previous next

Nau′ti-lus-pro-pel′ler.

A device for propelling ships, so named by Mr. Ruthven. A large iron chamber containing water is placed in a suitable part of the ship. This contains a horizontal turbinewheel rotated by a vertical shaft from the engine. The rotation of the wheel impels the water through two pipes outwardly to each side of the ship, where it escapes through two nozzles which may be directed either toward the stern or bow of the vessel, causing her either to go ahead or back, as the case may be. This motion of the nozzle is rapidly effected by means of a handle on deck. The two nozzles may be pointed in different directions, so as to cause the ship to turn on her center. The motion of the turbine does not require to be reversed, the backward or forward motion of the vessel being entirely controlled from the deck.

The apparatus has been tried by the British Board of Admiralty on the “Water Witch,” a vessel of 800 tons. The result was a success so far as a reasonable speed was concerned, but the device was not regarded as equal to the paddle or propeller as a means of propulsion.

The idea is very old, has been tried a number of times, and proposed much more often. See hydraulic propeller.

1877.

Tufts University provided support for entering this text.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Water Witch (1)
Ruthven (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: