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MARINE REVIEW. II Expense of Improving Fire-Room Forces: Editor Marine Review:--It is announced that in the operation of the Northern line passenger steamers North West and North Land during the coming summer special attention will be given: to the fire- room force, in order to avoid the trouble that has been encountered with the Belleville water tube boilers ever since these vessels were placed in commission. The force of firemen, or boiler attendants in whatever capacity they are engaged, are to be educated, we are told, up to a degree of efficiency equal to that attained on the big cruisers which the British admiralty has equipped with boilers of thiskind. If it is necessary to bring about such a reform in firemen in order to successfully operate boilers of Belleville type, it would seem that we ave still very far away from general use of them in ordinary merchant ships. This question of fire-room detail, necessitating skilled men and other attending expense, is evidently the great barrier to the general adoption of this type of boiler in the mercantile marine, notwithstand- ing the extent to which it is now being used in naval vessels, especially in England. In an address before one of the engineering societies in London, recently, the engineer-in-chief of the British navy said that 'Cexperience with these boilers had previously shown that to secure efficient results the fires should be stoked at regular intervals, and kept light, in view of the fact that practically only the funnel draught was available." And then he goes on to explain that "for this purpose clocks were fixed in the stokeholds, and the two furnace doors in each boiler were fired alternately at intervals of about four or five minutes; thus the fire was replenished every eight or nine minutes. Sight holes are provided in the smoke-box casings through which the fires can be observed. Air guages can be inserted in these sight holes to ascertain the pressure of the gases over the fires."' " It would certainly seem that the matter of great care necessary to 'the operation of these boilers is the weak point in the system. To ex- pect the ordinary fireman to do all that is necessary "to secure effi- cient results" is absurd. Probably on the big lake passenger steamers -- this summer the management of the engine-room forces as a whole will afford the kind of service with the ships that was contemplated when they were built. It is to be hoped that such will be the case, 'as the enterprise of the Northern Steamship Co. in connection with passenger service on the lakes has been worthy of commendation from the begin- ning. But the fact remains that in the mercantile marine, except per- haps here and.there in rare eases of special service that will warrant exire expense, boilers of this type are not BESTEL, - Buffalo, N. Y., ; May 17, 1896. D. EK. Ford, who is. to a up. the aatine of Boek feel of the ship yard of the American Steel Barge Co. at West Superior about?' a June i, was engaged on tugs in the Chicago river only a few years ago. He found favor with Mr. Viet of New York, who looks after the vessel interests of the Standard Oil Co., and his progress with that com- pany has been rapid. It is understood, however, that in his new posi- tion he will represent eastern capitalists associated with Colgate Hoyt, more so than the interest of Mr. Rockefeller in the barge com- pany. While the Rockefeller fleet of new vessels were building on the lakes in 1895-96, Mr. Ford was engaged as a. representative of the owners at the Globe yard, Cleveland, and at the works of F. W. 'Wheeler & Co., West Bay City. Of late he has been supervising the construction of the big oil barge that is being built for the Standard company at Buffalo. The Brown Hoisting & Conveying Machine Co. of Cleveland has received an order for an electric traveling crane of 25 tons capacity and 58 feet span from the Chicago Ship Building Co. Electric power is to be used entirely in the shops which the Ship Owners' Dry Dock Co. _ of Cleveland is equipping for repairs to steel vessels. The buildings for this work at the Ship Owner's plant are up and machinery is be- ing installed as rapidly as possible. The tools will include rolls, -- punches and sheers, all dircetly connected to electric motors. The rolls are said to be the largest on the lakes. It is now thought that the cost of this repair plant may reach $20,000. C. W. Whitney of New York, sole agent in the United States and Canada for Purves' furnace flues and Serve's boiler and stay tubes, has removed from 68 to 11 Broadway in the Bowling Green building. A number of prominent people connected with marine affairs have taken offices in this building, and Mr. Whitney will find himself in good company.--Marine Journal. = Metine Engineer as Immense Iron Furnaces. Within the next month the Carnegie Steel Co. will have com- pleted its big Duquesne furnace plant, which is the largest and most _ modern works of its kind in the world. Furnace No. 3 at Duquesne was put in blast May 7. The final work is being done on No. 4, which will be ready for firing early in June. Two of the modern hoe naces, Nos. 1 and 2, have been in operation for several months. Be- sides the four new furnaces at Duquesne, the Carnegie company has two old stacks, and foundations have been laid with the ultimate in- tention of replacing these old stacks with others of the same design as Nos. 1, 2,3 and 4. After No. 4 furnace at Duquesne is fired next month, the Carnegie company's seven stacks at Bessemer will be re- modeled, so that they will have the same capacity as the Duquesne stacks, qmich average over 500 tons a day each. It i is with this plant, in connection with his ore possessions on the Mesabi range, his steamship contract with John D. Rockefeller and his railway from Conneaut to Pittsburg, that Andrew Carnegie ex- pects to maintain beyond attack his supremacy in the iron industry. _ Stretching along the whole length of furnaces at the Duquesne plant is a monster stock yard for ore. It has a total length of 1,100 feet and a width of 300 feet, and is surrounded by a solid masonry wall 32 feet high. Its effective width is 226 feet, and it has a total capacity of 600,000 tons of ore. _In the construction of this stock yard, 265,000 cubic yards of earth were excavated ata cost of about $80,000, and ~ - 25,000 cubic yards of stone were placed in the great wall. The floor of the yard was made 8 feet deep with concrete, requiring about 155,- 000 barrels of cement. The yard is drained by a large sewer, and at one corner provision is made against a flood by a well or pump. The stock yard is spanned by three great electric cranes and along its whole length on the furnace side, erected from the yard level, are two series of steel constructed bins, one set for ore and the other for coke and limestone. There are thirty-six ore bins in a line farthest from the fur- naces, with chutes running to either side. One is for the delivery side and that nearest the furnace is known as the consumption side. A track runs over the center of the bins, and the ore is dropped from the steel hopper cars into the bins. If the ore is to be stocked it is dropped into the delivery side and is caught, and. carried automatically by a con- veyor to large piles .in the. stock yard. If for immediate use it is dropped into the consumpion side "When. ore is needed from the stcok yard. piles itis simpl y. scooped up by. the five-ton buckets. and carried by yan Als = ; conveyors to the consumption § side. _ These, great « cranes, each with a ee capacity for handling 2,000 tons of ore daily, haye : a clear span of 223 feet. Each is capable of moving 100 feet z a minute on its own tracks. The inner series of bins is provided for coke, limestone, mill cinder and some grades of ore. The total storage capacity of the bin system is 9,500 tons of ore, 3, 600 tons of coal and 2,200 tons of limestone. The Matters is drawn from the bins into hinclsats for feeding the furnace. These buckets rest on cars, provided with scales for weighing the ore. A train of these cars is pushed to the foot of the furnace hoist, where each bucket is picked off, hauled up and dumped into the furnace. The hoists are controlled by an engineer in the hoist house, and the position of each bucket is known there. Not a single man is on the furnace top, and the charging is all in the control of theengineer. The whole time in picking up and returning a bucket is one and three-quar- ter minutes, the ore buckéts holding 10,000 pounds, and the coke. 4,000 'pounds. A hot blast pipe is run to cih ore bin, to ieep the ore orn freezing during the winter. The large single-sheet chart of Georgian bay, just. issued by the British admiralty, was prepared from the surveys on which Staff Commander J. G. Boulton, R. N., has been engaged for several years past. This chart may be had frott the Marine Review for $1.75. The price is higher than is usually charged for navigators' charts, but this one takes the place of ee ten sectional charts and is corrected up to date. Dimensions of the Cleveland Ship Building Co's new dry dock at Lorain will be: Length over all, 560 feet; width on top, 102 feet; width at bottom, 56 feet; gate, 66 feet; water over mitre sill, 17 feet. Pumping facilities will admit of the dock being emptied in an hour and fifteen minutes. iAppointtients of captains and engineers for 1897, vest pocket size, $1.00. Order from the Marine Review, Cleveland, Ohio.