Posted by Andy Clayton on April 11, 2006 at 15:43:58 from 83.104.41.160 user cousin_jack.
In Reply to: The Beckfoot Launch posted by Laurence Monkhouse on April 09, 2006 at 08:36:27:
(Nice link to the Steam Boat Museum by the way!)
Just a quick note. I endorse the fact that only a deisel launch would 'chug' in an audible way, but the remark that calling it a motor launch limits it to internal combustion is not conclusive.
Several manufacturers of steam tractors (ie lightweight traction engines) referred to them as 'motor tractors' and had this term cast into the ironwork of the smoke-box door rings. Wallis & Steevens of Basingstoke, and Garretts of Leiston were two who did, there were probably others.
At the start of the 20th C. nomenclature for novel mechanicaly propelled machinery had not settled down into familiar definitions. Originaly, large stationary steam engines for pumping mines etc. were called 'fire-engines' and the term 'engine' was freely applied to almost any mechanical gadget.