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12 MARINE REVIEW. DEVOTED TO THE LAKE MARINE AND KINDRED INTERESTS. Published every Thursday at No. 409 Perry-Payne building, Cleveland, O by John M. Mulrooney and F. M. Barton. SUBSCRIPTION--$2.00 per yearin advance. Singlecopies Io cents each. pee binders sent, post paid, 75 cents. Advertising rates on appli- cation. Entered at Cleveland Post Office as Second-class Mail Matter. The books of the United States treasury department on June 30, 1895, contained the names of 3,342 vessels, of 1,241,459.14 gross tons register in the lake trade. The number of steam vessels of 1,000 gross tons, and over that amount, on the lakes on June 30, 1894, was 359 and their aggregate gross tonnage 634,467.84; the number of vessels of this class owned in all other parts of the country on the same date was 316 and their tonnage 642,- 642.50, so that half of the best steamships in all the United States are owned on the lakes. The classification of the entire lake fleet on June 30, 1895, was as follows: Gross Class. Number. Tonnage. Steam vessels....... Eanes atsenetaccsratesserreseem aa 756 857,735-00 AUIS VESREIBiesieselescersssdsscracnsssesceesaets 1,100 300,642.00 MURIEL PR eGescecsscssteeccerercascness: « sence casts 487 83,082.00 MOS levepicpeaccsssscaresecstsces Reeneee onc SU 1,241,459.00 The gross registered tonnage of vessels built on the lakes during the past five years, according to the reports of the United States com- missioner of navigation, is as follows: Number. Net Tonnage. Year ending June 30, I891......ccseccseceee 204 111,856.45 SC SE ef 1892...0.0006 oncnb60 : 169 45,168.98 SS oe rf SQA seccmeet seciecesnce 175 99,271.24 - ss wv ns LOQAccassaseseeeress i TOON 41,984.61 ae sf st T1895 ..sc00e aaeasese naa 93 - 36,353.00 Total....... seaonnscacconoabo0ecaoccono § GfiG) 334,634.28 _ $T. MARY'S FALLS AND SUEZ CANAL TRAFFIC. (From Official Reports of Oanal Officers.) St. Mary's Falls Canal. 1895.* | 1894. 1893. 1895. 1894. 1893. No.vessel pass'ges| 17,956] 14,491|_12,008|| 3,434] ---3,352| «3,341 Tn'ge,net registd|16,806,781| 13,110,366|9,849,754||8,448,383|8,039,175/ 7,659,008 Days of Navigat'n 231 234 219 365 365 365 * 1895 figures include traffic of Canadian canal at Sault Ste. Marie, which was about % per cent. of the whole, but largely in American vessels. Suez Canal. If HAS BEEN learned that there was no thought at any time since his recall to this country of assigning Col. Wm. Ludlow to succeed the late Gen. Poe in charge of river improvements on the lakes. His duties in New York harbor had been fixed by the chief of army engineers before his arrival. Col. Ludlow is still retained in Washington on account of the consideration of the Nicaragua canal question by the house commerce committee. The advocates before the committee, represented principally by Messrs. Warner Miller and Menocal, certainly made a mistake in at- tempting to break down the force of the report of the Nicaragua commis- sion by maligning publicly the individual members and seeking to travesty their doings at the isthmus. Under such circumstances the members of the commission were, of course, prompted to take a course that did not help the canal project. The examination before the com- mittee willdoubtless be completed in a few days. Col. Ludlow's statements before the house committee have brought him into prominence on this great canal question, and his testimony has been of the highest importance. It will certainly tend to delay any act of the government giving support to the canal. The whole trend of his testimony indicated that the project of constructing a Nicaraguan canal will bear further investigation before the government is committed to it. He has said, in substance, that it will not do to embark on the under- taking without more definite information than the commisssion of en- gineers has thus far been able to gather. Touching on the question of Cost, he said that he did not think the canal could be built for $125,000,- 000. The board of engineers had made a provisional estimate of $134,- 000,000 to cover the cost of construction, but he now wished that they had fixed it at $150,000,000. For that sum, he thought, a canal might be constructed which would be safe and commodious and sufficient for com- mercial purposes. Before he could speak accurately, however, some hydraulic data must first be procured. He thought there were better ways of building the canal than those formulated by the company, scme of which he regarded as impracticable. He could not say how long it would take to build the canal. He would approximate the time between seven and ten years. A great part of the national interest in the canal was,Colonel Ludlow said,on the supposition that it would allow our great war vessels to pass from ocean to ocean. Since the reportof the com- mission was made it was learned that this was not the case. The canal was, in short, a more gigantic jundertaking ithan the commission had supposed, and he would suggest a further investigation of the project before the government should be committed to it. He wasin favor of getting a canal through, but wanted to doit right. A thorough exam. ination of the route could, he said, be made within two years. SoME OF THE details of the recent successful fight of the lake vessel owners against the Detroit river bridge are not known even to executive officers of the Lake Carriers' Association. It probably seemed Strange, after all that had been said in the newspapers about the bridge bill being certain of passage in the senate, and after President Brown and Secretary Keep of the Lake Carriers' Association had given up hope of defeating it in that body, to find that in the end Senator McMillan, who had the bill in charge, did not attempt to bring it up in the senate. The secret of the whole matter was that at the last moment Senator Burrows, Mr. Mc- Millan's colleague from Michigan, had been won over to active opposition to the bill by Harvey D. Goulder, counsel for the Lake Carriers' As- sociation. Above all other men in the Senate, Mr. Burrows was the man to oppose the bridge bill. The single fact that he had begun prepara- tions for a speech in opposition to the measure was enough to silence it. Adverse opinions from the two Michigan senators was most to be desired by the vessel owners. Senator Burrows, representing the state of Mich- igan, opposed to Senator McMillan, acting for the city of Detroit, was the condition in the senate which the represntatives of the vessel inter- ests sought to bring about, It would mean defeat for the bill, and the advocates of the bridge were shrewd enough to recognize the disadvant- age of such a condition. Altogether the bridge fight in the present con- gress has been the hardest struggle ever undertaken by the vessel owners of the lakes, but a repetition of it may be expected as long as the Lake Car- riers' Association exists, and especially while Harvey D. Goulder is re- tained asits counsel. The compensation received by Mr. Goulder would hardly pay for one week of time removed from his valuable law practice, and yet he spent practically the entire winter on this work. To him the bridge question has been one of pridein defending an interest with which he has been associated all his life. THE announcement that Col. Lydecker of the army engineer corps, already stationed at Detroit, has been assigned temporarily, and in addi- tion to his present duties, to conduct the river and hartor works that were under the direction of the late Gen. Poe, will not, to say the least, be received very favorably by the shipping interests of the lakes. It msy be that the 20-foot channel work end the construction of the new lock at the Sault will go along all right under the direction of officials tempo- rarily in charge, but it can hardly be claimed that an officer in any ser- vice, whose duties are confined toa period of afew weeks or months, can be expected to exercise the authority that would attend a fixed appoint- ment. The war department has already been criticised on account of the rapidity with which a big canal was built on the Canadian side of the Sault, and if completion of the big works that were under the direction of Gen. Poe is delayed beyond the opening of another season of naviga- tion, the vessel interests can not be blamed for entering serious complaint on account of such delay. SENATOR BLANCHARD'S amendment to the river and harbor bill making it a misdemeanor to discharge or deposit mud, cinder, ballast or other matter in the waters of any harbor or navigable channel for the im- provement of which money has b2eu appropriated by congress, will un- doubtedly be made a part of the law, and will, of course, apply. to all dredged channels on the lakes. If this law is enforced in cases where vessels jettison parts of their iron ore cargozs on the lakes, it will tend to overcome the trouble that has often been encountered on account of shallow spots in new channels that were caused by ore being thrown overboard. BARRING serious accident, it is quite probable that the aggregate of freight moved by the new Mutual line steamer Coralia during the present season of navigation will be greater than that ever moved by a ship in any part of the world during a like period. Every effort will be made to un- load this steamer in a day at Ashtabula and her loading time at the Esca- naba ore docks will, of course, be only a few hours. With evena slight increase in water her cargoes will be made to average £,000 net tons. Considerable improvement is noted in Niagara river water this sea- son. Navigation of the river was opened on April 30 by the steamer Robert Holland and consort Sophia Minch, carrying iron ore for the Tonawanda Iron & Steel Co. They went down the river while it was running full of heavy ice, and before the channel buoys had been placed. The Holland drew 12 feet 4 inches and the Minch 12 feet 8 inches.