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July, 1910 . The car haulage system has been: pro- vided to shift. cars on the two standard gauge tracks on the axis of the dock. The necessity of maintaining a switch- ing engine on the latter is thus avoided, minimizing the fire risk.. The cable of the haulage system extends the full length of one track from a hoist in a house at the outer end of the dock to a sheave at the shore end of the pockets and then back along the other track to the hoist again. 'TAE Marine. REVIEW A recording scale installed on the dock enables a record to be obtained of each car of coal shipped. Power is derived from the Great Northern Power Co., of Duluth. The dock was designed by H. L. Dresser, chief engineer of the Duluth, Missabe & Northern Railway, and the dock was built by the Barnett & Record Co., of Minneapolis, Minn. : The Progress of Warship Engineering O. THE 1909 edition of "Fighting Ships" a careful analysis of warship engineering during the past year is once again contributed by C. de Grave Sells, M. Inst. C. E. Prominence in this sur- vey is naturally given to turbine ma- -chinery, a good deal of attention being 'bestowed upon the comparative trials of the United States cruisers Birming- ham, Chester, and Salem, dealt with already at some length in these columns. At the outset Mr. de Grave Sells re- marks that during the past 12 months a greater readiness has been shown on the part of the authorities of the other navies of the world to follow the ex- 'ample of the British navy in the adop- tion of turbine engines for the propul- sion. of their ships, but the principal fea- ture of the year has been the acceptance of 'other types of turbines for ship pro- pulsion besides the two generally recog- nized as having proved themselves suit- able for marine service. The Parsons type, however, is still well ahead of all others, but the adoption of the Cur- tis type. for a British cruiser and the assumption of the license to manufac- ture by Messrs. John Brown & Co. -of' Clydebank, combined with the excel- lent results obtained with the Salem have given this type a very considerable increase in favor. . The Internal Combustion Engine and the Use of Gasoline. In the course of a note on internal combustion éngines the author remarks that most navies have now some few craft fitted with these engines, but the general adoption of such engines for naval purposes has been greatly retard- ed by the greater attention given by designers and constructors to gasoline and paraffine motors, rather, than to the development of engines using _ mazout, which is generally considered to be the only fuel permissible for naval pur- poses, This point has been emphasized on several occasions recently by small mis- haps, but the disaster on the Italian submarine Foca, which resulted in con- siderable loss of life, should determine once for all the entire abolition of such substances from vessels of war and es- pecially so for use as fuel. It is well to again insist on the point that in a war vessel the one thing to provide for is to render her as perfect and as ser- viceable as possible for use in war, otherwise there is but little reason for her existence, It is certainly possible to run boats with gasoline in compara- tive safety so long as their compart- ments are freely open to the outer air, but. in a war vessel, with its sundry compartments and difficult ventilation, the oversight of a small leak may lead to an accumulation of inflammable and explosive . vapor which may even. in peace time, have dire and fatal effects. The use of gasoline must be absolute- ly dispensed with, and, whilst paraffine is much safer and less objectionable for war ships, still even this has its dangers, and it is well to adopt mazout, which is the only absolutely safe fuel for such purposes. Marine Suction Gas Plant in Oper- ation, The author includes an _ interesting description of the suction gas engines and Capetaine producer-plant in use on board the gun-boat Rattler. He men- tions that since her transformation the Rattler has run about 2,000 miles at an average speed of 8 to 9 knots. The fuel used has been Scotch anthracite, costing 15s 6d per ton, and it is found that the consumption . is about | 50 per cent of that originally consumed of best Welsh coal to obtain the same result, The machinery is found very handy for getting under weigh. From taking charge the vessel can be start- ed in 30 minutes, and, when the eti- gines are finished with, 10 minutes is sufficient for the engine staff to leave everything in good order. In space and weight the new installation saves about 25 to 30 per cent as compared with steam machinery, and whereas as a 293 steamship the engine-room and_ stoke- hold complement consisted of four en- gineers and 13 stokers, she now requires only three engineers and four producer attendants. But the work of these lat- ter is very different indeed to what was required of the stokers, as the charging of the producer is much simpler work, and requires to be carried out once only in every two hours, The undoubted advantages of the sys- tem over steam machinery for such an installation will probably, lead to its being adopted for small vessels for har- bor use and vessels having a regular service from a fixed base, but there seems no probability of its extensively displacing steam machinery under or- dinary conditions. The Status of Engineer Officers. Mr. de Grave Sells devotes some space also to the question of the status of engineer officers, and gives a careful summary of the reforms which the en- gineer officers of the British navy, in their recent statement of disabilities, have set forth as being necessary. Concluding this part of his review, Mr. de Grave Sells says that "the world in general has come to realize that thorough efficiency in any special branch can only be realized by special devotion to that branch, and this is truer in en- gineering matters than in any others. In this special line, too, the extent of the knowledge: required covers a very large area, for the complex mass of machinery due to human ingenuity con- tained within the hull of a warship is no small matter, and each particular portion has its special needs, for which practical experience of those needs is required. So that to be a real engineer, the officer must give all his time and all his thoughts to his profession, and it is folly to suppose that he can attain to the required grade of perfection if the larger portion of his time is given to such entirely alien matters as those appertaining to many of the duties of the executive officer. To continue in this direction is to court disaster, for in time of peace. It must be realized assuredly be found wanting, however well they may have been bolstered up by their more experienced subordinates in time of peace, It must be realised that the result of the battle will ab- solutely depend as much on the ma- chinery and the engineer staff as it does on the guns and the men behind them. The engineer officers of the past and present have always respond- ed splendidly to what was required of them, and it should be the aim of all concerned to render the engineer offi- cers of the future as near perfection as possible, and this can only be done by