The Ottawa Free Trader

SCIENCE AND PROGRESS

HOW A FIRE PATROL STEAMER EXTINGUISHES FLAMES.

Important Government Document on Industrial Education--Moon and Magnet.
What Makes Telegraph Wires Hum.
Fire Steamer Throwing Water.

Cities with long water fronts are obliged to have fire patrol boats. These are swift little steamers with powerful pumping machinery. They must put out fires upon burning steamers, upon the great wooden docks and piers, and also in the huge warehouses that are always situated close to the water front.

The model boat of this kind is said to be the Zophar Mills, of New York. That city has now two fire patrol boats. Both are quite steadily occupied. The Zophar Mills has calls on an average of every other day some months.

ZOPHAR MILLS AT THE DOCK.

The Zophar Mills is 125 feet long. When the fire boat lies at her dock her bow is pointed to the river in readiness to dart out, and all her connections with the shore are so arranged that they can be slipped and she can be out in the stream within a minute after an alarm is sounded aboard. At the bow she is held by a doubled line with the bight aboard, so that it can be thrown off instantly; the telegraph and telephone cable has a metal plug on its shore end that slips into a socket in the back of a little house like a sentry box on the pier, and can be disconnected in a second; the stern line is hitched over a snubbing post on the pier, and can be cast loose by the man who breaks the cable connection with a single motion. There is always a pressure of sixty pounds in the boilers, which is ample for immediate action.

The capacity of her main engine is 250 horse power, and her two pumping engines are thirty horse power each. With this power she can throw from each pump, when worked at the top of her ability, 1400 gallons a minute. Her ordinary service from both pumps working together is about 2,400 gallons a minute. That seems like an enormous quantity of water to throw at a fire. At that rate she must have thrown about 23,000,000 gallons on the Bankstreet cotton fire during her two hours of work there some time ago.

Fire boats at the seacoast cities have an advantage over others, since salt water puts out a fire sooner than fresh.

The Marine Fire company stay upon the Mills all the time, except when they go ashore for meals. Their captain is paid $1,500 a year.

A 6-inch hose pipe hurls a powerful stream of water upon the flames. Two stand pipes have been rigged upon the steamer. These are to throw water to a height. A hose leads from the pump to a stand pipe and is securely fastened to it. By means of a crank, cylinder and cog wheel the hose from which the stream plays can be elevated or turned in any direction.

The Mills can throw water three-quarters of a mile, that too faster than four ordinary steam fire engines will do. It is a machine of tremendous force.

In putting out fires it is found that burning cotton is most difficult to extinguish.

One of the crew of the Zophar Mills, a strong young man, has saved already, in the course of his career, seventeen lives. He has two silver medals. The fire steamer has done considerable life saving in her time, also.