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Her midship body is taken up by machinery including the boiler and engine and an auxiliary 5 HP 3 X 4 Semple single cylinder that pushed a 4.5 KW AC generator. With this rather large amount of power Firefly was equipped with lots of batteries, refrigerator, chargers, radio, radar and a multitude of feed water, bilge, fire and other pumps. She has a large lazarette to store towing gear and line as well as to house a small diesel generator. One must remember that the oil fired boiler required AC to operate the burner, it being too large to conveniently operate from batteries. Hence it was necessary to have electric power to start the boiler to make steam from which to run the steam driven generator and thereby get everything operational for vessel operation. Below: Firefly on launching day prior to the installation of her 7,000 pounds of lead ballast. She required ballast as the the boat had only light living accommodations, and was quite light, despite the steam gear.
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