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December, 1909 consider any other but the paddle wheel with its walking beam engine, and as they knew nothing of any other type, readily pronounced its superiority over all other types and catried with them the ship owners, ship 'builders and mariners generally, the screw propeller being sneered at by them as a low down Philadelphia idea. This last argument was a clincher, anything from Philadelphia being regarded the limit. of technical depravity. Iron Construction in the United States. A short time after iron construc- tion was introduced abroad, certain engine builders began iron construc- tion in the United States. The first one in America was built in Ken- sington at the boiler works of Jesse Starr, sevéral squares away from the water and was hauled to the water's edge by a large number of horses and then launched. The 'first iron steamers were fearful specimens of naval. architecture... The workmen were the boiler makers of the works and the vessels were looked upon by ~ these engine builders as merely ex- aggerated boilers. At first they em- ployed commonplace shipwrights to do certain wood work that the ves- sel meeded. Reaney, Neafie & Co. took a somewhat more advanced stand than their neighbors. They usually gave the whole ship building work with its technique ito first class ship builders. They made contracts for this work with John Beyerly & Son and with William Cramp. Con- tracts at this early date were of great advantage to William Cramp and his son, who can justly say that they were in the business of iron ship building with the earliest anywhere. . Many of Reaney, Neafie & Co.'s improved methods in engine work were due to J. Shields Wilson, who had been placed in charge of their drawing room. He had been brought up in the I, P. Morris Works and had gone to Reaney, Neafie & Co. to post himself on screw propulsion and screw devices. He soon appre- ciated the great defects that existed in all of the works of this country. During the reading of Mr. Cramp's paper, Mr. Dobson,. upon the com- pletion of the paragraph at the top of page 3, closing with "to what was Original with them," said: "In this connection it may be of interest if we should go back over the records of the British Society of Architects and there find a paper on 'the Stev- ens battery--and our cousins across the water are very "modest in claim- 'into the reversing cylinder. ferry boat built in' this' country. TAE MaRINE REVIEW ing things--but if you will look at that design, you will find that in the first application to an armored ves- sel of twin screws, the protective deck was worked into that design, also the much used balanced rudder, where a portion of the rudder ex- tended under the deadwood, the dead- wood being cut away to accommo- date it." Discussion on Mr. Cramp's Paper. President Taylor: Gentlemen, this paper is now before you for discus- sion. Mr. Horace See: Mr. President and Gentlemen, I would like to make a few remarks on the paper. Mr. Cramp's very interesting reminis- cences of the evolution of screw pro- pulsion in the United States have car- ried me back 'to my early experience and associations, not only with this evolution, but also with those of the metal vessel, where I find a mass of information bearing on both. sub- jects, but as the full presentation of the matter would make a voluminous paper, I shall only use at this time some that somewhat differs from, or enlarges a little upon, what Mr. Cramp has given in 'his paper; ithis matter being largely that which came under my personal observation. John Shields Wilson, to whom Mr. Cramp calls attention, entered the Port Richmond Iron Works of Isaac P: Morris, in 1852, or at the same time I was placed there. He went into the drawing office, where I also entered aftér spending two years in the machine shop. He was some- 'thing more than a draughtsman or only a man in charge of a drawing office. He was an engineer with a mathematical education of a no mean order, for one appearing at. the dawn "Of a new art--fully equipped to meet all fact, Shields Wilson was so equipped that he became one of the pioneers the conditions it presented--in in what today is known as naval ar- chitecture--like the engineer who be- came the pioneer in the composite 'architecture now demanded on land. "Mr. ! 'on the work of the day. imprint He was connected with the building of the metal hull as well as the engine and boiler. - It was he who made the Wilson made quite an 'steam reverse gear a success by in- troducing in' 1860 the floating lever to control the admission of steam It was he who designed the engines and boilers of the first double-ended screw 'together We were more 'Or less" 'until 1879 when' he' resigned: a as su- 'real thing, 483 perintendent engineer of Cramp & Sons and the position was given to me. I can, therefore, state with some emphasis that the general de- sign of engines and boilers did not include a complete pipe plan until after 1870, or after he had left the Penn works, which can be readily understood as the entire force in the drawing office of the Penn works, in- cuding himself, consisted, for most of the time, of two men and one boy, in extreme cases of not more than. three men, who had as much as they could look after in designing only part of the work without touching _the pipe or boiler plan, as shown by the extent of the orders which in 1869 included 49 engines and boilers off of 22 different patterns, also three iron vessels, the Pocahontas, Charles. Pearsons and Havana. The Man Higher Up to Blame. The absence of the concrete design previous to .1870, I beg leave to state, was not due to the opposition of, the foreman boiler maker or to that of any other foreman, but to the man higher up--the boss or man- ager without any technical educa- tion.or the man who must see the who could not fathom a drawing ,but must have a working model' to «clear 'the way. 1 Rave known him to stop before a drawing board where something new was be- ing developed, "I: suppose' this is science." He was continually at vari- ance with the engineer in charge. It was he who placed the heads of the mechanical branches above the engineer, it was he who had the work done by the foreman without first having a well digested plan prepared in the office. He, therefore, was the one responsible for a system leading - not only to endless alterations but also to marring the success of the main design. This opposition, conse- quently, kept down the size of the office force so that it was unequal to cope, even if it desired, with more than the general plans and some few of the details, thereby necessitating the ordering of the material and the 'planning .of the staying of the boiler to the foreman boiler maker and the arrangement of the piping, outside the main steam and other large pipes to the machinists. An awakening was necessary before there could be any hope of a change. This did not come until the size of the work demanded something better than the rule of thumb, not until concerns with engineers in full charge led the reform and compelled the lag- gards to adopt similar methods if