The sturdy little vessel illustrated opposite page 238 shows the salvage tug _Admiral de Ruyter_. She is owned by the Ymuiden Tug Company, Amsterdam, and is stationed at Ymuiden in readiness to render assistance to vessels in distress off the treacherous Dutch coast. She is capable of facing any weather, and her high bows and bold sheer enable her to keep fairly dry in even a pretty bad sea. An interesting comparison will be seen between this and the _Edmund Moran_. This represents a typical New York harbour and river tug. No one who has ever come into the American sea-port can have failed to have been struck instantly by the numbers of fussy little tug-boats of a peculiar type that come running up and down the Hudson and across from the New Jersey shore to the great city. Their prominent features include a good deal of sheer, an exaggerated bridge deck with wheel-house in front, at the top of which is usually a golden spread-eagle. In the winter-time, when thick ice-floes obstruct the Hudson and the bitter cold penetrates into the little wheel-house, there are more comfortable though less exciting avocations than those enjoyed by the commanders of these busy steam craft, which now carry on their work in such numbers where little more than a century ago Fulton’s _Clermont_ was scorned and ridiculed by those who never thought that the river and harbour would ever see such steam-shipping. But the tug-boat has in some cases been enlarged, and super-imposed by a promenade deck, and even given a saloon so as to become a passenger tender. The illustration opposite page 234, for instance, shows this evolution. This is the _Sir Francis Drake_, one of the passenger tenders owned by the Great Western Railway Company, and, since the opening of Fishguard Harbour for the calling of Atlantic liners, this vessel has been employed for landing the _Mauretania’s_ and other great ships’ passengers without wasting time. The liner comes into harbour from America, lets go her anchor, and immediately after there come alongside her three of these tenders. One takes the mails as they are shot on to her deck, another receives the baggage, while the third is used for passengers; this third tender is also the last to leave the liner, so that when the passengers get ashore they find their baggage already awaiting them at the Customs platform. In the olden days the tug was a wheezy old lady lacking the smallest attempt at smartness, and exceedingly slow. Her hull was of wood and clinker built, her paddle-wheels gave to her a very moderate speed, and her accommodation was chiefly non-existent. But to-day, as the _Sir Francis Drake_ shows, she has developed in some cases into practically an Atlantic liner in miniature. [Illustration: THE SALVAGE TUG “ADMIRAL DE RUYTER.” _From a Photograph. By permission of the Ymuiden Tug Co., Amsterdam._] [Illustration: THE NEW YORK HARBOUR AND RIVER TUG BOAT “EDMUND MORAN.”]