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12 MARINE REVIEW. Published every Thursday at No. 409 Perry-Payne building, Cleveland, Ohlo, by John M. Mulrooney and F. M. Barton. SupscripTion--$2.00 per year in advance. Single copies 10 cents each. Convenient binders sent, post paid, $1.00. Advertising rates on application. Entered at Cleveland Post Office as Second class Matl Matter. The books of the United States treasury department on June 30, 1896, contained the names of 3,333 vessels, of 1,324,067.58 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, 1896, was 383 and their aggregate gross tonnage 711,034.28; the number of vessels of this class owned in all other parts of the country on the same date was 316 and their tonnage 685,204.55, so that more than 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, 1896, was as follows: Gross _ i Number. Tonnage. Eee yessela piece ae nee * 924,630.51. ., Sailing vessels and barges............ Te sctieainttidedeseoesees ; 1321. CBTTAIDOATS EH ccttsrrerce ct sceons cetees Decebsvceessccces despaecseduncue 416 - 45,109147 ee oe ey anne eae wh coke MOUalescssiisscccscus Weaver ssvunsescuscWantttsacets 8,333 1,324,067.58 The gross registered tonnage of the vessels built on the lakes during the past six years, according to the reports of the United States commissioner of navigation, is as follows: ding June 30. 1891 ............cecccccccseveee eascisannetec' 204 - 111,856 45, Meer Sane ee BOD encore ctetccss ~ 169 45,968.98 S8 dite OS x 1898... 175 99,271.24 se atc Lee) 1894. 106 41,984.61 Boe oe aeet a 1895. 93 36,352.70 * oe ene 1896. 117 108,782.38 ITO GREE FAR Ee a SE bck de ovateeee checks 355<fhe0+ 864 414,216.36 - ST. MARY'S FALLS AND SUEZ CANAL TRAFFIC. (From Official Reports of Canal Officers.) St.Mary's Falls Canals. Suez Canal. 1896* | 1895+ | 1894 || 1896 | 1895 1894 Number of vessel passages- 18,615 17,956 14,491 3,409 8,434 3,352 Tonnage, net registered......|| 17,219,418] 16,806,781) 13,110,366|| 8,560,284] 8,448,383] 8,039,175 Days of navigation...... ...... - ~232 231 234 365 365 365 *1895 and 1896 figures include traffic of Canadian cana] at Sault Ste. Marie. -- Although American grain routes from the northwest to_the Atlantic seaboard, and American lake vessels, are each year taking craffic from the St. Lawrence route, the Canadian authorities do not seem (0 tire of their effort, under great financial disadvantages, to complete the St. Lawrence canal system. They are again prompted to activity by the progress that is being made with improvement of the Erie canal. A conference was held recently at Montreal 'between the government representatives and those of the Montreal corporation and commercial bodies. It was agreed that the harbor facilities of Montreal must be greatly improved and plans were submitted for the construction of a number of new docks with modern equipments. Premier Laurier and Minister of Public Works Tarte declared it to be the intention to push the improvements on the canals as rapidly as possible. The Welland canal is to be still further deepened, the St. Lawrence canals enlarged and deepened, and the channel between Quebec and Montreal deepened to a depth of 30 feet. Minister Tarte said he had visited Boston, Portland and Buffalo and had there seen American elevators handling Canadian produce. Premier Laurier said that while it was the intention of the government to complete the canals at an early date, it seemed to him that all the money that had been spent in their great canal systems would be money lost unless the harbor of Montreal was fully equipped to handle all the trade that could be obtained. ' 'When rapid work in ship yards of the United States is referred to, it is sometimes said that only in the building of cargo vessels--steam- barges so-called--can any claim be made for efficiency. But there are a couple of instances at hand just now of large passenger vessels, one of them costing $375,000, the contracts for which call for cumpieuon within six months. The side-wheel steamer to be built for the Cleveland & Buffalo Transit Co. by the Detroit Dry Dock Co. is tu be delivered in practically six months from the time of beginning work, and the Cramps of Philadelphia will have finished the steamer Miami, another large pas- senger steamer, within six months of the date of signing the contract. The Miami is a steamer 240 by 40 by 23 feet, built for H. M. Flagler to ply between Miami, Fla., and the Bahama islands. She has three decks and is to be propelled by two sets of triple expansion engines. A com- plete electrical equipment and all other conveniences applied to passenger steamers will be found in this vessel. Her equipment will include the hooks for life boats, manufactured by the Standard Automatic Releasing Hook Co. of New York, which were selected after they had been care- fully examined by Mr. E. Platt Stratton. _A private trial of the submarine wrecking boat Argonaut, built by the Columbian Iron Works, Baltimore, Md., after the design uf Simon Lake, the inventor, was made recently in the dry dock of the Columbian Iron Works. The vessel was submerged in 21 feet of water, remaining under the surface for two hours, during. which time constant communication was kept up by means of a rubber tube with the six men who were in the vessel's cabin and engine room. 'The crew stated that during the entire time they suffered no inconvenience from lack of fresh air. -A number of tests of the engines of the vessel were made, and while the trial was merely preliminary, it is claimed that enough was learned to make it certain that the boat will be able to perform the work for which she is designed--namely, the recovery of cargoes from sunken vessels and any other work of a submarine character. The announcement that the movable dam in the St. Mary's Falls canal above the locks, which is intended as a safeguard in event of acci- dent to the docks, is to be replaced during the coming winter by a set of swinging gates similar to the lock gates now in use, 1s a matter of 'special importance to the vessel interests, as the mitre sill ot this dam is an obstruction to the deeper navigation that will be provided when shallow places in St. Mary's river are fully dredged out in accordance with the 90-foot channel project. It would be a great advantage to the vessel interests to have this improvement completed on the opening of naviga- tion next spring, so that full advantage could be taken of the dredging that is now going on elsewhere in the river. There is printed elsewhere in this issue afiother ccmmunication from New York that contains severe criticism of the stearmboat inspection service. The Review would take more interest in the contents of these communications if permission was given to sign the names of corres- pondents, but in every case the claim is made that the heads of the steam- boat service could, if they saw fit to do so, injure anyone who would publicly oppose them. The correspondents are connected with large shipping interests in New York, and their excuse for not signing names is therefore accepted. It is quite plain that an effort is again being made to have the treasury department undertake important changes in the steamboat inspection board. When the Oceanic of the White Star Line first came out, about twenty- seven years ago, she was so "long and narrow' that some of the oldest Atlantic salts began to seriously speculate as to the chances of her breaking in two when going through a head sea, such as is often met with near the banks. Results proved clearly that her enterprising builders were right, and the aforesaid salts wrong, for, independently of the general success of the White Star fleet, there are no ships so easy in a seaway as those of the new type first designed and built by Messrs.. Harland & Wolff. Perhaps the worst '"'pitchers" that were ever constructed were ships of 240 feet keel and of large beam. Anyway, a long ship with fine ends is constructed on the principle of the strongest form of girder or fulcrum- beam known to science.--Nautical Magazine. The United States now has only five. torpedo boats--Cushing, Eric- son, Foote, Porter and Dupont--but with sixteen others now building we will soon have twenty-one; quite an increase over five, but still very few in comparison with other countries. Taking last year's fgures, England has 256, France 244, Russia 185, Germany 155, and Spain forty-six. Of England's 256, forty-two are of the class known as torpeto-boat destroy- ers, or vessels which, in addition to being equipped for attacking with torpedoes, are especially designed to destroy other torpedo boats. The trial speeds of these forty-two boats vary from twenty-six to twenty-eight knots. England also has twenty-eight torpedo vessels building, designed to attain a speed of thirty knots, and has just let contracts for several others designed to attain a speed of thirty-two knots. Denison B. Smith, secretary of the Toledo Produce Exchange, asked the Marine Review for an estimate of the value of all ships owned on the lakes. The answer was $85,000,000, including new vessels now under contract in ship yards. The figures were made up from a summary of insurance values placed on vessels in the Inland Lloyd's Kegistry, with additions on the same basis covering a very large number of vessels of which there is no record in the registers of either 1896 or 1897. If the law relating to the displacement or injury of buoys is not of a kind that will admit of conviction and severe punishment when careless- ness on the part of vessel masters is proven, the vessels owners should immediately take steps to provide such a law. It is their duty to assist officials of the light-house service in protecting all aids to navigation, but especially the gas buoys, which are very costly and which have been liberally provided for the lakes of late. Each of the two propellers of the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse weighs twenty-six tons and is 22334 inches in diameter. The ship's massive engines sling them around seventy-seven times in a minute. The Kaiser Wilhelm has a bunker capacity for 4,950 tons- of coal. The engine and boiler room staff comprises seventeen engineers, seventy-five coal passers, ninety stokers and eighteen oilers. The navy department has adopted bottle green as the official color for torpedo boats. Chief Naval 'Constructor Hichborn has informed the superintending constructor at Norfolk of this action and directed him to paint the vessels of the torpedo boat flotilla now on their way to that yard with this color. German authorities predicted a yearly traffic of 5,500,000 tons for the Kiel canal, but the second year's traffic only shows a passage of 2,036,861 tons. As a strategic waterway for the German navy this canal may prove a good thing, but from a commercial point of view it is a disappointment. The Eophone Co. of New York has an order from the treasury department to install one of its instruments, a description of which ap- peared in a recent number of the Review, on one of the new revenue cutters for the lakes. The great Armstrong ship building works in England which cover two miles of the north bank of the Tyne, employ some 20,000 men, have a capital of $20,000,000 and earn $2,500,000 a year in profits, were estab- lished fifty years ago. It is expected that the model tank under construction at the Washing- ton navy yard will be completed by next spring. The work of construc- tion. is in charge of Assistant Naval Constructor F. B. Zahn. Harland & Wolff of Belfast are said to have just closed contracts with the White Star Line for two cargo steamers, each over 600 feet in length.