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34 "THE Marine REVIEW PONTOONS TO FLOAT A STRANDED STEAMSHIP During a dark night many months ago the steamship George W. Elder ran on a reef of sharp rocks in the Colum- bia river some forty miles below Portland, Ore. The acci- dent was due to the sudden disablement of the steering gear in making a short turn. Several holes were knocked in the steel hull. No lives were lost, but most of the cargo was. The Elder ran on the San Francisco-Portland route, and was on her trip to the former place when the accident occurred. Persistent efforts have been made by the underwriters to raise the vessel and float her from the rocks, but without avail. About $5,000 have been expended fruitlessly. Eight great cylindrical pontoons are now being built at Portland that are to be used in floating the stranded vessel. This means a novel plan has been formed after many other devices have failed. These pontoons will be sunk alongside the vessel and connected by heavy cables underneath the hull. A powerful air compressor will then force the water out of the pontoons, and it is expected that the steamer will rise without further trouble. The Elder has been sold to private parties by the underwriters. It is claimed that the vessel can be repaired and made as staunch as ever. CAPTAIN BACON, D.S. 0., R. N, ON SUBMARINES Captain Bacon, addressing the Institution of Naval Architects on "The Causes of Accidents to Submarine Boats and Their Salvage," said that the details of the boats used and the practical results attained were very properly kept secret by the admiralty, but the prevention of acci- dents, far from being confidential, was a matter rather of common humanity. It was necessary to accentuate the fact that every boat designed was designed to fight, they were no mere playthings, not mere structures of scientific inter- est. There would be no difficulty in designing a mere sub- marine boat with a maximum of safety devices, but with the minimum of fighting efficiency. The accidents that had occurred were not such as to destroy confidence in the general system of submarine work. But before adopt- ing any special appliance or constructional complication, care should be taken that the fighting efficiency of the boat should not be seriously affected, and that such ar- rangements should be efficient against all reasonable acci- . dents. It was simple to design a boat to be safe against any particular accident. The impossibility lay in design- ing one safe against any accident. At present the work the boats did was up to the full requirements of war training. TRADE NOTES The Standard Motor Construction Co., of Jersey City, is making two engines of 300 H. P. each for the United States navy department, one to go to Portsmouth, Va., and the other to Portsmouth, N. H., for high speed ferry service. The Allegheny Forging Co., Pittsburg, Pa., with offices in the Frick building, has just issued a price list of chain which is very concise and compact and is well worth writing for by any one interested in chains. A circular has also been issued by the company giving a price list of rivets and burrs. The Atlantic Works, Inc., Twenty-eighth street and Grays Ferry Road, Philadelphia, Pa., has received' an order from Wm. Cramp & Sons Ship & Engine Building Co., Philadelphia, for one of their B-11 adjustable bevel band saw machines which tips 45 degrees each side of the center. - the B. F. Sturtevant Co., Hyde Park, Mass., has just is- sued a circular concerning the Sturtevant Generating Sets. ' The vertical single engines are designed for continuous opera- tion at high speed; the vertical compound engines were speci- ally designed under the rigid specifications of the United States navy department for the attainment of maximum efficiency They represent the most advanced practice in modern steam engineering. Katzenstein's automatic improved metallic packing is being installed in the main engines of the large new cruiser Yorck, of the. German navy. A large consign- ment of this packing has just been shipped to A. G. Techlenborg Co. of Geestemunde, Germany, and an- other lot has just gone to the Russian navy for the navy yards at Nicolaieff. The engines of the four. new ferry boats of the Lackawanna railroad are also being packed with this packing. This packing is manufactured by L. Katzenstein, 358 West street, New York. : _ The East End Boiler Works, 11-19 St. Aubin avenue, Detroit, Mich., has just completed and placed in the tug Home Rule, owned by the Hackett Wrecking Co., Amherstburg, Ont., a new large Detroit water tube boiler of which the East End Boiler Works are the sole makers. The new boiler occupies the same space as the old one but contains 45 percent more heating surface. As evidence of its steaming qualities it may be mentioned that on going up the river to receive the boiler the tug left the smokestack at Amherstburg and that after.receiving the boilers she returned to, Amherstburg with- out a stack under her own steam, the boiler furnishing steam readily without the draft that would have been available if the smokestack had been in use. Unless a hydraulic jack is absolutely reliable the engineer, mechanic, railroad man or whoever is using it, is better with- out it. Just at the critical moment, when everything depends on a jack "standing up," a poorly, made device is liable to give way. In the Watson-Stillman hydraulic jacks, every such element of uncertainty is eliminated, hence the confidence reposed in them by those who have to trust life and limb to the dependability of a hydraulic jack. The cylinders and rams, for which, in some makes, so-called seamless tubing is thought good enough, are in the Watson-Stillman jacks forged from solid steel billets, forged and bored like the cylinder of a high-class steam engine. Valves, glands, pistons, etc., are made and finished with equal care, packings and other parts subject to wear are easily accessible and replace- able, the result being a hydraulic jack so thoroughly depend- able and constantly ready. for service, that it holds first place among this class of tools. The manufacturers, Watson-Still- man Co., 46 Dey street, New York, have a list of about 300 styles of hydraulic jacks, which they will send on request. We have recently received from the Burt Manufacturing Co., of Akron, Ohio, a very handsome catalogue which de- scribes in detail the various oil filters and exhaust heads manufactured by this company. The Burt, Manufacturing Co. is the largest manufacturer of oil filters in the world, and its new catalogue has been conceived and executed on a scale which accords with its reputation, as it is said to be the largest and handsomest catalogue of this class of goods which has ever been issued. It illustrates and de- scribes the Cross,. American and Warden oil filters, the American oil filtering system, and the Burt and Standard exhaust heads. The valuable information which it contains in reference to the filtering of oils makes it a valuable work of reference, worthy a place on the desk of anyone operat- ing a power plant. It also describes fully the Unit Type of oil filters, which is used in connection with the American oil filtering system. Everyone interested in the running of a power plant is invited to write the Burt Manufacturing Co., Akron, O., for a copy of this handsome publication.