Regular visitors to our website might notice that the background and the header have changed. The header photograph shows part of the steam launch Phoebe in Kingston Mills admired by hundreds of people. She is on her way to Ottawa, via the Kingston-Ottawa Rideau Canal, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This was 1982 at the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the opening of the canal in 1832.
This is the original photo of Phoebe in the second lock chamber from Kingston upstream. Note the turbulence in the lock and the effort by one of the crew to keep her from bumping into the lock wall. Just to the right and above the bow pennant is Jack Telgmann in a grey suit anxiously supervising the effort. Jack Telgmann was the “mover an shaker” who transformed the former Kingston Water Works into the current Pump House Steam Museum and he repatriated the steam driven Phoebe from the USA as a Canadian Treasure. Phoebe has been an important and highly visible part of the museum collection, ever since. Photo credit: Roger Compton, Kingston, ON.
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The background is part of a photo of the steam engine of the Phoebe. Engine, water safety tube boiler and auxiliary equipment is original equipment from the 1914-s when the Phoebe was built by the Davis Dry Dock Company at Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
The Davis steam engine that drove the steam launch Phoebe, one of the last examples of steam propulsion, in the late 1800-s and early 1920-s the internal combustion engine replaced many mobile steam engines because the gasoline driven motor was so much more compact and light as compared to steam propulsion.
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The emergence of the automobile launched much experimentation with electrically driven cars and steam driven automobiles. Witness this one.
David Nergaard from the USA drove his Stanley steam automobile 750 kilometers to Kingston to participate in the 2004 Steam Festival, organised by the Friends of the Phoebe. David is on the right “tooting his horn”.
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And that is not all, much more can be done with steam: making Espresso, cleaning cloth and disinfection rooms and work spaces, killing bedbugs and other nuisances, sterilizing surgical equipment, cleaning machinery and cooking food in a pressure cooker, driving turbines that make electricity, district heating and co-generation, and … making music!
Gerrit van der Zwan, one of Friends of the Phoebe, tunes a steam organ also called a “Calliope” during the 2004 Steam Festival at the Pump House Steam Museum.
“Surprise! It works. Eileen van der Zwan shows her enthusiasm playing the calliope.
The Pump House Steam museum is not all about pumping water, but about the importance of steam in the first Industrial Revolution during Queen Victoria’s reign in the United Kingdom. Steam and related technology still drives our modern society in many ways.
The STEAM LAUNCH PHOEBE 