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i E-D:. T-O =—s= “COMMERCE, a RING AND SCI VOL. V.NO. 387. a $2.00 PER ANNUM SinG~e Coprms 6 CEnTs, MARINE SUPERS!TITIONS, Indeed marine superstitions should not be hard to kill, for they are not very numerous. A large uumber have been fathered on sail- ors by land writers, but they want the true ring; the salt flavor is lacking, and it is easy to see that their narrators never were afloat. The really. nautical superstition is unmis- takable. It is born of the sea taring life, and the spirit of it speaks as surely of blue wa- ter and the association together for months ata time of briny minds in dim and resonant interiors as the lurching, rolling gait, the toughened hands, swinging athwartships, tell of the ocean sailor, the sea-jockey used to such hurdle races as the Pacitie in storm ofters, or to such mad galloping as the roar | ing and revolving storm forces upon him. There is the old superstitien about Finns, for instance. The Finlander makes a very good, quiet, respectable sallor, but both Eng- lish and American seamen agreed, for some | reason undeterminable, to look upon him as a sort of magician, and to fear him and treat him respectfully for that reason. Many stories used to be related of him. usually depictured as a yellow haired man i1a sealekin cap, full of predictions and always rightin his prophesying, In some ships, when there was a Finn aboard, it was customary to nail a horse-shoe to the foremast to neutralize any prediction he might utter that was likely to be injurious to the ship or crew. He was occasionally credited with the.nower of getting drunk as‘often as he liked throughout the longest - voyage ona single quart of ruim, the contents of the bot- tle never diminishing, no matter how often he put it to his lips, and he has been known to stand the bottle on a table before him and talk to it. Finland ’ships, too, were always thought able to obtain a fair wind whenever they chose, and, with studding sails aloft and alow, overhaul and pass vessels beating in the same direction against a gale. Dana tells a story of a captain who threatened to confine a Finn in the forepeak if he did not make a fair wind for theship. ‘Che wind re- maining dead ahead convinced everybody that the Finn refused to give in, whereupon he was bundled into the forepeak and left there without food. The Finn held out for awhile, but unable to stad the imprison- | ment any longer, ordered the wind to shift, which it did, and the yellow haired magic- ian was liberated, as this arose it is impossible to say; but it is easy to see that it belonged to the ocean and must have had its origin in the forecastle. It is as salt in its way as the notion of Sun- day entertained by a ship’s carpenter, who considered that he tulfilled all the Sabbath obligations laid upon him by combing his hair and mounting a pair of green spec- tacles, and declaring that he would not give | a chew of tobacco for the chances of a man who considered that the main topsail looked | white on that day. Of all the superstitions of the sea the most ; intelligible are those which gather about the | wierd electric exhalations called composants. A green, faint, and sepulchral light, shining ata yard arm or boom end on a pitch black | night and amidst a gale of wind, might well puzzle and agitate the simple heart of a sea- man staring aloft at it. Shakepeare embodies the shining appearance in the person of Ariel, and spiritualizes it by his own con- ception: ‘‘Now on the beak, now In the waist, the deck, in every cabin, I flam’d amazement; sometimes I’d divide, and burn in many places; on the topmast, the yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinetly, then meet and join.’ It is quite possible that one finds here the groundwork of the belief for- merly entertained that “St. Elmo’s fires,’’ or composants us they are usually called, were | women who took this form to bewilder sea- men, ‘There are stories of sailors giving chase to a composant, following it from a lower yard arm to the truck, and then being spirited off by the figure of a female that suddenly gleamed out in the darkness with the composant shining on her hair like a star, Another superstition was that compo- sants were the souls of seamen who had died aboard the ship, and who, in flaming form, haunted those yards and spars, upon which they had often, when in life, hung on by their “eye-lids.’? No sailor liked one of those lights to shine upon him. ot He is | How such a superstition | fell upon his face he would go below with the conviction that something evil was sure | to happen to him. As to the Flying Dutch- man, it is doubtful whether Jack ever sin- cerely in his heaat believed in that appari- tion; but of Friday. the marine dread was habitual; dead bodies and parsons were looked upon as fateful, and to drown acnt was a certain way of provoking disaster. Davy Jones belonged to Jack’s theology. What appearance he assigned to this spirit, whether he had horns and a tail, or whether he more resembled Neptune as personitied in the olden times by men-of-wars-men who crawled over the bows with crown and tri- dent when the equator hove in sight, isa point that remains to be settled, but there could be no doubt that Davy Jones was-a dangerous monster, who lived at the bottom | of the sea, and whose days and nights were | devoted to the pleasing labor.of stowing | away in bis immense locker the bodies of seamen who came floating down to his do- minions. Another nautical superstition willingness to kill or capture a Mother Ca- rey’s chicken. Coleridge’s.‘ Ancient Mari- ner’s’”’ albatross: is.a land-going fancy; no | mariner, however‘ancient, would anticipate evil in killing an aibatross either with a hook or cross-bow. ‘To slay one of .those little chickens, however, which follow in the wake of ships, rising and falling amid the stupen- dous surges like divine intimations that even | as the lives.of those sparrows of the deep are cared:'for “ed fe‘ the ‘poor: sailor himself watched over, would, in Jack’s mind, be reckoned as wicked as robbing a church. But -all such fancies and: superstitions are fast drifting away, if, to. use a marine ex- pression, they are not already out of sight astern. Draughts trom the scuttle-butt, in lien of the old ‘‘tots of grog,’? may have something to do with the change, but the active agent of the transtormation is un- questionably steam, and its obnoxiousness | to the ancient rude poetry and imaginations of the deep may be witnessed in the adver- tiseménts which daily announce the sailing of whole fleets of steamers on Fridays.— London Teleyraph. FURNACES New York, Aug. 31. | Editor The Nautical Gazette: | Dear Sir: | M.,” asked the writer to state how he pro- | posed to use sectional boilers on shipboard. My article to which he alludes referred more particularly to the advantage accruing ‘from the use of high steam than it did to { anything else, but in order to carry very | high steam successfully sectional or water | tube boilers can only be used, if a proper j | BRICK factor of snfety is to be maintained, for with high steam we must have just as safe a boiler or generator as one carrying only | thirty pounds pressure, fer thirty pounds of steam makes just as deadly an explosion as one of 200 pounds, only the effect of the | jatter may be felt a little further off. | One of the first requirements of a safe steam generator is that all parts of it should , be accessible to the hand or the eye, in or- | der that a thorough knowledge of its condi- | tion may be possessed by the person in | charge, | This, however, is not the case with shell | boilers, where the lower half of the cylinder ‘is filled with flues or tubes, which makes | this portion of it entirely inaccessible, un- less the tubes or flues are cut out oecasion- | ally and removed, for a thorough examina- tion, if it is desired, As to how I would use sectional boilers on shipboard, I will say: All boilers’ in use on Western river boars are of smal] diam- eter, not generally exceeding 42 inches, ‘These are set side by side, with four, five or six in a battery; the furnace being con- structed of fire brick, the flames of the | furnace, passes under the shell and returns through flues or tubes to the stacks, the deck being protected by briek work and entire battery of boilers surrounded with | might perhaps be found in. the sailor’s un-. ON STEAMERS. | Your correspondent, “M. J. | the aid of a very light backing of sheet iron, | supported with light angle iron as a frame, furnishes a fabric of iron, protected by re- fractory material, tor the direct confinement of the flame or furnace fires. This class of from internal heat, and the shock and jar incident to this class ot steamboats, which have none of the advantages of making landings at or alongside of a dock, as is customary on the tidal rivers of the Eastern States. The steamboats of the Western rivers have to come to their landing by being forced up alongside of the river bank in the most primitive way, to say nothing of the severe usage they receive by being worked over bars and snags and similar obstructions. ‘The brick work around the boilers is the last thing to give out, except at the bridge wall, where it ie too frequently melted down by the intense heat from the heavy firing; for in most of these stenmers they burn as high as 66 pounds of bituminous coal per hour on a square foot of grate surface. 1f this could be done on any of our river or seagoing steamers their crown and tube sheets would not stand an ordinary watch of four hours, Therefore, “M. J. M.’’ will not require further argument to prove to him that brick work on Western river steamers receive the roughest kind of usage—first, in shocks and jars, and second, from intensity of heat, the like of which is not equalled in the world for severity. “M. J. M.” evidently fears the “pitching and tossing” and its effects at sea on boilers set-in brick work, which I take to mean brick work as commonly constructed for land boilers, This, I confess, would not stand at sea or even on the boats of the riv- ers.of -the West; but properly speaking, ‘Western river boilers are virtually sectional boilers, for they consist of a series of small shells, and that is all: any sectional boiler consists of, and aet in iron work, with brick or terra cotta work to protect it from the warping effect of the turnace heat, which is well and thoroughly accomplished on the steamers of the Western riyers, Years of practice have thoroughly demonstrated that boilers set in this way will last longer and do far better service both in generating steam and in economy of fuel than it is pos- sible to accomplish in shell, water Jeg, or fire box boilers. A case that will dewonstigh to “M. J. M.”’? (whom [infer to bea student of en- gineering or an actual follower of the pro- fession) or to the most incredulous, how | much it is possible to accomplish by using k furnaces or a similar refractory mate- in place of the ordinary water leg or water wall in common or general use in marine boilers, is that of the steamship New Orleans, running between this city and New Orleane, La., which was originally built with six boilers 9 feet diameter, with one furnace under each shell, which were in- closed by 9 inch water legs extending up to the axis of the cylindrical shells, thus virtu- ally surrounding the furnace and_ boiler with a9 inch water leg. After running the ship for about two years these water legs required a general repairing to make them tight, but the engineer in chief of the com- pany deemed it best to stop oft all connec- tion between the shell portion of these boil- ers and the water legs which surrounded the entire furnaces, and then lined the fur- naces complete with fire brick, which was virtually surrounding the 9 foot shell boiler | with a fire brick furnace, depending upon the old sheets only to hold the 9 foot brick wall in place, These brick furnaces have now been in constant use at sea for nearly two years, giving entire satisfaction, increasing the efli- ciency of the steaming properties of the boilers, at the same time showing a very large saving in fuel over the furnace and boilers as originally constructed, before the brick was put in, which is accounted for in this way: The water legs, as previously used, exerted a cooling or condensing influ- ence on the products of combustion in their passage out of the furnace, thus allowing a large precentage of them to escape. ‘The brick furnace, when once heated, facilitates the combustion of the gases as they rise trom the fuel; hence they do not escape from the connections and tubes, but contribute full amount of heat due to their combustion. The United States Naval Advisory Bourd have made’ investigation into this subject of briek furnaces, and their economy as applied to steamship boilers, and have made the If the reflection | furnace withstands the severest kind of usage | specitieation for the new steel cruisers whieh call for their boilers to be set in iron frame- work, protected by brick. Thus, Mr. Edi- tor, my reply to your correspondent has assumed a length beyond what I intended, but should he require further information on the subject your humble servant will gladly respond. Yours very truly, OBSERVER. — — THROUGH ‘THE RAPIDS. The Herald’s Buffalo Correspondent says: The imitation of the old steamer Maid of the Mist was sent through the whirlpool rapids below Niagara Falls in the presence of 10,000 spectators, Exeursions were run on all railroads centering at the falls, both from the States and Canada. ‘There was much criticism on account of the whole aftair be- ing turned into an advertising medium. It was said that the scheme was gotten up for the benefit of the hackmen and _ hotel keep- ers, but the advertising privilege of the boat was bought by a patent medicine dealer of Lockport. ‘lhe little craft was rigged up to represent the original Maid of the Mist, which was piloted safely through the rapids in 1861. At 3:20 p. m., Butfalo time, the. boat was towed out into the stream and eut loose at about the point where Captain Webb started on his tatal swim. She went swiftly down the stream and when reaching the rapids was dashed about like a small boat in o rough sea, but kept her course sately thr eral “tines. Sti@' reached ‘the whirlpool in about three minutes from the time she struck the rough water. Then she floated around and gradually worked to the Canadian shore, remaining in the whirlpool about twenty minutes. After reaching the shore she was secured and her flags taken off, after which she was pushed out into the stream and floated down the river some distance when she was taken in tow by some boys and tied up to the Lewiston dock. a A PORTABLE BREAKWATER. A most ingenious invention called the Greenway Breakwater has come before our notice, and is one which, if we can judge from the the successful experiment made, will in a very short time be brought. promi- nently before the public. The object of this breakwater, which is simply a line of buoys, is not to resist the force of the waves, but to turn them against one another. The buoys are moored in a straight line, independent of one another, and are of a triangular shape, with 2 sharp point, which is directed toward the sea when the buoy is in position. They are held by two anchors to each buoy, fore and aft, so as to keep them in position with the space of a buoy between each. ‘The draft of each buoy is 10 feet. Whena wave strikes the sharp prow of a buoy it is divided into two parts; the divided wave then rushes towards the buoys on either side, and in the space between it meets that portion of nnother wave which has had similar treatment from the neighbouring buoy, with the result that the diversion and collision reduce or entirely break the force of the wave, and the water is carried harm- lessly inside of the breakwater. Such a breakwater could be constructed ina very short space of time, while the cost, compared with that of a concrete or stone breakwater, would be trifling.— Liverpool Journal of Com- meree. = i ie W.B.'‘Turman, of Waldron, Ark., is the patentee of an improved valve gear for steam engines constructed to allow convenient re- versal of the engine, and for regulating the amount of steam admitted to the steam chamber. Mr. Isaac Cumberbatch, of Newark, N. J., is the patentee of an ingenious device for regulating the draught ina steam boiler. At the top of the boiler is located a hollow cyl- inder which connects with the boiler and has a movable rod passing through its center, which is connected with the top of a series of disks in sneh a way that as the steam is admitted the rod will be raised proportion- ately to the steam pressuies, and the dam- per in the flue of the boiler whieh is con- nected with this rod by a series of levers will be correspondingly closed and the draught diminished, hy coreaaine and turning around seve ,. ead