Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/510

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
496
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from the Atlantic Works, East Boston, for the Boston Fire Department. Her pumps were of the Amoskeag pattern. This boat has since been replaced by one more powerful. The next fire boat was the Havemeyer, built in New York in 1875, and followed in 1883 by the Zophar Mills for the same department. These boats are still in service.

The first very powerful fire boat was the Seth Low, built for the Brooklyn department by the Cowles Engineering Company of that city. This company has since built a number of fire boats

Fig. 10.—The Fire Boat New-Yorker, New York Fire Department.

for different cities, one of them being the New-Yorker, which is among the most powerful in the world. Chicago has four fire boats in her department. The modern fire boat is sometimes built of wood, but generally of iron, and in some cases the decks are so provided with corrugated iron shields and sprinklers that the boat can be worked to advantage in a perfect sea of fire. The whole power of the pumps can be concentrated in one stream from three to five inches in diameter, from a swivel nozzle on the forward deck, or, instead, a large number of ordinary fire streams can be