The herald., 1897-07-18
THE FAMOUS YACHT ELLIDE
WONDERFUL PERFORMANCE ON
THE HUDSON RIVER
Uwner e. B. Warren Can Take Sum-
mer Cruises at the Rate Of a
Mile in ! :35
speoiss Correspondence to The Herald.

ono minute and thirty-f1ve seconds!
This pleasant possibility is one of the
pero uisdtes of E. Burgess Warren of
Philadelphia, the owner Of the speedy
steam yacht Ellide, which has just
proved herself to be the fastest thing
afioat.
There have been rumors for some time
that there was being constructed at
Upper Nyack, N. Y, pretty little Hud-
son river town, a boat that was going
to astonish the natives. Those rumors
are circulated every once in while, To-
cations being different, and SO at first peo-
pie paid very little attention to the talk.
Presently 1t became known that Charles
d. Mosher, a naval architect of whom
every one knows, was the man who was
engineering the construction of the boat
Since that news leaked out, there has
been a good deal of anxiety Or rather,
interest, as to how the craft would per-
form when she was given a chance.
She has shown exactly what she can
do, and Charles D. Mosher has gained by
means of her fame among boatmeu
that will last as long as Robert F'ulton's
Over in Europe they are making great
deal Of noise about that 100-foot torpedo
boat called the Turbinia, but when it
comes to a question of speed. she is not
even In the same class with the Ellide.
when the latter was ready for this trial
In which she showed her speed posi-
bfft1es, she had on board twenty-five
passengers, who weighed in the aggre-
gate something like $500 pounds.
Mr.. Mosher had agreed with Mr.. War
chr Ira al
Of thirty miles an hour, which would
have been very fast. but not extraordin-
ary.. Incidentally, 1t might be Of inter
eat to Mr.. Mosher's friends to know
that he gets a bonus of $1,000 for every
mile the Ellide can make over thirty
an hour It was a sight not to be forgot
ten-and the writer was there, so he
knows-to sec that little craft when she
made her start. To look over her stern
It seemed for q second as If some giant
fish had suddenly beaten the water into
fragments with his mighty tail. Then
the Ellide shot forward like an arrow
from bowstring.
Second by second her speed increased
until the people aboard began to wonder
when she was going to stop. Pilot Pack
ard held her to her course as true as
q plumb line, and never boat answered
her helm more beautifully than this.
Down on the floor of the engine room was
Designer Mosher, watching her engines
with the same care that a mother watch
es an infant child. He told every stoker
and every engine man just what to do,
while he watched the cleaning child of
his brain with fervor that almost
amounted to ecstacy. Faster and faster
she went, until her propeller was making
$50 revolutions minute and her boilers
were under a pressure of $50 pounds of
steam. The auxiliary engines were NOV
ing at a rate considerably faster than
their superiorS.
Now, while you are thinking a bout the
speed of the Ellide, and she is the speed
lest beauty that ever f1oated on keel,
take these facts into consideration: She
Is 80 feet long and feet inches deep.
Her mean draught is feet6 inches Here
is point that is not to be forgotten as
well. The Ellide's planking is of that
finest of material for a boat double
skin mahogany. Otherwise she is steel,
and it would seem as if, like the Coney
island steamboats,, "she will not burn,
she cannot sink
She is a combination of the pleasure
and the speed craft Her forward deck
is thirteen feet long, with the cockpit
Just abaft wherein are located the steer
ing wheel, the compass pinnacle, the
voice tubes and the annunciators On the
port side of the Ellide is the refrigerator
and china closet, and on the starboard
side is the bathroom with toilet access
sories. Look at the engine which is in
the machinery space that comes next.
It is a quadruple expansion affair, with
nine cylinders, 9x13x1Sx24 inches by a
ten-inch stroke. Beside the main pro-
polling engines there are what are called
an inboard surface condenser beside six
specially designed engines for running
the feed pumps, air pumps and circu-
lating pumps.
The Ellide's boiler is water tube in a
polished brass casing. There are two
steam drums placed over two water
drums and connected together by great
number of solid drawn steel tubes so
arranged that the gases pass twice the
length of the boiler among the tubes be-
fore entering the stack, thus practically
absorbing all the heat from the gases
of combustion. The boiler is subdivided
into two independent sections, to pro-
vide against accident. In case tube
should give out in either section, the
boat could still be run by the remaining
section or half-boiler power.
The eighteen-foot dining room comes
after the machinery space and next to
that is the after deck. "A permanent
wooden awning with glass windows
runs the full length of the boat and en-
closes everything in staunch and ship
shape fashion. Now you can see what
the Ellide is like, what sort of boat 1t
Is that has smashed all records now and
will make plenty of new ones in the fu-
ture, unless all probabilities fail
( To go back where we were before tell
ing what the Ellide is like, brings us
right to the time when the yacht was
moving a speed that is only compare
bic to an express train. The most cur
ious fact of all was that in spite of her
tremendous velocity, she seemed to leave
no wake. 1t was a remarkable fact to
see boat cut through the water at the
rate of speed at which she was moving
and hardly disturb the water at all
There were actually no waves resulting
from her passage through the water.
Those who were aboard Of her sat by