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June, 1909 society will be called to order at 9:30 a. m. merely to get the proceedings under way, and will almost immediately adjourn to avail themselves of the in- vitation of the Detroit Ship Building Co, tainment of the have undertaken the enter- who society for the day and have engaged the steamer Britan- nia to convey the party to Wyandotte to witness the launch of the steamer Conemaugh for the Anchor Line. The side launch will doubtless be a novelty After the launch, a luncheon will be served to most of the coast members. on board the Britannia and the steam- er will at once proceed down the river and give the party an opportunity to witness the work on the Livingstone channel, returning to the city towards evening. The second day, Friday, a morning session will be held at the rooms in the Stevens building, at which papers In the afternoon the party will board the U. S. S.. Don Juan d'Austria which has been very graciously placed at the dis- posal of the society for the day by the Michigan Naval Militia and which will convey the members, ladies and Old 'Club at St Clair Flats, where dinner will be served, re- will be read and_ discussed. guests to the turning during the evening. ~ On Saturday a morning session will be held and the reading and discussion of papers concluded, and in the after- noon autos will be provided for trips about Belle Isle, Grosse Point, with afternoon tea at the Country Club, (oeten concluding the proceedings of the con- vention. Members and guests are urged to register at the registration office on the parlor floor of the Hotel Pontchartrain immediately on The final program will be distributed at the reg- istration office. may wish to return via Cleveland will have an opportunity, through special arrangement with the D. & C. Naviga- tion Co., of making the trip by the steamer City of Cleveland. It is much to be regretted that lake shipping will probably not be in a normal condition at the time and that probably not much over 60 per cent of the tonnage will be in commission, as an opportunity to judge of its volume would doubtless be enlightening to many of the visitors. arrival. Visiting members who _ expansion TAE Marine Review 161 Boiler Explosion on Steamer Hoyt N THE morning of May 15 the starboard boiler of the steamer Jas, H. Hoyt exploded when the ship was about 3% miles off Fairport, O., enroute to Ashtabula, killing three men and injuring three oth- ers, two seriously. Among those injured was the chief engineer, John Duggan. The Hoyt is a modern steel bulk freight- er built by the American Ship Build- ing: Go. at-.Superior, Wis., in 190Z and is 356 it, keel, 50 it. beam, 27 ft. deep, and is fitted with triple engines and Babcock & Wilcox water tube boilers of the "all large tube" type. The boilers. are fitted with automatic traveling grate stokers and automatic feed water reg- ulators. The killed and injured were taken ashore at Fairport and thence to Painesville for attention. An in- quest was held at Painesville, and subsequently the inspectors of steam vessels, at Cleveland, preferred charges against the chief engineer and a trial was given him at Cleveland on May 22, before Capt. Jas. Stone, supervis- ing inspector for the Ninth District, as a result of which he- was exon- erated of blame. In the evidence given at the coron- er's inquest, Chief Engineer Duggan testified that he knew nothing positive- ly as to the cause of the explosion, nor had he observed anything. unus- ual about the boilers previous to the explosion. He testified further that there was no explosion, "simply the letting go of the headers caused the escape of steam." In his testimony before Supervising Inspector Stone, Duggan said that between the time of leaving Cleve- land and the rupture of the boiler (about three hours), the gage cocks - were tried at least six times per hour and the glass was blown down sev- eral times, not only by himself, but by the "handy man," and that a con- siderable 'time before the rupture took place he noticed an abnormal or unusual action of the water in the glass and immediately proceeded to draw the fires, but before this was completed the boiler gave way. He also 'testified that the time elapsing between his noticing the peculiar behavior of the glass and the explosion was not over ten muin- utes. Immediately following the rup- ture -it was discovered that the valve in the steam connection to the wa- ter column was closed, and as the testimony of the engine room crew was to the effect that none of them had closed it, it was sought to be shown. that it must have been closed maliciously by some one on board. Only the chief engineer testified as to positive knowledge of its being open on leaving Cleveland. Other testimony was to the effect that the boiler, as indicated by its appearance subsequent to the ex- plosion, was empty or nearly. so, Independent of the apparently con- tradictory statements by the chief engineer before the coroner and Capt. Stone, it is not by any means diffi- cult to arrive at a conclusion as to the probable facts. First, the evidence as to the change in water level from normal to that of an empty boiler in ten minutes may be set aside with- out consideration; the thing is impossi- ble without water having some exit from the boiler, even if the valve had been closed by some one on board, and that this was the case is a wild improbability. That the gage cocks were tested six times per hour is within the bounds of possibility, although also to be doubted, and the fact that that evidence is the unsupported statement of the chief engineer, is not to be overlooked. He also, by his own statement, had entire charge of the feed water that morning and it does not appear that any other of the en--- gine room crew paid any attention to it. That the valve was found closed may be accepted as a fact and that it was never open at any -time after leaving Cleveland is not only not impossible, but the probable truth. How much feed water was admitted to the boiler during those three hours is, of course, problematical; there must have been some, because the entire water contents of the boiler probably did not exceed 10,000 pounds and even at the leisurely gait at which the Hoyt "was traveling, not over 9 miles per hour, the evaporation from one boiler could hardly have been less than 10,000 pounds per hour, but the drum alone contained about 3,200 pounds to work- ing level and this could not have dis- appeared in 10 minutes, as positively asserted by Duggan. The engine room crew simply deceived themselves, as is further evident from Duggan's state- ment that even when his glass and try- cocks were showing water, when he blew down the column proper he got dry steam. If the lower connection to the column was uncovered, how could the glass and try-cocks be repeatedly blown. as stated, and continue to show