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1899. ] MARINE REVIEW. 13 Direct payments of either. class, the subvention or the bounty, find abundant justification in the fact that the government receives value from the ships in postal service and in the national defence, inasmuch as the vessels may be converted at short notice into naval auxiliaries or mili- tary transports. A well thought out and carefully framed bill providing for bounties for American ships was before congress at its last session and will again claim the attention of that body when it meets in Decem- ber. Ihe way was prepared for this measure by a law which congress passed in 1891 and which has already borne good fruit. The new ship- ping law will extend that principle. It is a further adoption and applica- tion of methods successfully tested abroad. It is designed to hasten a good movement. It only needs now the earnest support of the Amer- ican people in the south and the north, and the west and the east, to put it on the statute books where it will be a life-giving force to American shipping. Public sentiment should mass itself behind this bill in a vol- ume and with a power that will overcome all opposition. It is not the s'ip builders alone who will derive advantages from such legislation. There is capital which is always alert for profitable invest- ment. There are steel, machinery and material to be bought from Amer- ican mantifacturers. There are wages for great numbers of mechanics and seamen. It has been truly said that if the government adopts this new policy in regard to ships the demand for material for new vessels will be so great as to guarantee activity 'in the iron and steel trades, already so busy and prosperous, for a long time to come. Such a feeling of security in respect of one of the most important of our industries will confer direct or indirect benefit upon all classes of the population. The manufacturers and indeed the whole great business element in this country have another interest in the upbuilding of the merchant marine. They are concerned respecting the American foreign trade. 'They desire that there shall be facilities for the direct shipment of goods to all the important markets. They believe that this service will be better for Americans if it is organized by Americans. The ships should be American ships flying the American flag. It is only through a strong merchant marine of our own that we need expect to have a maximum of efficiency with frequent sailings over direct routes at cheap rates. The country which has its own ships will have agencies of transportation whose first business it will be to serve its own people at its own ports. American ships would aim first to secure American trade. They might scatter into other parts of the world seeking business wherever they could find it in future years, as the British ship has done, but their fore- most task would be to carry away our own exports and bring hither our own imports, and this is a condition of things which would soon be te flected in the freight markets to the advantage of all our industries. In no country have more remarkable advances been made in a few years than in Germany. No great modern people, with exceptions for the Russians and the Austrians, might be supposed to be less well adapted for life upon the sea. Their only practicable outlet to the ocean was from one or two hundred miles of coast on the North Sea, and a con- siderable part of this shore belonged to Denmark up to a rather recent date. There were some German harbors on the Baltic Sea, but boats from these ports, except those engaged in trade with Russia and Scandi- navia, had io pass the Danish and Swedish forts through a narrow pas- sage way, until the completion a few years ago of the Kiel canal. German shipping interests had to place their main reliance on Hamburg and Bremen, ports located a considerable distance up rivers, whose impor- tance as centers for the ocean trade dated from a time when vessels drew much less water than they do today. The German was not by nature a seaman. He had no innate talent either for building or navigating a ship, and it is only after a consideration of all these facts that any fair idea can' be secured of the importance of the developments of the past few years. The harbor works at Hamburg and Bremen, the canal to connect the Baltic and North Seas, enormous busy ship yards, handsome, swift and commodious modern vessels, the equals of any afloat, and rich steam- ship lines which run into every ocean are some of the results we see today in Germany. All this has not been attained by accident. The movement has been well directed by men of serious purpose. Government and private cap- ital have worked hand in hand. There has been hearty co-operation and the progress has been marvelous. Many of the lines have received sub- ventions. The German line to the Far East, openly established with the object of building up German trade in China, Japan and Australia, is one of the most notable and successful instances of this kind. The aid which the government has extended to shipping in Germany, however, is of still another character. The state owns the railways and shippers are often given special export rates. In this way the government, without appear- ing to favor the shipping interests, does them nevertheless a very useful service. By such a policy, well-regulated and continued throughout a period of years, aided by their excellent technical schools for ship builders and navigators, the Germans have raised themselves from a tribe of landsmen to one of the foremost commercial nations in the world. While the Germans had few natural qualities fitting them, to follow the sea, the Americans are of a different type. They inherited the tradi- tions of the English people as navigators. The Yankee sailing ship, shaped out of the timber hewn from the forests of New England, and the Yankee sailor were long a sight on every wave. The United States has thousands of miles of coast line on the Atlantic, as well as the Pacific Ocean. No country is more favorably situated in respect of water front. It has harbors in abundance, the peers of any in the world. One coast invites trade with Europe, Africa and South America; the other with Australia and Asia. The country has unlimited natural resources which have led to the upbuilding of great industries. Nature decrees that we Shall carry on commerce with other lands on a large scale. And yet despite all these favoring circumstances we have been going backward as a shipping nation for many years. We have allowed the American flag to be driven from the seas, the Yankee sailor has sought another occu- Pation and has forgotten his craft, while our harbors swarm with ship- Ping from other lands. . The condition of the industry is so unfortunate that an heroic remedy is required. It is a desperate situation. Positive action is necessary at once. Because this important industty is in this plight, because 'the nation should have postal boats and boats upon which young sailors and apprentices may be trained, and because a strong merchant fleet is needed as a guaranty of national security in war time, the United States govern- ment must be enlisted in this work of building up a mercantile navy under the American flag which will be the pride of every citizen. It is said that the ship building industry in this country now needs no subventions; that subventions would only be gratuities; that American ship yards were never more busy and that American steel makers have lately furnished large quantities of ship plates to Great Britain. If our ship yards are now quite busy an investigation will show that it is on coasting vessels and warships, and vessels to be navigated under the terms of the shipping law of 1891. If we can make ship plates for Europe we can make them for ourselves, but we must have steady employment for our ship yards on a large scale and a greater incentive for the invest- ment of money in ships than the mere ability to build them cheaply. They must be operated after they are built. Consul Russell of Liverpool, 'recently computed that on American vessels crews catt only be procured by paying them from 32 to 37 per cent more than on British vessels, while to feed and maintain seamen on American ships costs 27 per cent more than on British ships. Other expenses are heavier also, and although these will tend all the while to fall to European levels, the first steps are costly. A certain insurance to timid investors, differences in wages and operating expenses, the cost attendant upon general inexperience in the business, and the difficulty of establishing new enterprises, as well as the possible conspiracy of older rivals in the trade to keep newcomers off the routes by cutting down freight rates to ruinously low figures--all these items must be covered by the government in its bounty bill. That these disadvantages which we will at first be subjected to will gradually dis- appear admits of no question. As our position in the shipping trade be- comes stronger smaller payments may suffice. The task now is to start this long delayed movement, and it is the immediate duty of every Amer- ican to urge upon those who are responsible for the conduct of the government the adoption of an active and enlightened policy in respect of the American ship. THEO. C. SEARCH. Philadelphia, Noy. 28, 1899. A NOTE OF EXPLANATION FROM MR. W. I. BABCOCK. In the Review of last week it was said that the "free ship" publica- tions of the country were doing Mr. W. I. Babcock of the Chicago Ship Building Co. an injustice in quoting him as saying that even now the ship builders of the United States can build at as low cost as foreign builders. That Mr. Babcock's communication on this score was mis-_ understood will be seen by the following note, just received from him: "Having found that in some quarters my letter to you of Oct. 14, 1899, has been misunderstood in one respect and taken to mean that J consider that even now the ship builders of this country can build at as low a cost as foreign builders, I beg to be allowed to correct that im- pression, which was not intended nor is it a fair inference from what I did say. At the present time the very much higher wages paid by us, nearly double the average rate in British yards, makes a difference against us in labor cost too large to be overcome, either by the admitted greater efficiency and willingness of our mechanics, our much greater freedom from tyranny of trades unions, or our more extended use of labor-sav- ing machinery. When, however, the increasing volume of orders and certainty of their permanency, following wise legislation by congress, calls into existence here new yards, modern in every respect, and justifies the remodelling and improvement of existing plants; in other words, when, 'as I said before, we have plenty of work and time to get ready, then we can beat the world." TRIPLE SCREWS THIRTEEN YEARS AGO. A new claimant has appeared for the honor of discovery of the value of triple screws in war ships. The chief constructor of the Russian navy says that during the trials of the Livadia, Dr. A. C. Kirk made a model and had it carefully tested on Loch Lomond at the instigation of Capt. Artsayooloof, to determine the efficiency of twin propellers, with and with- out the center propeller in position, and with all three propellers in use. During all the thirteen years which have intervened since their submission the reports made by Dr. Kirk have remained in the archives at St. Petersburg. They are now to be given out and it is claimed that they will show that Dr. Kirk, by his experiments, arrived at conclusions which have since been proven in practice to be accurate. Dr. Kirk found that up to 15 knots the result, so far as propulsive efficiency was concerned, was the same whether the total power was divided between two or three screws, but that for higher speeds it was possible that the division of the power among three screws would be advantageous, although the data was not conclusive. The dragging of the center screw due to working only the two side screws increased the power required for 13 knots speed by 11 per cent. The conclusions deduced from his experiments, as embodied in th= report to the Russian government, were that the division of power beiween three screws was at any rate perfectly safe; that the steering would be im- proved by the third screw, and that at very low cruising speeds the third engine would be an admirable thing. SUPPLEMENT TO THIS ISSUE. We have reproduced as a supplement to this issue half a dozen copies | of photographs taken by the Detroit Photographic Co. during the last International cup races between the Shamrock and Columbia. These views are part of an historical collection of views made by that company, which is by all odds the finest yacht collection in existence. In addition to making a specialty of photographing all the races and cruises of the various yacht clubs, this company has the largest collection of individual yacht photographs in the country. It is interesting to note that they have lately taken up great lakes subjects, and are engaged on making a complete series of shipping scenes on the lakes, in which much interest- ing material is sure to be gathered. ee