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Show IFEini SHIPS Collision Device Now Adopted In United States Navy. COMPRESSED AIR IS SECRET By Its Use, When Existing Equipment Is Coupled Up, Water Is Expelled From Damaged Compartments and Is f:pt Cut. By GEORGE CLINTON. Washington. The United States battleship North Carolina, now lying in the Portsmouth navy yard, is being fitted with a few simple devices which, according to her commander, Capt. C. C. Marsh, will permit her to hit as big an iceberg as did the iil-fated iil-fated Titanic, to hit it jiu-t as hard and yet. to stay afloat for perhaps long enough to come into port under her own steam at any rate long enough so that the crew could be picked up and brought to safety. Two words sum up the whole story compressed com-pressed air. It is the story not of a new invention, inven-tion, but of the new application of a well-known and well-tried method. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of what the North Carolina expects to be able to do is what actually was done in the case of the Yankee. The engineers who tried to raise that foundered ship and Captain Marsh was one of them first set the pumps to going. Nothing happened except the throb-throb of the pumps. The water refused to go down. The j engineers were astounded. They thought it over and they set out on a new tack. On top of the coffer dam which reached down to just above the water line they built a little air lock. Compressed Com-pressed air was forced into the water-filled water-filled compartments below, and, in the words of Captain Marsh, "the water went out like pushing a ball." The workmen descended into the cavity and found the leak five small rivet holes. Had there been compressed air pumps on the Tdtanic a similar miracle might have been worked. Water Forced Out and Kept Out. "I have seen." writes a man who thinks that compressed air will be the solution of many of the dansrers which threaten modern ocean-going liners, "Captain Marsh open the sea cocks, flood his forward trimming tanks, and then, by turning on the compressed air, force out the sea water in five minutes, and by keeping on the compressed com-pressed air keep the water out, although al-though all sea cocks remained open." Every one familiar with the wrecking wreck-ing operations of today will at once comprehend the simple physical principle prin-ciple involved. Your ship, let us say, strikes another ship, an iceberg, or a derelict, and a hole is stove in her. The water rushes in. It finds itself confined to a reasonably water-tight chamber which can be shut off from the rest of the vessel by doors. If the walls of the bulkhead are strong enough the ship can go ahead, carrying carry-ing the extra burden of water. But it is better, of course, to remove the water and close the hole, or at the very least to strengthen the wails of the bulkhead so that they may withstand with-stand the added pressure of the water a pressure which at a depth of 30 feet below the surface of the sea would amount to 15 pounds per square foot. The proposition then is to turn compressed com-pressed air into the neighboring com-ua.rtmeuts. com-ua.rtmeuts. re-enforcing them and preventing pre-venting water from leaking into them either from the damaged one or from i strained plate on the hull of the vessel. ves-sel. This accomplished, yon have injured in-jured your ship from sinking for the Mme being. The next step is to turn 'be compressed air into the bulkhead " here the tear Is, thus driving out the water to the level of the bottom of tlie tear. Conditions now are such that workmen can patch up the rent more r less effectually, alter which the rest of the waler can be sucked out and the ship proceed to repair dock Expense Is Not Great. As has been said, the North Carolina Caro-lina is now being fitted up so that she can rescue herself after this fashion. The new cruiser Utah is already provided pro-vided with ihe neoe-sary apparatus. At first blush it sounds as if .a compressed com-pressed air equipment which would be powerful enough and widely enough distributed to be able to' fill any bulkhead bulk-head on a great steel vessel with compressed com-pressed air at a moment's notice vou'd be prohibitively expensive. But r'.antain Marsh's experience is quite otherwise. A few hundred dollars certainly less than a thousand will' cover the entire cost. . Here Is the way of It: The modern battleship already has the two essential things the com : ressed air pump and the svstem oT :!pcs running everywhere. The com-messed com-messed air apparatus Is regularly "srd for blowing smoke and gases out I -m' the big guns, the pipes are the i ''."p mains, the ventilator pipes es-j es-j eeeially those from the coal bunkers i and the "sounding tubes" the ver-I ver-I tical pipes which drop straight from j Ihe deck into the hold, and through i which soundings of the bilge water are taken. Your system, then, requires re-quires only coupling up to be complete. com-plete. That, in n word. Is what Is being , done on board the North Carolina. General Brush Retired. Today there are on the active 'list ' of the regular army only three officers offi-cers who saw service In the Civil war. Brig. Oen. Daniel H. Drush has retired wtlhlu a day or two and with Ills retirement re-tirement tho last general officer of 0 the army who saw Civil war duty passed from the scene of field duty. There always has been a dispute as to whether Maj. Gen. Frederick Dent Grant, who died a few weeks ago, had a right to be considered a veteran of the Civil war. Grant was under fire in the sixties, but it has been held that he obtained that distinction only because of his somewhat adventurous boy spirit which led him to wander away from his father's headquarters to be made the target tor some scattering scat-tering shots of the enemy. 'The younger Grant was not sworn Into the service during the Civil war. Four lieutenant generals are carried car-ried on the retired rolls of the United States army. The ranking officer whose name appears there is Nelson A. Miles. One year ago General Miles, 71 years old,, was thrown from his horse while riding on the Potomrtc driveway. He was badly hurt and for a time fear was entertained that he might not recover, but today he is up and about, and apparently is tit for another campaign, if such were necessary,- against either the Sioux, the Nez i'orces, the' Arapahoes, the Klo-was, Klo-was, the Pawnees, the Cheyennes, the Blackfeet or the Apaches, for with the braves of every one of these tribes the general has measured cunning and strength. Chaffee's Bravery at Santiago. Adna K. Chaffee is a lieutenant general on the retired list, ranking between be-tween Generals S. B. M. Young and John C. Bates. His civilian garb cannot can-not hide the soldier figure, and if the evidence of form were not there. Chat-fee's Chat-fee's face would show that most of his life had been spent in the open, and moreover in a position ot command. com-mand. When he was a colonel Chaffee was in command at one part of the field in front of Santiago where the bullets were flying thick enough to make the situation uncomfortable. Captain Lee, a British army officer who had been sent to Cuba to watch the operations of the war, and who of course was a noncombatant, wrote a story about the fight in which he said that nothing noth-ing was more magnificent than the courage of Col. A. R. Chaffee on that occasion. Everybody under orders except ex-cept Chaffee took such cover as could be obtained. The colonel turned to Captain Lee, who seemed reluctant to consider that seeking cover -was the proper thing, and said: "You had better get something in front of you. There is no use being killed at this stage of the game." Lee took to cover, but in telling the story he added: "I noticed that Chaffee refused to follow fol-low his own advice." "Moral" Bills Annoy Them. Occasionally congress urges that it must must be excused for not doing more legislative work because time is lost by listening to active persons who are pressing for the passage of "moral measures." Of course this plea is more or less pleasantly humorous, hu-morous, but the country probably has no adequate idea of the immense number num-ber of moral reforms that congress is asked to bring about by proper leg- islation each year. It is a sad mistake to suppose that the only Washington lobbyist is the gentleman who would safeguard the interests of capital and whose check x book is as conveniently placed as his handkerchief. Organizations closely allied with the churches have their lobbyists in the corridors and, while it may involve a statement hard to be believed by some people, it must be said in truth that as a rule their lobby is more powerful than the one which would make for immorality. There is a certain reform bureau at work so constantly that its labors may be said to be continuous, which at one time had eight bills in congress con-gress of which it was urgmg the passage, pas-sage, bills, to use the bureau's own words, which were intended "to make the laws of Christ to some degree the laws of this world." This one bureau at one time had endorsed "and commended com-mended to churches and reform societies socie-ties for support" legislative measures to remove the federal sb.ie'ri in interstate inter-state commerce from "oris-inal pack-j pack-j ages" imported into the "dry" terri-jtory; terri-jtory; to prohibit interstate transmis-! transmis-! sion of race gambling ode's and bets; I to prohibit interstate tr.a n; ot tation and description of prize fights ; to prohibit pro-hibit Sunday toil and traffic in the District of Columbia; to rrehibit saloons sa-loons in Hawaii; to proh'b : United States district attorneys from engaging engag-ing in private practice; to forbid liquor in shir and building- used by the United Stares government, and to restrain traffic in opium Fear Rcfar-n Movements Now here was a reform tmr"i'i thai had undertaken a good deal it was a power and is a power It must be : understood that rriticism of till kinds has been directed at meml'.-us ni the i organization from time to rime, but criticism does not seem to Sieve affected af-fected tlip spirit or the m"-.Ml and bodily activities of the n ' emiers. Congress is always afraid of a ti-foHii movement. Now this does not mean that congressmen are eowj: !tit there are some reform iiiom ui vs which congressman simply ip oc-' oc-' lieve in and which probe.Mv iw ' think that the masses of the !!. of the country do no! believe hut they are afraid' of having their position posi-tion misunderstood. In fact. It has been said of members of congress frequently that they stand for Immorality, and this charge has been made simply because soma members have felt that the reforms which were asked were not to be brought about by laws, hut rather by , the teachings of church and school and that perhaps really the reforms were not reforms nt all, being merely attempts on the part of certain people peo-ple to dictate how other people should live and perhaps bring up their children. |