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'taken PLATE 2. ¢ as. the handle or lever is_ released, the pressure in the closing main "forces the miter-valve on to its seat, and moves the ram back to the "closed" position, and the door is again closed. Thus any man shut in a compartment may escape, and when he has passed through, the door will immediately close behind him. ing of the closing of the doors is given by bells at each door ringing continuously as the door is moving. . As it is desirable that the officer on the bridge should know the position of each door, whether open or closed, an electric indicator is provided; this -contains a fascia plate, on which a plan of the vessel is engraved. Ruby _discs are let into the plate at dif- ferent points, and are numbered to correspond with the doors they rep- resent, and these are automatically _ lighted when the door is open. (3s .a. photo of. this-:indicator. In addition to the above, automatic bilge float-valves can be fitted in all or any desired water-tight compart- ment, and will at once come into action upon a rise of water in said compartments due to any cause what- . soever, closing automatically all doors leading from them. Plate 4 shows a hydraulic cylinder section of the for opening or Warn-- Plate. TAeE MaRINE REVIEW closing doors. It is needless to point out that this cylinder can be used for actuating either vertical or horizontal doors, Plate 5 is from a photo of a "cleav- ing. action" bulkhead door, for cut- ting through coal or other obstruc-_ tions. The door is especially adapt- ed for water-tight bunkers. From the foregoing description it will be seen that every requirement of a perfect water-tight door system, as already set forth, is fully covered. When 'the safety of passengers is into consideration, what sur- prises the writer is that with such a system available any shipowner should think of building a passenger vessel, 'and sending her to sea, relying on the old system of closing bulkhead doors. It is compulsory to provide a full complement of lifeboats and other life-saving appliances, together with davits, which can be relied upon to lower the boats in a heavy sea, with the least chance of mishap. Still, all said and done, provided a vessel is not on fire and can float even with a big hole in her side, she is about the most comfortable and safest place available in mid-Atlantic on a winter night with a high sea running, espe- cially if she -has. still some motive power left, if only sufficient to keep her up to the 'wind. If owners will Only give the matter careful consideration, they will find already granted a special class in their registry for vessels fitted with such an arrangement. European owners. are rapidly be- ginning to realize the advantage of the system, not only for Atlantic liners, but for. all cross-channel boats carrying passengers, with the results that recent vessels built for both the English and Irish channel service have hydraulic system installed, as also the Ben-My-Chree, the latest addition to the Isle of Man Liverpool ser- vice, which has only a three-hour run. The tendency towards' increased speed and the fact that turbine vessels cannot be stopped so quickly as ves- sels with reciprocating engines (al- though it may be treason to say so), all point to the importance of render- ing passenger vessels. as nearly un- sinkable as possible. The inventions which I now propose to consider tend more toward the comfort of passengers than to their safety, and for this reason 1 shall deal with them much more briefly. The first of these is the new means of disposing of the ashes and clinkers from the stokeholds of vessels with- out the necessity of hoisting them above the main deck and dumping them into an ash chute or over the side; or else forcing them above the water line by a jet of water and then over the side through a bent pipe. The first of these methods is more PLATE 3. that instead of the fitting of such a device being a serious, ufnecessary outlay, it will be a source of positive gain, not only from the fact that the passengers, who value their lives, will from choice travel by vessels so fitted, but also that there should naturally be a considerable saving in the amount debited to insurance account, whether a company insures its own vessels OF NOL, To shew that. there are. good grounds for these arguments I may mention that the North German Lloyd advertise water-tight door-closing system, and that the Germanischer Lloyd have their vessels as having a or less crude, clumsy, and sometimes very noisy and objectionable to pas- sengers, not perhaps so much from the noise of the hoisting appliance as from the expressive mode of speech common to firemen and coal passers, some of whom require to operate the gear on a level with the passenger accommodation. The second method is in many re- spects an improvement on the first. On the other hand, there are, how- ever, some serious objections to its use, not found in the hoisting method. These are, in deep ships such as the Lusitania, the very heavy pumps and high water pressure required to op-