Last weekend a friend and I visited the Steamboat Arabia Museum in KCMO. Fascinating ! Following is an excerpt of an email I sent to my friend after we returned home.
"Further reading has revealed:
The port side engine had been salvaged from the wreck shortly after it sank. Missing engine mystery solved.
The "doctor" feedwater pumping engine was at the rear of the boilers. There would have been a shroud at the rear conducting hot gasses from underneath the boilers into the flues. It, of course, had not been salvaged. The furnaces were at the front, also toward the front of the boat, where we saw the brickwork. The furnaces were of sheet iron, as was all boiler ironwork. Furnaces were essentially underneath each boiler and hot gasses passed from them, underneath each boiler to the shroud at the rear. Gasses then entered the flues and passed again to the front where the flues communicated with breeching leading to the stacks. These were "return flue" boilers, much like the PM Research 6-flue return boiler I built from a kit."
Bob Swinney