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152 THE MARINE REVIEW DEVOTED TO MARINE ENGINEERING, SHIP ' BUILDING AND ALLIED INDUSTRIES Published Monthly by The Penton Publishing Company Penton Building, Cleveland. -- - 1521-23 Lutton Bldg. CHICAGO - . - . ; CINCINNATI - - - - . 503 Mercantile Library Bldg. NEW YORK - - - - - - 503-4 West Street Bldg. PITTSBURGH - - - - : 2148-49 Oliver Bldg. > 501 Metropolitan Bank Bldg. WASHINGTON, D.C. _ - - a are BIRMINGHAM, ENG. -- - - = Subscription, $2 delivered free anywhere in the world. Single copies, 20 cents. Back numbers over three months, 50 cents. Change of advertising copy must reach this office on or before the first of each month. The Cleveland News Co. will supply the trade with THE MARINE REVIEW through the regular channels of the American News Co. European Agents, The International News Company, Breams Building, Chancery Lane, London, E. C., England. Entered at the Post Office at Cleveland, Ohio, as Second Class Matter. (Copyright 1914, by Penton Publishing Company) April, 1914 OOOO Lifeboats Equipped with Wireless Wireless is one of the greatest of all blessings to the mariner and it is constantly finding new uses. In a moderate sea the inevitable difficulties of launch- ing boats may be more or less successfully met, but there is still a great danger to life when this has been accomplished, and the boats are afloat with their passengers and crew, for it is no easy matter to handle heavily laden boats in a seaway, and next to impossible to keep a number of them in close touch for any length of time when the sea is rough, and through hours of darkness. There is, therefore, a clear call for some efficient means of dealing with a fleet of boats under such conditions, and of keeping them together until help can arrive, for we may assume that any modern vessel will have ample op- portunity to send out S. O. S. messages to the full limit of her wireless installation before the last neces- sity of taking to the boats is decided upon. A new departure, which will do much to meet these "requirements, was made on Saturday, March 14, when the Allan liner Alsatian sailed from Liverpool on her second voyage to Canada. She is equipped - with a special lifeboat, which hangs from davits on her starboard quarter. It is not only a lifeboat, but is self-propelled, and, more important still, is fitted with a wireless telegraphic installation, which has an effective range of 100 miles. This lifeboat was built on the Clyde. She is 28 ft. long, and has a beam of 8 ft.; her hull is compactly and staunchly constructed to stand heavy wear and tear. She was put through a series of tests in a moderate gale about two weeks THE MARINE REVIEW boats will be very much enhanced. April, 1914 ago with satisfactory results. Her motive power js a four-cylinder paraffin motor of a well known and well tried type, the sine qua non of the machinery being, as it is of the hull, the maximum of reliability possible. The boat attained a speed of nearly seven and one-half knots on trial, and is calculated to have sufficient power to keep in effective control, under tow and in a moderate seaway, a string of ten ordinary boats loaded with passengers. Two similar boats are to be fitted to the Aquitania, and it seems likely that the practice will become general. If the scheme works out as is anticipated, and there seems no reason to doubt that it will do so, it is apparent that the chances of safety for passengers who have been driven by force of circumstances to take to the high seas in small They will no longer be helpless castaways, but will have the tte- mendous advantages of mobility and companionship, It is almost unnecessary to point out that, whereas each isolated boat would have to make her own sig- nals of distress, a group of boats would all be served as effectively by one signal, such as the ordinary rocket signal, and this alone makes the time during which such signals are available very much longer. There are other obvious advantages from grouping the boats, but the one great novel advantage is that derived from the possession of a wireless installation with a range of a hundred miles. It needs no great stretch of imagination to picture the difference between the posi- tion of a solitary and, perhaps, inadequately manned boat laboring in a seaway, and relying upon the chance of attracting the attention of some passing vessel, and that of a chain of eight or ten boats having motive power, and capable of making continuous calls for help to all ships carrying wireless installations within a 100-mile radius. : Running in Fog It is quite natural that at the recent meeting of the Pittsburgh Steamship Co.'s officials with its captains and engineers attention should have been paid to the recent comments of Judge Tuttle on lake naviga- tion. There is no doubt, as Hermon A. Kelley very well said, that the utterance of the court came as a distinct surprise. If there is one thing more than another that the leading companies on the lakes have emphasized during recent years it has been that of exercising care in fog. The captains are told over and over again that the safety of the ship is their first consideration and that weather conditions must govern the operation of the ship. Dispatch is sec- ondary to safety. The vessels of the leading fleets are not driven at top speed through fog. There 1s not a ship that does not run under check in thick weather. . It is obviously impossible to define what moderate speed in fog may be. No court will undertake to define it, because moderate speed is governed by 4