The deck of the boat must be cut the shape of the inside of the gunwales, out of quarter-inch board, and is to be fixed so that the gunwales are one inch high. It must have a hole cut in the middle to go over the boiler and pipes. A hole must also be cut over the engine, and one also in the front part of the deck large enough to admit your hand, to allow of your removing and lighting the lamp. These two holes ought to be covered by movable skylights. A hole must be bored in the deck just in front of the after-skylight for the wire from the reversing-valve to project about half an inch. A wire handle must be fixed by riveting to the end of this, and two pegs driven into the deck, one on each side, in front, to prevent the handle being turned too far to either side. It should only turn one quarter of the way round.
If you have followed these directions your boat ought to steam for two hours and a half without refilling the boiler; though the lamp would not burn all that time. But if you solder a short piece of tube a quarter of an inch in diameter into the front end of the lamp and quite at the bottom edge of it, and have a closed tin tank with a like tube to it in the front part of the boat, and this tank is filled with spirits, and connected to the lamp by a piece of india-rubber tubing joining the two tubes, the lamp will supply itself from the tank as it gets low. The spirit from the tank will not fill the lamp, but will just cover the hole of the tube and keep at that height so long as there is any spirit in the tank. Such an engine as here described would cost to purchase about £7 10s., and the boat with engine complete, quite double that sum.
Fig. 26
CHAPTER VI.—THE AMERICAN DANCING ‘NIGGER.’
By C. Stansfeld-Hicks.
Fig. 1.