CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MEANS OF PROPELLING CANAL BOATS, STEAMERS, AND OTHER VESSELS
Year: 1838

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, we, RAMSAY
RICHARD REINAGLE, of No. 15, George Street, London University, in the County
of Middlesex, Royal Academician, and Chevalier GEORGE ROBERT D'HARCOURT,.
of No. 6, King William Street, in the City of London, Civil Engineer, send
greeting..
'
WHEREAS our present most Excellent Majesty. Victoria, by Her Letters
Patent under the Great Seal of Great Britain; bearing date, the Fifteenth day.
of August, in the second year of Her reign, did, for Herself, Her heirs and
successors, give and grant unto us, the said Ramsay Richard Reinagle and
George Robert D'Harcourt, our special licence, full power, and privilege,
and authority; that we, the said Ramsay Richard Reinagle and George Robert
D'Harcourt, our exors, admors, or assigns, or such others as we, the said
Ramsay Richard Reinagle and George Robert D'Harcourt, our exors, admors,
or assigns, shall at any time agree with the others, from time to time and at all.
times during the term of years therein expressed, should and lawfully might make;
use, exercise, and vend, within England and Wales, and the Town of Berwick-,
upon-Tweed, and also in Her said Majesty's Colonies and Plantations abroad,
our Invention of "CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MEANS OF PROPELLING CANAL
BOATS, STEAMERS, AND OTHER VESSELS;" in which said Letters Patent is contained
a proviso that we, the said Ramsay Richard Reinagle and George Robert
D'Harcourt, shall cause a particular description of the nature of our
Invention, and the manner in which the same is to be performed, to be
inrolled in Her, Majesty's High Court of Chancery within six calendar

page_text: months next and immediately after the date of the said in part recited Letters
Patent, as in and by the same, reference being thereunto had, will more fully
and at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, we, the said
Ramsay Richard Reinagle and Robert D'Harcourt, declare that the nature of
our said invented improvements, and the manner in which the same are to be
performed, are fully set forth and explained in the following description
thereof, that is to say:-
The Invention consists of open water chambers, trunks, boxes, or cylinders,
placed within the stern or on the two sides of the stern of any vessel; in such
chamber, trunk, box, or cylinder, is placed a piston with a thrusting head,
which will be made to push against the water let in and retreat by its attach-
ment to an engine moved by steam or other power; these water chanıbers,
trunks, boxes, or cylinders will cause no alteration in the external form of any
vessel, or barge, or boat, nor will the piston head advance greatly into the
water. The water chambers will be below the water line of the draft of the
vessel, be it ship, barge, steamer, canal boat, or any other character of vessel
used for the purpose of conveyance of persons or goods and merchandize, on seas,
lakes, rivers, or canals, but never below the line of the keel. There will be no
necessity to form these chambers of any particular geometrical shape; they are
to be in certain cases a single water chamber, trunk, box, or cylinder; in others
double, either by dividing the chamber, &c. into two, the one over the other, or
side by side. There may be as many of these propellers put to a ship or other
vessel of bulk as necessity or convenience shall determine; the governing rule
will be, that a propelling surface to the piston, as a head board, shall equal the
surface of a paddle board of a common wheel, which shall bear its proportion to
the said vessel as now is regulated by scientific tables, according to any given horse
power; thus, for example, if one paddle of a wheel contains fifteen square feet of
surface, videlicet, ten feet long by one foot six inches deep, the propeller should
present an equal surface to thrust against the water, let the figure of such head
board be of any form whatsoever. If the vessel will admit, by its build and other
circumstances, two such chambers and piston propellers, the vessel will obtain
double the speed. The propeller need not travel in the chamber beyond a two-
feet stroke. It is to be considered that a foot, or even an eight inch stroke,
will be ample for certain velocities, such short stroke or action admitting a
greater number of strokes per minute than the more lengthened one. If sixty
strokes per minute be given, it will be found that on each return or withdrawal
of the piston the rush of the water will act as a propeller of at least two-thirds
the value of the thrust. The water, checked as it will be by the immediate

page_text: return of the piston acting forwards, will serve powerfully to propel, and this,
in course, will nearly double the stroke by the effects produced. If a vessel
be built expressly for this propelling power, with a flat stern, such vessel, let it
be what it may, will move with more speed and certainty than common built
vessels are likely to do. The chambers, &c. may be, as stated, divided into
two, three, or four, or any greater number. When this disposal of the propeller
into more than one chamber occurs, the motion must be alternate; when
divided into three, the strokes must be either consecutive, as one, two, three, or
by making one chamber equal to the other, two alternate, the strokes, videlicet,
two and one; when divided into a greater number, the alternations need never
extend three throws, making any larger number acting twos together, or more,
so as to divide the propelling powers into thirds. Large vessels and ships of
war may have two or three engines on each side of a boiler, which boiler must
generate steam for their supply; accordingly the mechanism need not be
dictated; mechanical science is sufficiently established to regulate the required
motion. In order to understand this propeller completely, it is intended to be
a straight forward or an angular side thrust by the usual means of strong piston
rods, aided, when required, by compound joint levers; it is intended, as occasion
requires, to hang or suspend the propeller on ball and socket hinge actions, and
fix the piston thrusting rod low down from the true centre, so that the action
will be a balancing thrust and retreat by'a double knuckle joint. It is intended
to use such flat propellers to act as a common door horizontally on similar
ball and socket joints acting right and left. The propeller head will be made
of oak or ash wood, full three inches thick, in plates, placed transverseley and
firmly fixed by screws; this head is to be covered with a caoutchouc rope fabric
made on purpose, the warp being of one thickness of rope or cord, and the woof
of only half or one third the size of each such rope or cord. The whole inside of
the water chamber, &c. will be lined with this fabric, facing it by a metal frame
of iron or copper to the margins of the propeller head by screw bolts and nuts
passing through the wood propeller, the nuts being fixed at the back of such
propeller; this fabric may be fastened after it has covered the front of the
head board behind at the back of the chamber. It is intended to employ both
methods at times. To return to the first lining in front; it is intended that
the two sides of the bag or water trap, and the upper and lower edges of the
mouth, be fixed by a metal frame in horizontal bands, and be well screwed to
the wooden chamber, box, trunk, or cylinder; but, if a cylinder, it must
be made to suit such form. The purse, or bag, or mouth of the water chamber
will then be able to bear the force of the water, and will prove water-tight; but
in order to render this covering still more perfectly water and air tight, the

page_text: caoutehoue rope fabric will be faced over with a compound webbing made of a
'sheet of caoutchouc placed between two strong sail cloths, or ticken or canvass
made of aloes or other substances, varnished and stuck together by a solution of
caoutchouc, and both sides will receive three or four coatings of the same; this
.varnish will cause this outer covering to adhere to the rope webbing. It may,
nevertheless, 'be fastened by a frame of metal to the mouth of the water
chamber. For light boats, as canal boats of from ten to twenty tons burden,
the fabric last named used double, and fixed together by the caoutehouc
varnish, or leather if preferred, and secured as already described, either in front
of the propeller, or carried behind, will suffice,, and be a perfect guarantee
against water and air.
"
Having now described the chamber, and the piston head or propeller, we
proceed to attend to the rear of it. There will be used as a steadying frame
for the piston rod a cast or wrought iron hollow cone, opened or closed at the
'base, with arms projecting' to fix by. screws. The cone will require a centre
division for the piston to pass through after it has entered the head, which will
be suited in its diameter to the secure holding the piston rod. The piston
rod will be secured to the cone's base, or, if it be without a base, to the back of
the propeller. The cone, to be rendered light, will have openings in any form
(parties may choose) on its side. All this will be done before the rope fabric
'linings are attached. The back of the water chamber being then water-tight,
the space must then be adjusted for a free action to and fro, and the head of the
cone will retire to the back of the water chamber, and the piston will work
through a proper stuffing box in the back of the chamber, with an oil feeder
above, as in steam engines and other machines. Two or more sufficient air-
holes must be provided at the back of the chamber, and valve flaps hung on the
outside to prevent air being drawn in as much as possible, and all that does
force itself within will be expelled through the valves by the retreat of the pro-
peller at each stroke. The piston rod will be worked, if a single propeller
be used, by the direct impulse of the engine. If two or more propellers are
used, two means are applicable; a double, treble, or quatruple crank throw,
or a shaft bearing an eccentric equal to the length of the stroke, or a triple cam
to the shaft working against a cylindrical head to the propeller piston. The
advantage of this machinery over the crank is the most easy action, there being
no neutral or passive point to overcome, and that by the unequal pressure and fall
or retreat of the propeller piston forward and backwards, it will produce a sudden
retreat, and resemble the pull of an oar which the boatman completes by a jerk
of the hand or arms when the swinging flap propeller is employed. Every engi-
neer will know how the knuckle joint in mechanism is to be constructed at the

page_text: plate where the piston rod must be fixed to such hanging propeller; as such
flap will describe a part of a circle, the movement will be confined to the
description of one third of a circle, more or less, as may be preferred. The
perpendicular fixed propeller, as a door, or two folding doors coming together,
will require in each case, if single doors, or double doors edge to edge, a
different mode of fixing the piston to them, and there is no difficulty or particular
invention required for it; it will be left to practical engineers to choose their
own method. The caoutchouc webbing and facing will be the same, and
fastened in a similar manner as first described, care being taken to form the
moving flap, flat, or doors of less dimensions than the chamber in which they are
to act in, and allow room for the webbing not to chafe by two great pressure.
The outer caoutchouc fabric will require occasional varnishing with the solution
of the caoutchouc. To give a back movement to any vessel whatever, where
it is absolutely required, one retreating propeller on each side, and behind the
true propeller, with a vomitorio sideways, and of a shorter and less stroke or
action, will stop or move such vessel backwards, and when one acts at a time
the business will equal the facilities of all paddle wheels by a reverse of the
action. This motion is too easy to describe, because all practical engineers know
how to throw geer out of action and replace it, and to let it act on a new shaft.
We claim as a novelty of Invention the lining the propeller chamber, trunk,
box, cylinder, with a caoutchouc rope webbing, invented by us expressly, to be
lined or doubled with a compound fabric of exceedingly strong sail cloth or
ticken made of aloes or other substances, with a sheet of solid or pure
caoutchouc between such cloths or tickens, to be fixed together by means
of a solution of the caoutchouc, as a glue or varnish unassailable by water.
We claim as a novelty of adaptation a propeller head for use in all vessels,
to be equal in its acting surface to the square feet or inches of a single paddle
board of any paddle wheel proportioned to the tonnage to be propelled by the
agency of steam or other power.
"We claim as a novelty of Invention the employment of hanging or swing
propellers suspended by ball and socket hinge attachments, or by common.
spindle suspension, and the facing such hanging propeller with a caoutchouc fabric
to be waterproof, as already described in the Specification, with single or double
elastic rope and canvass webbing with caoutchouc as before described.
We claim as a novelty of Invention the using double action propellers, as two
doors meeting but not touching, hung on ball and socket hinge actions or any
other, and faced to be waterproof, as already described.
We claim as a novelty of Invention the mode of fixing the piston rod to the
propeller head by passing through a conic formed case in angles, or round as an
extinguisher, and providing for the escape of air at the back by large holes
:

page_text: and valves to the back of the chamber right and left of the piston, above or
below.
We claim as a novelty of Invention the means of giving a retreating action
to a vessel by a separate apparatus, one only on each side and behind the
propeller, moved by altering the clutch in or out.
And such our invented improvements being to the best of our knowledge
and belief never heretofore used in this country, we declare this to be our
Specification of the same, and that we do verily believe this our said Specifica-
tion doth comply in all respects fully and without reserve or disguise with
the proviso in the said herein-recited Letters Patent contained, wherefore
we hereby claim to maintain exclusive right and privilege to our said
Invention.
In witness whereof, we, the said Ramsay Richard Reinagle and George
Robert D'Harcourt, have hereunto set our hands and seals, this
Fifteenth day of February, in the year of our Lord One thousand eight
hundred and thirty-nine.
Inrolled the Fifteenth day of February, in the year of our Lord One
thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine.