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TAE MARINE REVIEW ' : 21 with the advances that have been made in almost every other branch of the engineering profession, and as a*natural conse- quence the foreigner has entered the market, and his salvage steamers may now be found stationed at a number of places that have hitherto been neglected by the British salvor. The present methods of floating wrecked vessels may be summed up under a few heads, viz.--patching and pumping, FIG, 5.--WALTER BIBBY UPRIGHTED. coffer-damming or building up the bulwarks to above the water line where the depth is too great to pump out, and lifting by means of pontoons attached to wire ropes placed under the sunken vessel, when the depth is too great to al- low of coffer-damming. Taking first, "patching and pumping." This method is adopted where a vessel has gone ashore on rocks or sand and holed herself, more or less badly, sometimes filling up all the compartments with water which ebbs and flows with the tide. The most arduous part of this work, in most cases, falls to the divers, whose duty it is to make the fractures as watertight as possible. An examination is first made of the bottom, and plans for patching up the holes arranged; anchors are laid out to keep the vessel in position and assist in heaving off; and, if the ship is in an exposed place, scut- tles are cut in the hull to admit water in order to keep the FIG. 6.--S. S. SARAH BROUGH SUNK IN 12% FATHOMS OFF HOLYHEAD. vessel quiet in the event of bad weather coming on. The necessary number of steam pumps are put on board, and when everything is ready and. a favorable opportunity occurs, the ship is pumped out and floated. Time will not permit of going more fully into all the details, but a view illustrative of this method will now be shown. : Fig. 1 is a view of a vessel ashore on the west coast of Africa. The operations were similar to those described, and the vessel was floated. The bottom was very badly damaged, and the principal difficulty in the case was to temporarily re- pair this damage so as to enable the ship to make 'the long voyage to England in the winter months, there being no graving dock available, and no place where she could be satisfactorily beached to enable the work to be done. The difficulties, however, were overcome, and the steamer arrived safely at an English repairing: port. With reference to the cutting of scuttle holes in a vessel. in this position, in order to let water in to keep her quiet should bad weather come on, it is necessary to have some method of controlling the water, but at the present moment the author does not know of any satisfactory way of doing this. 'That is to 'say, that after scuttle holes are cut, say of 10 . inches diameter in the hull of a stranded vessel, probably at the turn of the bilge, no satisfactory portable valve has yet been invented that can be attached easly to these holes FIG, 7.--PONTOONS LIFTING THE SARAH BROUGH. and opened or closed from the deck at will, as the tide or sea covers them. Several kinds have been used and experimented with, but none of them has been quite satisfactory. Rods from the outside of the ship, attached to the valves or ports, and manipulated by screw gear from the deck have been tried, but owing to the length and necessary lightness of these rods or controlling gear. they are liable to damage by bending through a sea striking them, and so rendering them un- workable. It frequently happens that owing to the holds being partially full of coal, or other cargo, it is impossible to get down inside the vessel to attach anything there. FIG. 8.--S. S. SARAH BROUGH BEING TOWED TO CEMAES CARRIED ON THE PONTOQONS.