system with the necessary pumps; and the torpedoes, with their wonderfully in- tricate and delicate machinery, which is so arranged as to work automat- ically after being discharged from the ship, in a way that would seem to indicate human control at every moment. I trust, however, that you will have heard enough to satisfy you that the theme of my remarks is fully borne out by the facts which have been adduced. THE NAVY HAS KEPT PACE WITH GENERAL ADVANCEMENT. The truth is that in every department of life there has been-a tremen- dous advance, due to the exercise of skill, ingenuity and scientific knowl- edge, with which the modern war vessel has thoroughly kept pace. A moment's reflection would, of course, make it very clear to us that it would be impossible to build war vessels such as we now possess unless there had been a corresponding development in every other manufactur- ingindustry. 'Governor Roosevelt, when assistant secretary of the navy, touched upon a very important matter connected' with this. subject iia ¥ discussing what was known as the "personnel bill." In comparing the development of naval science to the point where it became necessary for every officer in the navy to be an engineer, so that it is necessary for the modern admiral to know many things of which our great Farragut, for example, was ignorant, he said that it would, of course, require vastly greater skill to handle the complicated mechanism which the modern war vessel is than one of the old ones, but that, just as we had always been able to produce competent men to handle the less complicated vessels of former times, so without doubt we would get competent men to handle those of today. He had learned the fact that the modern warship is a vast engine, and to be properly controlled must be handled by engineers. Ongress has, in the personnel bill, provided and directed that, as soon as we can make the necessary arrangements, every officer in the navy charged with the handling of a vessel, shall be a trained engineer, and therefore we may be sure that however complicated and delicate the or- anisms of the machine become, we shall have officers who, by education and experience, are fitted to properly care for the valuable and delicate machines entrusted to them. : I have had a part in two wars, in both of which the navy played an important part and became dear to the people, and I have also passed through the intervening interval, during much of which the navy seemed to be entirely forgotten. I sincerely trust that, as the lafe war showed, we not only know how to build good ships but to make them go and'to fight them, our fellow citizens in civil life will see to it that the navy is maintained in a state of the highest efficiency, both as to personnel and material, ever ready for efficient use when needed. In this work, which on both sides is a matter for engineers, this institute has a vital interest, and I trust that, just as your influence has for seventy-five years been on the side of general advancement of engineering in the mechanic arts, so it will be on the side of their advancement in the navy. QUESTION OF ERIE CANAL IMPROVEMENT. _ Editor Marine Review:--I don't know whether I ought to reply a second time to the attacks on the Erie canal made by Mr. C. V. R. Lud- ington of Monticello, N. Y., or not. 'He was, in his first article, as quoted by the Review, merely talking to the galleries and continually made the wildest statements, confident, to all appearance, that nobody would pull him up for them. Now, in the Review of Oct. 5, he becomes more wary and challenges me to take up the leading argument, so that he can sit under cover and fire at me. This sort of controversy is not so very profit- able. 'However, as he finds eight distinct points in his article that I - didn't' "answer" and thereforé apparently couldn't, I may be bound to -- try again. : 5 eee ree These points are either of so small account as to 'be hardly worth a ° second mention or are well-known and were raised at the outset to "fill up," or to create a favorable feeling in the rural and not-canal counties of the state, where anything "agin' the canal' goes. Let 'tts glance at them as he has repeated them. 'es ee te 1. The tonnage of the canalis a matter of 800 grain boats, with say 900 other boats that are not now fit for grain carrying. 2. 'The tonnage is rapidly decreasing,- faster even than the boats coca oe of them are used for lightering and cutside business than used to De. ; 3. As to what the $9,000,000 did for the canal, ask the boatmen and the insurance companies. 'At the canal heating 'before the Governor's committee in Buffalo this summer the boatmen were positive as to the great benefit. Nobody claims that the best use was made of it. 4. As to further widening anything but the locks, we in Buffalo have never advocated or asked it. The present capacity of the canal has to do entirely with the number of 'boats that can 'be locked through the sixteen locks at Cohoes, the slowest point on the canal. Nio secret about it. A pair of boats will go through in about four hours. This capacity has not been reached long at a time. 7. As to what towns "unaided by railroads," etc., the canal has built up, there are none. If there were, a canal would 'be the recipe for pop- ulating any desert. When the canal has done most of such a work we say it was the canal, and stop there, as anyone knows. 8. Which would we drop if asked to choose, the canals or the rail- roads? The canals, certainly. So if asked whether we would cut off our right hand or our left we would say the left, but we don't want to spare either. Now if the above eight crushers have very much to do with the ques- tion at issue I arn not able to see it. Of course Mr. Ludington tries to make it appear that'I was not able or willing to reply to them. Of course, too, he clings to the half-truth argument and talks about the capacity of the canal. It is the paying capacity and nothing else that is pertinent to the question, as Mr. Ludington will see by the following homely supposi- tion: 'Who will doubt that there are wagons enough in the country to bring all the surplus grain in the west to the seaboard, give them time enough? Then why do we have railroads, but because the "'capacity" of the wagons cannot be made to pay? 'Canal advocates see the paying capacity of the canal disappearing. 'They believe that for a moderate out- lay, a few cents per capita of the people of the state, this paying capacity can be restored. Herein, "ithe paying capacity," lies all the argument for the canals. Anyone who ignores it by talking of mere floating capacity is willfully misstating the case. 'Mr. Ludington has his funny moments now and then. He still sticks to the notion that if DeWitt 'Clinton had invented the railroad in place of setting up a canal he would have done us much greater service than he did. I will add a new idea to it by asserting with all the earnestness of my being that if Noah had put a steam propeller into the ark_he would have been able to bring his menagerie to America! \No dispute here. ~ Mr. Ludington scouts the "talk of the minerals of the Lake Superior region finding transit over the canal," Then why did our most. progres- sive iron men appear before the governor's canal committee at the Buffalo hearing and ask for canal enlargement, saying that they needed it?.. Why was the point made in one of the sessions of the New, York commerce. committee here, and made by the committee, that the iron tonnage of the _.. canal had very materially increased of late? . PARAM SS Inomrciievsl Really I cannot see why Mr. Ludington was "forced" to notice my. _ article, as he says, unless it was to enable him to drop. such jewels of _ thought as these: "The Manchester canal was constructed more than | seventy years before any railroad in the world was thought of; Mr. Sey- mour, state engineer, in 1854, when the celebrated nine-million bill was passed; his great heart and soul would have revolted at the thought of abolishing tolls 'on our canals," meaning Clinton. And so on, using half truths, like "capacity"; dwelling on antiquated conditions and ideas, as in the days of (Clinton; bringing facts and figures up to do duty as falsifiers; pretending, as he does in this article, to think that the lakes are some day to be drained into uselessness by canals, sewers and the like; using the $9,000,000 blunder as a whip to the back 'of the country voter, refusing to come down to anything like a business-like discussion of the cost to the state of making the canal again a regulator of the commerce of the east; dodging, backing and filling. Is it worth any man's while to do the state so conspicuously ill a service? We should say not, unless we were getting ready to run for supervisor of some back town or in need ofa railroad pass. | 'Buffalo, Oct. 7. JOHN CHAMBERLIN,