The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-04

zdItorfnI Opinions of the Leading Journals
Upon Current Topics cs-COmpiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
STEAMBOAT DISASTERS, AND HOW TO
PREVENT THEM.
Fyo,n the N. y. Times.

GhGN EN l. IlAHuh'
From the NJ y. Times
II tbera is onv circumstance that can add
to the phastliness of our modern steam
boat disasters, it is the fact that they are
permitted if not provided for by law. After
some years of fussing, Congress has at length
perfected an act which, however well IT. may
cooperate with care and vigilance on the
part of steamboat managers, nevertheless
permits careless and reckless officers to blow
np boilers, sink and burn steamboats,, and
make river travelling little less terrible than
il was in the early days of Mississippi racing.
Steam pressure may be limited, the rule OF
the road may be defined, and fire pumps may
be provided; but so long as boilers explode
every day, so long as ships collide and then
sinkright to the bottom for want of bulk
heads, so long as steamboats, invariably burn
up when we'll set on fire, the law is practi-
cally as inadequate as no law, to reasonable
and organized security.
The Stonewall horror is a fearful but not
unusual commentary on the state of legisla-
ton respecting the safety of life That
passenger could by any possibility 90 about
among a combustible cargo with naked
candle or lighted pipe; that the whole thou
sand-horse power of a burning steamer should
be uselessly straining in its boilers, when a
fraction of its energy rightly and instantly
directed would deluge the decks with water;
that whole ships company should be
drowned in smooth water, within stones
throw of shore, for the want of boats numer-
GUS and well-appointed enough to take them
clear of her as fast as they could get over her
side; that every single means of safety which
reasonable care could suggest or which
known and established arts and inventions
could supply, were either wanting or unused;
that every single appliance which law had
provided, either to prevent disaster or to
check it, was utterly abortive: that fire and
nAn11 M n or NoY
full of power and skill with as little hindrance
as an encampment of Indians would offer to
burning prairie, or q den of wild beasts to
mountain freshet, or a South American city
to an earthquake; this is the net result
of all our Investigations and commissions of
experts, and long-drawn reports and amended
laws is a worthy tribute to our system of
legislation on technical affairs, and the crown
ing glory of our civil service!
If the Stonewall had been filled with tin
der; if cotton bales had been piled round her
furnaces; if the whole crew had been drunk
and playing poker by naked torches; if there
had never been fire-pump nor bucket on
board of her; if every one of her boats had
been stove; if life-preservers had not been
invented; if there had been no scientific in
vestigations, mechanical inventions, no
legislation if the Congressman of the United
States had been even less distinguished than
at present as experts in engineering and steam
navigation; if the doomed vessel had con-
tended with all these perils-she and her
company could not have perished more mise
rably. Of what use is any pretence of legis-
lation on these subjects, when nearly every
collision or rupture of machinery or careless
lighting of a fire, ends in the broiling mang-
ling, or strangling of hundreds of human
beings?
This last horror is only one, and perhaps
the most unfrequent, phase of peril by steam
hnof faU he frn,,, &c
numerous and ever-present causes, vessel
gets hole knocked in her side and then
down she goes, before her people can get out
of their berths, when either bulkheads or
suitable water-discharging apparatus could
save her if she were cut half in two. 1t re-
quires some GOODNESS to fight fire and tempest,
even if the appliances are as they should be,
but if hull is properly constructed, all hands
may turn in after any ordinary collision and
let her take care of herself. To build a YES
sci without bulkheads is a risk that owners
will take as long as they are permitted; but
for Government to allow clearances to such
vessels, is simply crime against humanity.
Bulkheads properly secured are as certain to
keep vessel atloat after a collision as q
steam engine is to turn q screw; both may
fail, but if the latter is on the whole prac-
tical, SO is the former. But there is another
way to keep vessel ahoat. The engineering
periodicals have lately described the results
of O sort of mammoth injector, dozens OF
which may be placed all over the ship, and
worked by the whole boiler power of the
vessel, with pumping capacity equal to any
known emergency, and this, too, without the
Intervention of moving parts, but by the
simple turning of a cock. If there is any OBJ
lection to this, the centrifugal pump, thai
wonderful cataract-maker that attracts sc
much attention in our industrial fairs, or the
ordinary steam pumping engine, may, at
comparatively small expense, be so fitted il
ships as to receive the whole power if neces
sary, and to neutralize a leak through which
coach-and-six might drive. 1t does seen
stupid beyond measure, to let ship inconti
nently burn up or go to the bottom, when there
is force enough wasting within her to lift he
or her weight of water bodily into the ali
once a minute.
The reason why these things are permitted
is clear, and the remedy is most simple ant
most feasible. Despite the indifference O
Legislators as class to the subj jects that hav
no immediate relation to politics and politi
Clans no direct bearing on party ascendancv n,
special reference to immediate constituencies
weare unwilling to believe that they would ne
glect subject of such vast interest to tn
whole people if they knew how to cope wit
it. They are as profoundly ignorant of tn
remedies for steamboat disasters as thew ar
of medicine, languages the evidences G
Christianity; it is not in their line; they d
not know what to do or whom to consult, @
what advice to take or what to reject If the
were satisfied that the details of the Who'll
matter of the public against the transporter
could be managed and watched by thorough,
md hat la,,,,