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a MARINE REVIEW. Increased Facilities for Handling Ore. About May 1 the Duluth, Missabe & Northern Railway Co. will have finished work on that part of the new iron ore dock at Duluth which is to be used during the coming season. The company will then be enabled to load at one time at its two docks eighteen vessels, each of 400 feet length. This means that facilities for loading ore at Duluth will be wonderfully increased during the coming season and the docks will be the best and largest of their kind in existence. The new dock will be on St. Louis bay, just opposite the old dock. The last of the piling for the new struc- ture was driven a few da¥s ago, and the work of raising the superstruc- ture will now progress so rapidly that there is little doubt of its comple- tion about May 1. Only one-half of the length of the new dock, 1,152 feet, will be completed this season. The approach to this new dock is 1,306 feet in length. The approach spans the tracks of two other railroad lines with iron girder bridges, 66 and 76 feet in length, respectively. In the approach there are 642 piles and 1,100,000 feet of timber. Inthe dock proper there are 3,980 piles and 4,000,000 feet of timber. There are also 400,000 feet of maple plank to be used in lining the ore pockets. The new structure will have 192 pockets, with a total capacity of about 38,400 tons, or about 175 tons per pocket. When the new dock is extended toa length equal to the companion dock it will have an equal number of pockets, 384, but the capacity per pocket will be about 25 tons greater. The height of the new dock is 58 feet, which is 4 feet more than the old dock, and in this manner a greater capacity per pocket is secured without --: nearer 500,000 tons, although in 1887 a minimum was reached with 5 A an ad. dition of 46,690 tons. Even when the carrying efficiency of the toda is considered, the balance-sheet for the year offers a prospect of less com. petition for the British ship owner. Only one vessel of a total of 672 new vessels of 797,681 tons added to the register list during 1895 came from a foreign builder. : American Vessels For Canadian Coasting Trade, Some of the grain shippers in the Canadian northwest haye been discussing the question of opening the Canadian coasting trade to Vessels of the United States, at least as far as Manitoba wheat is Concerned, Their idea is to allow American vessels to carry wheat from Port Arthur and Fort William to Kingston and Prescott, and thus enable Montreal ty secure a larger share of the Manitoba wheat trade in competition with New York and other American ports. They argue that on account of the ability of the great fleet of American vessels on the lakes to Carry wheat down the lakes from the head of Lake Superior cheaper than the fey Canadian vessels engaged in this trade, the grain has sought Americay ports for export. The advantage afforded a few Canadian vessel owner, by the coasting laws in this regard, is, they Claim, of far less importang than the matter of moving Manitoba wheat entirely within the dp. minion. Joseph G. King of the firm of Marks, King & Co., Port Arthur, has prepared some statistics bearing upon this question. The total moye. ONE OF THE BIG I,AKE SUPERIOR ORE SHIPPING DOCKS. (From a photograph taken at Two Harbors, Minn.) cutting down the number of pockets. The new dock, when extended to a length equal to the old one, will have a greater capacity by 15,400 tons. About 2,000,000 feet of coast fir timber is contained in the construc- tion of the new dock. Machinery for raising and lowering the chutes will be of the;Denton counterbalance hoist kind, similar to that in use in the old dock. -- e Shipping of the United Kingdom Nearly Thirteen Millions According to the latest statistics of British shipping, prepared by Lloyds, there is owned in the United Kingdom 21,004 merchant vessels of 12,968,746 tons register. In nine years the increase has been about 3.2 million tons. The great tendency towards large steamers is reflected in the fact that although the number of steamers is under a third of the _ total number of vessels, the totnage of these steamers makes up fully two-thirds of the aggregate gross measurement. Thus there are 8,379 steamers of 9.9 million tons. In fact,in ten yearsthere has been an additon of over 3!4 million tons of steamers, even after all allowance is made for sales, wrecks, and waste generally, while the sailing tonnage is actually less than it was ten years ago by 462,000 tons. During the past year, too, the decrease in sailing tonnage has been larger than for many years, 112,779 tons, while only 251,489 tons of steamers, numbering 116, were added on a balancing of the account, so that the net increase is | 138,710 tons. This is the smallest addition to tonnage for ten years. In the preceding two years the increases were 351,739 and 281,928 tons respectively, but antecedent to 1892, the average for some years was ment of Manitoba wheat by water during the season of 1895 was 12,210,309 bushels. Of the movement from Canadian ports, American vessels cat- ried over four-tenths, or 4,606,686 bushels, to American ports, and Canadi- an vessels carried an additional small quantity to American ports, so that 4,700.623 bushels of Manitoba wheat went from Canadian ports to Ameti- can ports for export. Of the whole quantity of Manitoba wheat shipped via Duluth, two-thirds, or 1,092,972 bushels, were carried by United States vessels, and only 591,455 by Canadian vessels. Thus of the whole quan tity of Manitoba grain carried by water, amounting to 12,210,309 bushels, 5,699,658 bushels were carried by United States vessels, and probably all but a fraction of this amount went to United States ports to be shipped from New York and other ports to Great Britain, instead of from Montre- al to Great Britain. ; The British admiralty has authorized the adoption of oil fuel in the Gladiator, a cruiser the construction of which was recently begu® at Portsmouth, England. 'The oil is to be carried in bulk and the tanks are to be built as feed tanks. The cruiser is to be 5,750 tons displacemes! and 10,000 horse power. Engineer-in-Chief Melville, of the bureau of engineering, United States navy, says that experiments which have been made under the direction of his bureau indicate that the Gladiator will bea failure with oil as fuel. With all due respect to Commodore Melville it may also be noted that he has given little attention to the Belleville water tube boiler, or in fact water tube boilers of any kind, although the 3 British admiralty adopted the French boiler and is having remarkable success with it. a