The steamship Ulunda, on the remarkable raising and recovery of which this paper is written, is an iron screw ship of 1,161 tons, until lately belonging to the Furness line.  It is a sister ship to the Damara, of the same company, and was built and engined by Alex.  Stephens, shipbuilder and engineer, at Glasgow, being fitted with compound vertical engines, of 200 nominal horse power, having two cylinders of 33 inches and 66 inches diameter respectively, which are capable of sixty-five revolutions per minute, and give a speed of twelve knots an hour.

For supplying steam to the engines there are two return-tube boilers, each having three furnaces, and there is also a donkey boiler, which is used in harbor for working the four steam winches on deck.

She is divided into seven watertight compartments by athwartship bulkheads.  The foremost one is the usual collision bulkhead.  Between this and the foremost engine room bulkhead are Nos. 1 and 2 holds, separated by a watertight bulkhead.  Abaft the after engine room are two more holds, divided in the same manner as the forward ones, and astern is another compartment, in which all stores are kept.  Coal bunkers form a protection for the engines and boilers.  Fore and aft the ship, as low down as possible, are a number of ballast tanks, which can be filled with or emptied of water as occasion requires to alter the trim of the ship.  Extending over all holds there is a strong iron lower deck, about 8 feet below the upper deck, which is pierced with a hatch over each hold immediately under a corresponding hatch in the upper deck, for stowing and unstowing cargo.

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In the engine room there are six steam pumps, two of them bilge pumps, worked by the main crossheads, for clearing the engine room of water.  For pumping out the ballast tanks there are two more, which have their own independent engines.  The remaining two are for various purposes.  Besides these there are several hand pumps on the upper deck.

Having been built in 1885, the Ulunda is almost a new ship, and has been used principally as a cargo steamer, though she is provided also with a saloon and staterooms for a few passengers.  She was on her way from St. John, New Brunswick, to Halifax, when during a thick fog she struck on Cowl Ledge, a reef between Bryer and Long Islands, on the southwest coast of Nova Scotia, about half a mile from the shore.  The cause of the disaster was probably one of the strong tide eddies which exist in the Bay of Fundy, and which had set her in toward the shore.  It was calm at the time, and she was making seven knots an hour; and, being close to the shore, leads should have been going in the chains.  Had this precaution been taken, very probably she would have been able to stop or anchor in time to avert this catastrophe.  There was no cargo on board, it being intended to ship one at Halifax for London.