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20 MARINE REVIEW. MARINE REVIEW Devoted to the Merchant Marine, the Navy, Ship Building, and Kindred Interests. Published every Thursday at No. 418-19 Perry-Payne building, Cleveland, Ohio, by THE MARINE REVIEW PuBLISHING Co. SusscripTion--$3.00 per year in advance; foreign, including postage, $4.50, or 19 shillings. Single copies 10 cents each. Convenient binders sent, post paid, $1.00. Advertising rates on application. Entered at Cleveland Post Office as Second-class Mail Matter. It is definitely settled that Col. Jared A. Smith is to be transferred. Indeed there has never been any hope of reconsidering his transfer. He has been at the Cleveland post longer than it is customary for the war department to retain an engineer anywhere. His successor. will be Col. Mansfield of San Francisco. It is a little unfortunate that a young man is not assigned to the port of Cleveland at once. Col. Mansfield will retire in two years, and in the nature of things will not take the same interest in continuous engineering work that a younger man would. The Cleveland assignment is one of the most responsible in the chain of lakes. There is great work to be done--work which will be any man's monument when it is done. A young engineer would enter with zest into the work and take great pride in watching its development through a series of years. The harbor of Cleveland is in a formulative period and it needs one mind to direct it. It is to be hoped that when Col. Mansfield's term expires he will be succeeded by a young man of promise and energy. 'Concerning the armor plate contracts for 35,250 tons which the navy department is about to iet, a director of the Bethlehem Steel Co. said, after the company's recent annual meeting: "The Bethlehem company will bid for the entire contract, and I think I may safely say the rate specified will be lower than any that we have ever offered the government before. The reason for this is easily found in the magnitude of the. contract to be awarded. Heretofore the government has seldom made contracts for more than 2,000 tons of steel plate at any one time, and while such a con- tract will keep our large steel presses busy for a short time, its comple- tion leaves them idle for a much longer period, and while thus idle they are necessarily an expense to the company. If we secure this contract, however, it will mean enough work to keep these presses going for several years, and consequently we will be in a position to undertake the work for a smaller price than could possibly be offered on a contract of say two or three thousand tons." In the midst of life we are in death. The annals of the lake have yet to record a more pitiful bereavement than that of James Corrigan, vessel owner of Cleveland. None of its tragedies is more shocking, none in which the blow is so individual and so crushing. Surrounded by his family yesterday he is today alone. The pity of it is too that it seems so inexcusable. The accident to the Idler should never have happened. She was a staunch boat, designed to weather a gale. The evidence is conclu- sive that she would have weathered it readily had she been properly handled. The first principle of sailing is to reef when storm threatens. The captain should have lowered his canvas--all of it. It is idle for him to say that the boat would have been capsized had all her canvas been down. That is a practical impossibility. The dead are Mrs. James Cor- rigan, Miss Ida Corrigan, Miss Jane Corrigan, Miss Etta Corrigan, Mrs. Charles Riley and Baby Riley. : The wisdom of the creation of the naval strategic board is now appar- - ent. It does not interfere, as it was feared:it might, with the work of the bureau of navigation or the bureau of construction and repair. It attends strictly 'to its business of formulating plans of action in case of hostilities. The present complication in China has given the board the paramount ex- cuse for its being. Whatever movement of ships there may be in the' orient will be under its direction. In case of actual conflict it is quite likely that the president of the board, Admiral Dewey, will take active command of the fleet. The board has been in session at Newport during the past two weeks. Of course, the utmost secrecy obtains regarding its doings. That could hardly be otherwise. It is curious how many journals made the mistake of saying that the new vessel building for the North German Lloyd Co. is to be 752 feet in length, in other words, making her considerable larger than the Oceanic. This new German liner, as the Review noted sometime ago, is to be 706 feet long. But Messrs. Harland & Wolff of Belfast, Ireland, are now building for the White Star line a vessel which will exceed the Oceanic in length by 50 feet. The Oceanic, however, is likely to be the largest: vessel constructed during the nineteenth century. The secretary of the navy has been singularly happy in the selection of names for the six submarine boats. Each name is quite suggestive of the kind of creature the submarine craft is. The names are Grampus, Shark, Pike, Porpoise, Adder and Mocassin. Could any names be more appropriate and more deadly? : [July 12, CARGO RECORDS OF THE GREAT LAKES. None of the 500-foot steamers entering the lake trade this season | have as yet taken on cargoes equal to those moved last season by the big steel tow barges. Although most of the lake freighters are loading to nearly 18 feet mean draught, the stage of water in connecting channels is not quite equal to that of last year when the 18-foot mark was exceeded. The Rockefeller tow barge John Smeaton still holds the record, with a cargo of 7,446 gross or 8,339 net tons of ore to her credit. This cargo was moved about the middle of last season. The largest cargo credited to any of the new 500-foot steamers this season is one of 7,215 gross or 8,081 net tons of ore, moved from Two Harbors to Conneaut by the John W. Gates, of the American Steamship Co.'s fleet. The Rockefeller steamer E. C. Pope recently carried 6,585 net tons of coal from Erie to Duluth. This is the largest coal cargo ever moved on the lakes. The cargo records follow: : Iron ore--Tow 'barge John Smeaton, owned by Bessemer Steamship Co. of Cleveland, 7,446 gross or 8,339 net tons, Duluth to Cleveland, draught of 18 feet 1 inch; tow barge Manila, Minnesota Steamship Co. of Cleveland, 7,399 gross or 8,237 net tons, Two Harbors to South Chicago, draught of 18 feet; steamer Malietoa, Minnesota Steamship Co. of Cleveland, 7,335 gross or 8,215 net tons, Two Harbors to South Chicago, draught of 18 feet '4 inch; steamer John W. Gates, A. B. Wolvin of Duluth, manager, 7,215 gross or 8,081 net tons, Two Harbors: to Conneaut. : : Grain--Steamer Superior City, A. B. Wolvin of Duluth, manager, 966,550 bushels of corn, equal to 7,463 net tons, South Chicago to Owen Sound, draught of 18 feet 2 inches; steamer Superior City, A. B. Wolvin- of Duluth, manager, 200,000 bushels of wheat and 41,800 bushels of flax, equal to 7,175 net tons, Duluth to Buffalo, mean draught of 17 feet 3 inches; steamer Andrew Carnegie, Wilson Transit Co. of Cleveland, 332,100 bushels of oats, equal to 5,313 net tons, Manitowoc to Buffalo. ~ Coal--Steamer E. C. Pope, owned by Bessemer Steamship Co. of Cleveland, 6,585 net tons of bituminous, Erie to Duluth; steamer Hendrick S. Holden, Capt. John Mitchell and others, Cleveland, 6,432 net tons of anthracite, Buffalo to Duluth, on a draught of 17 feet 4% inches. FREIGHT SITUATION ON THE GREAT LAKES. Reports from all branches of the iron and steel industry are still of a very unsatisfactory kind, but as far as actual changes in rates are con- cerned the lake freight situation is just as it has been since the opening of navigation. Representatives of John D. Rockefeller, controlling prac- tically all the vessels that are not engaged in contracts, are continuing the policy of keeping enough ships in ordinary to limit the "wild" tonnage to a minimum, and thus save a freight market that would long ago have gone down to a basis of 50 cents on ore from the head of Lake Superior if it. were not for this influence. Ore shippers say that within the past few days they have secured more "wild" tonnage than at any time since the opening of the season, but aside from this claim there is nothing of interest to be told about the market. : The heavy movement of iron ore, looked for on the opening of the season, continues unabated. As noted a week ago, the shipments to July 1 are more than a million and a half tons in excess of what they were on the same date a year ago. The exact figures are 6,415,840 gross tons to July 1, 1900, against 4,755,956 tons to the same date in 1899, a gain of 1,659,844 tons. June shipments in 1900 aggregated 3,149,952 tons. DEATH OF CAPT. FRED N. LASALLE. Capt. Fred N. La Salle, who died last Friday at his home in Duluth after a severe illness, was one of the most picturesque characters asso- ciated with vessel interests on the great lakes. He was known everywhere on the lakes and had a wide circle of friends. Capt. La Salle was born in Bloomingville, O., July 3, 1848, and was a descendant of the famous Breckenridge family of Kentucky. He was left to his own resources at the age of eleven years and found employment as a cabin boy on the lakes. Later he became cook on one of the lake vessels, and when the war broke out he left to become cook for a colonel of an Ohio regiment. At the second tbattle of Harper's Ferry, in 1862, he was captured and sent to Libby prison, where he remained for several months before it was discovered that he was not a soldier at all. At that time he was only fourteen years old, and upon his release he determined to see the south. At the close of the war he shipped on an ocean schooner and sailed before the mast. Later he went to Denver to engage in the construction of the Union Pacific railway. In going through the Cheyenne pass he was captured by Indians, but was recaptured by soldiers the next day. He returned east and shipped on a schooner on the lakes and within a month thereafter was wrecked off Goderich, Ont., and for forty-vight hours was lashed to the mast. Upon his rescue he shipped in another boat and'was again wrecked, this time barely escaping with his life. He gradually worked his way up until he was commodore of the Lehigh Valley line. In 1880 he went to Duluth and first engaged in the coal business. Then he entered into partnership with A. B. Wolvin in a vessel and in- surance agency. In 1895 he formed a partnership with G. A. Tomlinson which continued at the time of his death. During the past four or five years Capt. La Salle was prominently identified with Geo. L. McCurdy, W. A. Prime and others in conducting marine insurance on a very large scale. About a year ago Capt. La Salle took a trip fo Europe for the benefit of his health and returned in a much improved condition. Later cee to California for the same purpose, but his case gradually proved ess. After the funeral at Duluth the remains were shipped to Chicago for interment. Following were the pall bearers: Honorary--George L. McCurdy, Charles E. Peck, W. M. Egan, Edward Smith, John Mitchell, R. R. Rhodes, James Davidson, James W. Millen, A. B. Wolvin and Alexander McDougall. Active--James J. Rardon, D. Sullivan, C. H. Sinclair, James Channon, James R. Sinclair and F. B. Higgie. "Graphite" is a very attractive publication, issued by the Joseph Dixon Crucible Co., Jersey City, N. J., for the purpose of establishing a better understanding in regard to the different forms of graphite and their re- spective uses. The July number is unusually interesting.