LEGISLATION FOR STEAM-BOATS.
THERE is a bill at present in the House of Commons on the sub- ject of steam-boats. It proceeds from, and is worthy of, the abso- lute wisdom of the Guildhall ; and may be called " a bill for de- stroying steam-vessels, in order to preserve wherries." It never seems to have struck these men of the East, that there was a more rational alternative-to destroy wherries and preserve steam- vessels. We have often observed, that below Bridge, wherries, at all times a precarious description of vessels, were, since the intro- duction of steam, no longer river-worthy. A cockle-shell affair, whose gunnel is elevated three inches above the level of the water, is swamped in a swell which would hardly discompose the gravity of aboat of decent build. The waves thrown up by the paddles of a steam-boat are not at the utmost above a foot high. They are short, but wholly without danger, unless to vessels that are only capable of floating in a perfect calm. What common sense re- quires is, that wherries plying below Bridge should be built after a different fashion-that an additional streak should be added to them, and then there will be no more accidents from steam-boats unless from collision, let their speed be what it may. A similar expedient is equally called for in the case of barges. They are at present laden within three or four inches of the water. A wave of eight or ten inches high will fill them. What is the ob- vious cure?—Surely to raise the gunnel of the barge. With espect to collision, a man with half an eye will perceive that the more rapid a steam-boat moves, the more completely is it under control. A staring, stupid Cockney, who sees a gig turn and a -ship turn, cannot distinguish between the power of the reins in the one, and of the wheel in the other. There is a difference, notwith- standing. A galloping horse is not only less easily swayed in its course by the hand of the driver, but the impetus with which it moves renders change of direction less easy to the animal itself than it is to a trotting horse, and less easy to a trotting horse than to a walking one. Land vehicles are managed with a facility which increases in the inverse ratio of their speed. But in vessels mov- ing through water, it is the motion alone that gives the helm its power. A vessel proceeding at the rate of ten miles an hour will turn in twice its own length ; a vessel proceeding at the rate of five miles an hour will not turn in six times its length ; and if proceeding at the rate of two or three miles, it will hardly answer the helm at all. The wise project, therefore, of compelling steam- boats to creep instead of walking, is, in other words, a project for rendering them unmripageable by way of rendering them safe. The great, and indeed the only error in the present construction of steam-vessels, is the position of the steersman. He is placed so low, and so far aft in the vessel, that he can neither see where he is going nor what lies in his way. The pilot or captain, it is true, stands on the paddle-box or in the bow, and thence " cons" the vessel ; but there is no " conning," as every sailor knows, like the eye of an expert helmsman. To remedy this, Captain BASIL HALL has proposed, in the United Service Journal, the adoption of the American mode of steering. " In America," says Captain HALL, " in all the steam-boats the helms- man, instead of being placed abaft, close to the taffrail, in a low situation, from which he can see nothing, is raised on a high platform, within a few feet of the bows, from whence he commands a view, not only a-head and on both sides, but he can see the smallest boats, even when close to the vessel's cutwater."
The advantages of' such a plan are too obvious to require enu- meration. He goes on to show that its adoption would be ex- tremely easy, and by no means expensive.
"All that is requisite is, to have a small platform or scaffold, eight feet square, raised about ten feet or twelve feet above the deck, at the distance of ten or twelve feet from the stem. On this let the wheel be placed ; and let the tiller ropes, after passing round the barrel, be led through blocks in the deck beneath, and again through blocks or sheeve-holes on the bul- wark, low down. The ropes then stretch along outside, and are supported on fair leaders or rollers till they reach blocks above the counter, and being drove through these, they are made fast to the end of the tiller ; which it is best to shift abaft the rudder, so as to keep the poop or quar- ter-deck quite clear for the passengers, and to prevent the possibility of anything coming in the way of the tiller."
Captain HALL thinks, that for vessels plying partly on rivers and partly at sea, a double tiller would be requisite. We shall not pronounce decidedly on this part of his suggestion, but we apprehend, that, by a very simple expedient, the necessity for a sea tiller and a river tiller might be avoided, and that the latter might be made to answer both purposes. This is, however, of small moment, compared with the improvement which Captain HALL has the merit of describing, and which we hope to see im- mediately adopted. All that we have here stated, regards the ordinary regulation of steam-vessels. For an extreme calamity, like that which throws a shade over our columns this week, we have suggested, at the close of the account of the loss of the Rothsay Castle, the only palliatives that such a lamentable but rare occurrence seems to admit of.
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