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16 which, if the use of a rail arranyement such as shown in Fig. 9 is undesirable, a boat standing inboard of another may be picked up direct from its chocks and swung outboard. Before concluding, I must take up a remark which has been put to me on more than one occasion--'What is the good of taking so much trouble over a question like this? The chances of ever getting any lifeboat safely into the sea from the tremendous height at which they are placed on present day liners are so remote that it is useless to hope for success, whatever davits are adopted." That is hardly sound reasoning, but it con- tains a great deal of truth, all the same. Sooner or later some different plan of placing the boats must and will be adopted; it is only a question of time. Some eight months ago, I put .a suggestion '-on the lines illustrated in Fig. 10 before a -prominent firm of ship builders on the conti- nent, without, however, at the time obtaining any definite result. I am, of course, fully alive to the many difficulties in the way of getting some such scheme adopted, and_ it may require a few more of those disasters which stir humanity to its very core, before conservatism can be made to budge. Ship builders do not, as a rule, welcome deviations from orthodox designs; that such deviations, possibly resembling the one fore- shadowed above, must ultimately come, I am nevertheless more than ever confident. At a scarcely a month passes without birth of some new _ leviathan, each exceeding its forerunner in speed and passenger-bearing capacity, the compelling ne- cessity for such vessels to be fully equipped with life-saving appliances of the highest order is a fact which cannot fail to thrust itself time when witnessing the with an added force and conviction upon the. observation of the most callous, In. bringing these remarks to a close, and speaking, as far as it is possible for me, from an impartial standpoint, I venture to assert that if ever there was a moment when the matter so briefly dealt -with in this paper called for careful and renewed consideration, that moment is now, when the gigantic crea- tions of recent. months and the rumors of even greater things in the near future, bring to the whole subject a new significance. COMMUNICATED DISCUSSION. H. C. Higgins, superintending engi- meer, Old Dominion Steamship Co.: I have your favor of the 14th inst., inviting me to discuss a paper to be read by A. B. Welin on boat davits. While there are two sets of Welin boat davits on the ships of the Old Dominion Steamship Co., we have never had occasion to use them at- Sea, or in port in fact, except at boat drill. We, therefore, have had little practical experience with them, and al- though | firmly feel they are a very good article, there is nothing I could say that would be of interest to the society. I thank you for your invi- tation. Lewis Nixon: I feel that all the mem- bers of the society are grateful to the author of this paper for bringing to their attention a development looking to the savine of life at sea. It 'has been said, as we all know, a great many times, there has been but little improvement in the method of han- dling the boats on shipboard since the day of the ark. Probably Noah used the same appliances as we have at the present day. That does not argue, necessarily, that they are so very bad, but does show that not much atten- tion has been paid to improving them. Of course, you have a prejudice on the part of the builder who has to make his estimates as low as possible, and owners are not in favor of adding lected. THE MarRINE REVIEW developments that directly increase the cost of their ships, but I believe if the superiority of this method of handling boats impressed itself on the ship owning class, that they will be specified by them, and naturally it will turn the attention of owners of pleasure boats to them, will bring their advantages prominently -- before such owners, with the consequent re- sult that either they will be adopted, or there will be improvements made along the lines of handling life boats, so that we may finally secure the ad- vantage of these improvements, and the advantage of any development which leads to decided improvement in any part of the equipment of the vessel is, of course, well understood by the naval architects of the world, end tor that reason |. think we are indebted. to Mr. Welin for this very interesting paper. Wie Hyslop. 1 am clad to have heard' Mr. Nixon express himself as he has. I have no doubt that the reason, One important reason, why this matter of improvement has re- ceived so little attention from ship owners, has been largely due to the fact that in the contrivances brought forward within the past 50 years, and until .quite recently, until perhaps nine years ago, or-thereabouts, the greater number of these were absolutely fool- ish. About that time, I employed a patent agent to procure for me a copy of every patent referring to launching boats, and I looked carefully through these papers, and I think the number that | got was about -35; most of them had reference to davits, and out: of the whole number there were only about "two that teally, I -- thought, would be entitled to any consideration by an intelligent ship owner or builder. But, whilst the form of davit is perhaps the most important thing to consider, there is nothing in the var- ious processes for launching such boats on an occasion of that sort that is not-material and there is not one consideration which is to be neg- Now, of course, these pro- cesses are numerous, there are the gripes moval of the covers from the boats, there is very ordinarily the necessity to raise the boats out of the chocks before they can be moved on board the boat; and then there is that most important thing, a matter I think where the chief difficulty and chief weakness in the ordinary means of using a life boat is to be found, there is that matter of getting the boat from the inboard side of the davit to the outboard, and in proper posi- to attend to, there is the re--- tion for lowering away. Now, what- ever these difficulties are in connec- tion with these various processes, there will remain some difficulty con- nected with the rolling of the vessel, or in .connection with any list she may have, and the importance of hav- ing proper provisions and proper con- sideration given to these preliminary processes lies in the freedom which it gives to the concentration of at- tention to the one process of lower- ing the boat away and the freedom from embarrassment. in dealing with those difficulties that always have and probably always will occur. I heard some years ago of improve- ments which had been made in vari- ous litle details in a ship over in Ho- boken, and securing the proper entry, I saw the captain of the vessel and he put me in charge of the second officer to show me anything that I wanted, and I found two things which ate rarely referred to, but which really are important, which had been covered in the provisions of that ship. There was just below the gunwale of the boat and outside of it a bolster continuous from one end to the other, semi-circular bolster, canvas covered, filled, I presume, with cork. Now, in an-iton boat or any boat, that bol- ster is very useful. It' saves the life boat from being stove in after she has been launched, or in the process of launching. I have seen an occasion where a life boat has been stove in in that. way. This' bolster has. aa- other use and permits of the cover of the boat rolling down, just below the projection of the bolster, and in the case of a boat pointed on both ends a lacing rope through the out- side edges of that cover with a simple toggle on each end, secures it in place and it can be cast off in a moment. In a similar way, I notice in the illustrations which accompany this paper, that the form of chuck renders unnecessary the hoisting of the boat before it can be moved out outboard. That is to say; chucks are inboard. The boat is held against the chucks inboard _ securely, the gripes hold it down to it, and the boat is not permitted to slide outboard, be- cause a simple rod, operating from the inner side of the boat, inboard side of the boat, is turned up in its place. In the plan put before you at the present time, all the complication of letting go one means of-securing the davit in position is avoided. You have one simple movement outboard, and that movement is controlled -by -a power much stronger, than that to be obtained by direct push by .a number of men.