Arkansas true Democrat., 1858-04-13
Guards agains. being scalaed to Des tn.

1 account of this disaster. But It Is not neces- 1 sarv. S.eambo,t caamities are of such ire
 queat occurrence, that unless q recsnt date, the
 details are of little interest to the general req
 der.
 Suffice it to say, that, in March, l8oo' boat "entrely new," duly inspected, and well sup 1 piled with water-guages. steam guAses, and all
 the appliances required by law" left Pittsburg,
 ard before she had proceeded three hundred miles ou her voyage an explosion took place by which the captain and ten other persons lost | their lives.
 | The supervisors say that the boilers "were i furnished with the alloys used in Evans Safety | Guard;" but they do not say that they were furnished toitR Evans Safety Guard. The truth is that the alloys were applied in the inch diameter contrvance of the super vjsors. and why this inch diameter contri- vance did not prevent the ca a'astrophe, is sui fciently explained in letter which Captain T. J. Haiderman one of the local inspectors at Cincinnati. addressed to a friend at Little Rock, on the 4th of January 1857.
 Capt Halderman is well known to the elder citizens of this place, having been engaged in the navigation of the Arkansas river from the year 1883 to the year 1877 His letter was not intended for publication; but we know he
 will approve of our extracting so much as re-
 lates to matters Of public concernment.
 You wish to know seneth hing of the cause
 of the explosion of the Metropolis,
 She exploded her boiler at Coalport some POO
 miles above this place. was lowed down here
 and I made a thorough examination of the mat
 ter. examined the safety guards
 and took them off with my own hands, and
 saw that they were iU condition that they
 would not work. or % into operation. although
 the alloy might fuse, on account of the spin dles that nass down through the alloy fitting
 so tight. that they could not turn round when the alloy did fuse.
 When the law first passed competitor drove MT. Evans 10 Get up a cheap guard
 which was of no account and coull rot be de-
 pended on He dispersed with fastening the
 tube into the fiues. the sluffing box and other
 things. ard instituted a small valve not more l than quarter of an inch in diameter. which
 would stick fast to the ~aat- But The most se- ! rions objection vas the spindle which, fitting tight. soon rustei and would not turn rouai. II condemned these small guards some tw7 wears a-o. 4 boat Nah Q blew mp with j one of them on. and o7a 0f -ba comm tee who ' investigated th- n tier -.'' me hat tha -uar'- were taken of ard examired ard that after arr'vf-g heat 10 mal- the alloy, jn the b-a-- cur. they could r"t rurn the sri dles round without the a>s:>tarce If vice. they were So l comaere 7,>tei fist.
 Whan vou were hare last vou saw aa i'm r-ovei rlar of Evsr,' T-nelll safety -uAr!. ] which we adopted a0l have required all the i hoats to put on l. has worlei well, and Q ! boat has met with an accident with that arrange ment hen the supervising inspectors met at &: | Louis sent them ore of the kind of guards l l we were using hoping they would adapt them ! ] ard take some measures 10 have all the local 1 1 boards use them. aS they were informed that 1 ] the small one could no be relied on. But i they simply passed resolution that the guards | l should not be put on with a valve of less than l one inch in diameter. without pointing out 1 any other defects in the small guards. Con- ] sequentlv, the board at Pittshurg and some others, simply made ar alteration in these small worthless guards, bv adding a one inch valve to them without any other alteration. Such was | the alteration that was made on the guaris that were put on the Metropols'
 The original guards that MT. Evans made. l were fitted up with two inch valve 80 as 10 ! let steam escape as fast as generated which 1 wouli prevent an explosion. The ! guards that are put on here work to admira- | ton. The engineers are generally much pleased l with them, and if not tempered with, and i kept in order no boat will blow up with them on. I am perfectly satisfied that the Metropo- lis never would have blo@u up with the guar.ls properly fitted on her The engineer let the l water get low in the boilers. and know there was heat erongh then to fuse the alloy, and no doubt it did fuse the alloy: but the fault lay in the fixture that contained the alloy.
 
 "Onlv short time since. alloy was put on the Emma Graham to fuse at 14O It's A temporary engineer was on the boat and. af- ter making trip, he told my colleague (Mr i Gnthrie) that the alloy fused at 1OO pound. pressure, and he could not get along with l. l The permanent engineer then joined the boat l and informed him what the previous engineer stated afont the alloy. I told him to place l man al the steam guage and another at the safety guard at some time on the trip while he | boat was under way and let the guards % into i operation number of times and mark the l pressure by the steam guage at which the alloys | would fuse On his return he gave me a writ ten statement. He le the alloy f,ise six times i The To" est point it fused at was 136 pounds. | and the highest 139 pounds. The average of the six times was 138 pounds, whch was only ? | pounds ltss than what the alloy was intended | to fuse at
 Mr. Guthrie got Mr Tolle, the engineer of the Hickman,''to give him a written sate- ment about the alloy fusng too soon on that boat, which letter was Iaia before the super vislig inspectors and referred to a committee Mr Iolle admitted 70 me that he did not mo- tlce the steam gusge until some little time aE fs-f fb.ar ,f.vI, ' from the guard valve causes the steam 10 f.ll. ! and this was the case when Mir Tolle looked at 'he steam guage. Therefore, his report was not correct, as the steam hal fallen before he looked at the guage. This was the kind of burder the engineer of the Emma Graham made
 The alloy prepared by Professor Booth, I find operates or rather fuses correctly enough for all Practical purposes. have had but few coml lainis, and then the alloy was out of the way but few pounds. l have no doubt but that the alloy could be prepared with more cor iectness on board of steamboat when steam is up, and the boat under way when he furnace IS full of fire, at which titne the heat is more intense than in the small boiler in which Mr. Booth tests the alloy. *i+
 believe that no man on the western wa ters for the last sixteen years, has taken more pains to ascertain the ad yantages of Evans safe " guard. have used it since it was invented. looked upon it from the start as a most valu- able invention to prevent explosion of boilers and collapse Of fiues, and up to this time my confidence in it Is not the least shaken. The farther I have pushed my investigations, has on y tended to confirm my opinion uf its great value"
 We here close our extracts from Capt. Hal derrnan's interesting letter Few nersons in the United States are better acquainted than he is with steamboat nayigation either theoretically or practically But, on one point w. must he permitted to differ with him. He thinks that an instrument with valve only one inch in diameter if it be properly made and with pro- per fixtures, will answer since from the loud re- port it makes, it must warn the engineer to re-