The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1898-04-22

There is a sacrilegious saying among
seafaring men to the effect that those
who go down 10 the sea in ships shall be-
hold the works Of the LORD but those
who go down to the sea in schooners
shall see hell"
This was before the day of the torpedo
boat. otherwise this craft would have
been substituted In the saying for
schooner"
The life at sea on a schooner may be
TRYING, it may be cold and cherries and
limited, but to thoroughly grasp the full
significance Of being cribbed, cabined and
confined one should serve on board tor
pero boat.
A torpedo boat is a Tong. low, narrow
vessel in the designing of which the one
clement Of speed has been made to domin-
ate all other features. Therefore, every
qualification that makes for this end is
given the highest development to the al
most total suppression of every other
warlike and seagoing essential.
Thus we find, for instance, that a boat
Of 100 tons displacement, similar to the
three boats Spain sent to tn Cape Verde
Islands. is usually from 40 to 80 feet
long, slows % tons of coal. carries four
torpedoes, two for each tube. and has
complement Of about twenty men.
In dividing such craft up internally,
usually the sharp knife edge bow Is shut
off six or eight feet abaft the stem from
the remainder of the boat by the collision
bulkhead. This division is made, first, be-
cause nothing could be slowed away in
so narrow a place so far forward, and
second. to insure the safety Of the boat in
case her bows got stove To stave In the
bows of a torpedo boat is really quite as
easy as rolling off log, for the boat in
all her parts is made as light as possible.
The skin plating is made of the lightest
steel, the frames are Of light weight, the
longitudinals are mere strips of metal.
So thin and frail is the construction of
the boat that II she bumps or runs into
anything she would be bent out of shape
and should her bow strike any hard OBJ
ject-like a. floating spar or the Spite of a
dock-it would be turned back on itself
and twisted all out of shape, in much the
same way as a stiff piece Of paper would
be after being crumpled up in the hand
Next abaft the collision bulkhead comes
the torpedo room, where the torpedoes are
manipulated either to be fired out of the
bow tube or hoisted up to the deck tube,
according to- which way the boat may be
fitted. Next comes the mems quarters
a small compartment. where the eighteen
or twenty sailors are packed in like sar-
dimes
TORPEDO BOAT MACHINERY.
Then come the boilers and engines. The
former are of the tubular type. in which
water circulates through an almost inf
quickly raised and easily kept up, but
men, in order to keep these frey maws
aglow with all the fuel they can eat,
must be able to stand heat with nearly as
much impunity as did the three Israelites,
Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego, of the
Old Testament.
The engines Of the torpedo boat are of
the five cylinder triple expansion class or
of the quadrupaI expansion type. They
are the lightest, most carefully adjusted
and the most perfect and delicate speci-
mems of mechanism af1oat. AS a conse-
quence they must be handled with con-
summate skill. Usually there are two sets
Of engines. occupying the entire waist Of
y
Every part is as compact as possible,
there is not an inch of waste space-pipes,
cylinders, pumps, levers and other parts
Of the apparatus are here presented to
the view of the uninitiated in seemingly
endless confusion.
Indeed. it IS hard work for an expert to
know at first where to find the valve he
must shut. or the cock he must open, or
the wheel he must turn And the heat
thrown out by the whirhng cranks, the
leaking steam, the hot slides and the live
ly pistons is as great and overpowering as
the heat in the boiler room.
Yet here, as there, the machinists and
his assistants stand to their work. almost
stripped to their buff. rivulets of sweat
rolling down their faces and off their bod
les, with never a thought of the danger
surrounding them for let any part of that
swiftly moving. delicate machinery break
and often it does breaker let our fire.
man miss his fooJing-which unfortunate
ly sometimes happens-and the chances
are a hundred to one that he Will never
touch lever or furnace fire again
Abaf1 the engine room is usually a small
compartment where the engineer petty
officers sleep. -Four hunks is about all
there is To it. Abaft there is another
quite like it. This is the wardroon, cabin.
messroom and stateroom for the three
officers usually attached to a torpedo
boat. Not infreQuently the distance the
distance from the deck to thetop OF the
room is so low that men under six feet
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