| •The Steam Launch Phoenix; built, owned and operated by Keith and Marneth Weaver, Stillwater, Oklahoma. |
| •The Vessel is 8'-4" wide by 30'-6" long and has a draft of 3'. It has a registered displacement of 5 net tons, which is a description of how much it can carry and weighs 5500 pounds empty (no water, fuel, or passengers). It travels at 6½ miles per hour. |
| •The vessel is enrolled with the U.S. Coast Guard and is under their jurisdiction. |
| •All of the wood in the boat has been cut and milled locally except for a small part of the floorboards. A single white oak log comprises the strip built hull, and was harvested in Blackwell, OK. This tree was planted as a seedling by a land-run settler and was protected throughout it's life - only one nail was encountered by the sawyer in the outer rings of the tree. The other woods are pecan ribs, coaming and sub-deck; walnut top deck; bois'd'arc seats. All trees had been designated as undesirable b the land owners for various and destined to be only firewood. It took six years to construct in the owner's spare time. |
| •The propeller is a maganese bronze casting taken from a 1903 Navy propeller that was used on a similar craft. |
| •The engine is a 3x5.5x4 compound (constructed in Fredricksburg, TX), operating as a condensing engine with a maximum pressure of 150 P.S.I. and ehausting to a 20-inch vacuum. This gives the engine 10 H.P. at 350 R.P.M. |
| •The flow of the water in the system is from the boiler to the engine (as steam), exhausting through a feed water pre-heater to the keel condenser. From the condenser, water is pumped by a condensate pump to the hot well. The hot well is used to mix any needed make-up water with the hot condensate and remove any oil that might be in the feed water. From the hot well the feed water goes to the engine-driven boiler feed pump and is pumped back into the boiler through the feed water pre-heater (heat exchanger) where it picks up heat from the engine exhaust. The advantages of the condensing system is that the boiler uses distilled water as feed water, thus increasing the life of the boiler and it recovers heat that would have required more fuel to heat new feed water. |
| •This type of steam launch was used from the Civil War to the early 1920's. Between 1903 and 1920 steam launches were all but replaced in the United Sates by the more efficient internal combustion engines. There are however, certain parts of the world (notably parts of China and Burma) that still make and use this type of craft as well as by the limited nostalgic revival in this country. |