The Steamboating Forum

*Disclaimer* My username cyberbadger has nothing to do with the S.S. Badger - it is merely a coincidence.

I had a pretty good time at the S.S. Badger Annual Badger Boatnerd Gathering/Excursion.
Unfortunately they did not give a tour of the Engine room or engineering areas this year.




























-CB

At the Wisconsin Maritime museum:







-CB

The U.S.S. Cobia WWII submarine was interesting to take a tour through.

















-CB

Note that those pistons in the first pic of the second post, don't have rings, only labyrinth grooves, even at that size.

No rings = no cylinder oil needed, a smaller sacrifice in leakage with bigger pistons. (The amount of leakage with small pistons having no rings is generally a larger percentage of the steam flow, hence small steam engines need rings more than larger engines.

Lots of brass and bronze in those pictures, very nice to see this "eye candy"

Last photo is a torpedo power plant I think?

While at EB I was told there was a steam propelled torpedo that would go 110 knots, with 10,000 horsepower (hydrogen-oxygen) power plant inside the standard torpedo dimensions. While this torpedo looked good in the test tank runs, in actual sea service the controls could not adequately maintain a set depth of submergence, and at sea the torpedo would often launch above the surface of the water due to poor control response. The result was spectacular overspeed and machinery destruction.

fredrosse wrote:Last photo is a torpedo power plant I think?

Yup. It's a Mark 14 I believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo

They were not incredibly dependable: "They tended to run too deep, explode prematurely, run erratically, or fail to detonate." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gato-class_submarine
Including also running in a circle back towards the firing vessel.

Personally I don't know whether I classify it really as a steam turbine or instead more of a chemical jet engine almost.

-CB