Portable Pumps.
215
Chap. 6.j
is not mentioned by Belidor , Switzer, Desaguliers or Hachette; nor bas itbeen noticed by more recent writers, with the exception of Mr. Milling-ton a and perhaps one or two others. It has long been known in someparts of the United States . We noticed it twenty years ago at New Rochelle , Westchester county , in this state, (New-York ) and were in-formed by a pump maker there, that they “always had it.” It is nothowever universally known, for in 1831 a patent was taken out for it. b
There is another application of theburr pump in ships that is probablydue to old navigators. We allude tothe use of those portable instrumentswhich, says an old autbor, “are madeof reed, cane, or laten, [brass] that sea-men put down into their casks to pumpup the drink, for they use no spick-ets.” No. 85 represents one, with aseparate view of the sucker, from anillustrated edition of Virgil, of the 16thCentury. They appear to be of con-siderable antiquity and were perhapsused for the same purpose by the an-cient sailors of Tyre and Carthage,Greece and Rome. No. 86 is a figureof the common liquor pump, derivedfrom the former. It is from TJ Art duDislillateur, in ‘ Descriptions des Arts eiMetiers,’ folio, Paris , 1761. The se-parate section of the lower part showsthe ‘boxes’ to have been similar tothose now often used. Another suckeris figured with a spherical valve; a boy’s marble, or a small ball of metalbeing placed loosely over the orifice, instead of a clack. It was at thattime made both of tin plate and of copper as at present. One of thesepumps is mentioned by Conrad Gesner , as constituting part of a portableItalian distillery, in the former part of the 16th Century, at which periodit seems to have been common. See a reference to it, page 218.
Ship pumps seem to have been made of bcjjred wooden logs smce thedays of the elder Pliny, and probably were so by both Greeks and Ro-mans long before his time. We learn that they were made by ship-wrights, i. e. by a certain dass of them. c At the present day, everyperson knows that wooden pumps are oftener to be found in ships thanany other: this has always been the case. It is to them only that refe-rence is made in the relations of early voyages. The vessels of Colum-bus, d Vasco de Gama and Magalhanes, were furnished with them; indeedno other kind appears to have been used by old European navigators.From the importance of efficient machines to raise water from ships, itmay reasonably be supposed that if any nation had possession of a Supe-rior one, it would soon have been adopted by the rest.; but there is notthe slightest intimation of any difference between them. The pump inSpanish , Portuguese , English and French vessels, is spoken of as com-mon; as much so as the anchor or rudder: thus—when the Vitcrria one
No. 85. Sailors’Portable Pump.
No. 86, LiquorPump.