Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1893 — A WONDERFUL BOAT. [ARTICLE]

A WONDERFUL BOAT.

It Can Make Eight Miles an Hoar Through Two Feet of Ice. The most wonderful ice-crushing steamboat in the world has been set aside by one still more wonderful, says the New York Sun. Like the first one, it is built to carry trains of cars across the Straits of Mackinaw from Mackinaw City to St. Ignace, Mich., in connection with the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railroad, along the southern shores of Lake Superior. In those Straits the ice in winter is prodigiously thick, and when there is not a solid bridge of clear blue ice over the water there is apt to be a wedge of drift ice. The ferry-boats that carry the heavy trains across this piece of water are obliged to be powerful fighters, and they are built in a peculiar way to do their fighting. Their bows, which are as solid and strong as a naval ram, are built to slope inward and downward, so that the boats climb up on the ice and break or crusn it down. The enormous weight of the newest boat, the Ste. Marie, which is 5,000,000 pounds, will crush any ice that it rests upon. Under.the bow is a propeller screw, which not only pulls the boat ahead but sucks the water outi from beneath the ice in order thaV the ice may be more easily broken. , Then, again, the screw sucks the broken ice away and ca'sts it behind jas the boat pushes its way along. ! This new boat cwst more than a thiid of a million of dollars. She oan carry eighteen loaded cars on her three (tracks and can make fifteen miles an hour. Her side platitt are six inches thick, and the sides of the vessel are nearly three feet thick toward the bottom of the hull. She is all coated with one-quarter inch steel except at ( the bow and stern, where the steel plates are two inches thick. The two ends of the boat are almost solid timber, to make a battering-ram of her. Her bow screw is smaller than in the stern, but with both at work she can make eight miles an hour through solid blue ice two feet thick, and when she encounters soft or drift ice ten feet thick her forward screw will bore through it and hurl it out of the way without its greatly impeding her progress.