SHIPS' BOATS : THEIR QUALITIES, CON- STRUCTION, EQUIPMENT AND LAUNCH- ING APPLIANCES. By Ernest W.

Blocksidge, M.I.N.A. (Longmans, Green & Co. 25.?. net.) Reviewed by FELIX RUBIE, M.I.N.A., Surveyor of Life-boats.

Tins book should be of use to all who are interested in the details of the construction and equipment of ships' boats. It is orthodox in that it con- forms to the practice of ancient books on Naval Architecture and that it is dedicated, has a preface, and, in addition, a quotation from Ruskin of some length, though it may be doubted if Ruskin had in mind a ship's boat when he wrote, in " Harbours of England," " There is, first, an infinite strangeness in the perfection of the thing, as work of human hands. I know nothing else that man does, which is perfect, but that." The book mentally raises again the whole question, not of what ships' boats should be, but whether ships should have boats at all for life-saving. One can hardly read it without feeling that shipowners, and those connected with ships, doubt their utility. Anyone familiar with ship-yards, their managers, marine superintendents and others who work there, knows the language habitu- ally used over boat-lowering gear and davits. It is not language fit for this or any other journal, but it seems to me to point to some doubt, in the minds of those who use it, of the value of the ship's life-boat and all its belongings.

It is, in fact, an unsatisfactory craft.

It takes up a lot of room, and, as one can see at a glance from Mr. Block- sidge's admirable illustration of the boat-deck of the Aquitania, might be very difficult to launch. It must always be remembered that a ship's life-boat necessarily is something entirely different from the Life-boats of the Institution, which are, of course, far too large and heavy to be carried in davits, and that it simply could not live in really- bad weather. Apart also from construc- tion—and much remains to be known about the stability and construction of ships' life-boats, and of the possibility of launching them under all conditions —there remains the question of " hand- ling," and I think it still is the most important of all. The small boat handler is not the product of a passenger steamer. He is round the coast, used to small boats from an infant onwards.

Such men are the coxswains at so many Life-boat Stations. Were it possible to calculate the crews' lives saved by the skill of the coxswains in handling the boats successfully in very difficult cir- cumstances, it would be a large and interesting total.

The main problem, then, is whether we should not be wiser to rely on the ship rather than on her boats, and to devote the energy and money, which is now | divided between the two, on making the • ship herself safer. Much might be done | towards making ships practically unsink- i able. Much, in fact, has been done.

! Our later types of Dreadnought are j able to float when struck by at least one ! torpedo. The Marlborouyli was struck in the boiler-room in.the action at Jutland, was able to remain in the line, and was i afterwards safely docked on the Tyne.

This was the only case of a modern ; battleship being struck by a torpedo during the whole war, but it is enough to show what can be done by proper design.

If the boats were eliminated, it would also be possible for the whole of the upper-deck to be arranged as rafts, which would float away with the passengers on them if the vessel sank, until they were rescued by some passing- vessel. The deck on top of the rafts would, of course, form a continuous deck for passengers to walk about on in the ordinary way. • r.

To return to Mr. Blocksidge's book.

It will be found to contain considerable detail about the construction of ships' boats j and the lowering gear, davits, and other fittings are well described and _ illustrated. Its illustrations and detail sketches are its best features.

I am doubtful if the inclusion of a chapter on stability adds much to its value, for the same can be found in the ordinary text-books, and it does not go far enough. Dynamical conditions should have been dealt with. Any ordinary person, with no other know- ledge than that which he derived from reading this book, would decide that an ordinary bicycle was an im- practical device with no transverse stability. This roughly illustrates what 1 mean. The importance of transverse stability seems exaggerated, whilst longitudinal stability and intermediate inclinations between the two are over- looked.

Enough also is known about waves to have made it worth while to include an outline of the subject. The particles of an ordinary wave, as it passes, have an orbital motion. If you take, say, a cubic foot of water at the crest of a wave, and a cubic foot from the hollow or trough, the -virtual weight of the cubic foot at the crest is much less than at the hollow. This can be roughly illustrated by attaching a stone to the end of a piece of string and swinging it round, or swinging round a bucket full of water. Some years ago, when long vessels were first running on the Atlantic, it was found by calculation that too much strain was put on the top strake of side plating, and that it should have shown signs of straining, which, in fact, did not occur. In these calculations no allowance was made for the difference between the virtual weight of the water at the wave crest and the hollow. It is quite a simple matter to make the calculations if the size of the waves are known; but in practice the worst possible wave conditions are assumed, and the calculations made accordingly..