“To enter,” exclaims Mr. Bayard, a member of the Senate, “the contest with England for the supremacy of ocean steam navigation required talent, energy, and faith of the highest order known to our countrymen, for to fail would involve a loss not only of the vast sums necessary to make the effort, but, what is of far more value to every lover of his country’s reputation, it would insure national disappointment, more deeply felt from the fact that England had already been vanquished by our sailing-ships, and gracefully yielded to us the palm of victory, since more brilliantly illuminated by the yacht America, and the clipper ship Witch of the Wave.”
Such were the expectations and warnings of those who guided public opinion in the United States, when it was resolved to undertake this great ocean race.
Before giving out the contracts for the machinery, Mr. Collins obtained from Messrs. Sewell and Faron, chief engineers of the United States’ Navy, full specifications of the engines and boilers the latter had designed, and subsequently made use of, for the steamers Arctic and Baltic.[197]
STEAMER “ATLANTIC.”
Mr. Faron’s visit to England.
Details of the build of these vessels.
At that time it was believed, from the best information that could be obtained, that the Cunard steamers carried an average boiler pressure not exceeding 10lbs. to the square inch, and that, to equal them, it would only be necessary to have for the Collins vessels, cylinders of 90 inches diameter and 9 feet stroke with the same boiler pressure, although Mr. Sewell (it is understood) originally advocated 95-inch cylinders. After the contracts were given out to the Novelty and Allaire Works of New York, Mr. Collins procured permission of the government to allow Mr. Faron to visit Great Britain and examine the marine engines and boilers in use there. On his return in the Niagara, he discovered that the safety-valves of that steamer were weighted with 13lbs. per square inch, and that with every plunge of the vessel, the valve would open slightly, at once indicating the pressure was equal to the load on the valve. The moment this was communicated to Mr. Collins, he conveyed the intelligence to his engineers, giving a cross section of the Niagara and the dimensions of her cylinder, with 13lbs. of boiler pressure, together with the cross sections of the Atlantic, and the Pacific then building. The engineers accordingly recommended that, to equal the Cunard vessel, the dimensions of the cylinder should be 95 inches diameter and 9 feet stroke, the size originally suggested by Mr. Sewell, to which Mr. Collins at once agreed. The engines of the Arctic, like those of her sister vessels, were of the “side-lever” kind, with solid cast iron beams, and wrought iron columns and braces. The cylinder, air pump, feed-pumps, shaft-bearing columns, &c., rested upon the bed-plate; the ordinary parallel motion was used to guide the piston-rod, as in the British engines, and the motion was communicated to the cranks by the ordinary arrangement of cross-head, cross-tail, side-rods, and single connecting-rod.
The most essential difference from the British method was in the steam and exhaust valves, which were of the “balance poppet” variety, the steam valve being also used for expansion, and working in the several vessels, under the following patents:—on Allen’s cut-off in the Arctic and Atlantic; Stevens’s in the Pacific; and Sickles’s in the Baltic. These engines were greatly admired at the time.
The boilers of the Arctic were peculiar to the Collins line, and their merit was principally due to Mr. Faron, who acted as chief engineer of the company. They were arranged with double furnaces, and lower water-spaces connected by a row of vertical tubes, around which the heated gases circulated, with a hanging bridge or plate, which checked their otherwise rapid flow to the chimney and rendered the combustion more perfect. The heating surface was principally confined to the tubes and consequently vertical, the height of the smoke-pipe above the grates, 75 feet, insured a strong natural draft, and the proportion of heating to grate surface, was unusually large, being 33¼ to 1. The ratio of evaporation of sea water, during the quick trip of the Baltic in February 1852, was 8·55 pounds of water per pound of anthracite.[198]