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20 MARINE 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, SupscripTIoN--$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 Pust Office us Second-class Mail Matter. The question of the small port hole is agitating the European jour- nals considerably. In London lately there have been started two or three papers. after the yellow pattern of American journalism and they have taken Rear Admiral (Melville's exclamation that.the small port holes of the ocean liners are an abomination as their text. The small port hole must go is the ultimatum pronounced. The noise has attracted the atten- tion of the sober technical journals and they accordingly have devoted much space to it. The discussion, of course, comes into being through the awful destruction of life in the fire on the North German Lloyd liners. The subject, however, is not new. Hitherto the small port hole has blocked egress and has caused the taking of lives which otherwise might have been saved. Each time such an event occurs the subject ola larger port hole is agitated. It was so in 1891 when the liner Anglia was thrown on her beam's end in the Hoogly mud. Naval architects and builders took up the subject then and came to the conclusion that the port holes could not be made larger. Port holes are not intended as avenues of escape, but as means whereby light and air may be admitted to the inward parts of a ship. It was decided that they could not be made larger without a sacrifice of structural strength. The British board Ol" trade, which exercises a very close vigilance over the conduct of British shipping, issued a revised edition of their instructions recently in which they say: "Surveyors should remember that while in some places, such as the ends of poops, forecastles and bridge houses, and in the sides or ends of deck houses, the size of scuttles may be as large as convenient; where, however, they go through the side plating the structural strength of the ship may be affected by them and a larger diameter than 10 in. should not in such cases be recommended. In the forward part of the ship it may sometimes be undesirable to have them so large as 10 in." To increase their size is to structurally weaken the vessel and render pos- - sible the admission of the sea, which would undoubtedly prove as produc- tive to terrible disaster as fire. The wonder and the romance of it! There has been at least one American product which has needed no diplomat to open the door of for- eign commerce for it. The over-sea oil trade of the United States is a commercial miracle. Its inception was: most modest. There was noth- ing about it to enliven the imagination; and now it has grown to such proportions as to fairly beggar the fancy. It is an important factor in American shipping. In 1862 about 10,000,000 gallons was sent abroad; in 1871 the exports aggregated upwards of 152,000,000 gallons. This period represents the desertion of the grain business in Cleveland by John D. Rockefeller, then a very young man, and his entrance into the business of refining oil. In 1882 the export demand for American oil was 514,000,000 gallons. This period represents the inception and organization by John D. Rockefeller of that combination of interests now known as the Stand- ard Oil Co. In 1897 the exports reached. nearly. 1,000,000,000 gallons-- to be exact 994,297,756 gallons, representing in money $62,000,000. This trade has been built up in spite of Russian competition, and Russia has the most productive oil field in the world. Russia also has a prohibitive tariff of 200 per cent. in its own immense domain. It can keep American oils out of its own empire, but it cannot keep them out of any other part of the globe, civilized or pagan. It is a monument to American ability that the United States can sell its oils at the very door of Russia. It can sell a superior article at a less cost in Central Europe and yet pay the long. distance freight and a better wage. That's due to economy of method in refining and transporting. Without the Standard Oil Co. the American oil trade would still be in the dribbles with an inconsiderable export trade. J. C. Stubbs has begun to run Collis P. Huntington's gauntlet, He will be pretty thoroughly clubbed before he gets through with it. Lately in Chicago he made a speech opposing the construction of the Isthmian canal. Huntington opposed the canal because he thought it would injure his railways. He used to say that for the interest on what the canal would cost he would transport from the Atlantic to the Pacific all the freight that ever went through it. Stubbs thinks that the money which the canal would cost ought to be expended in upbuilding the American merchant marine. The merchant marine needs upbuilding, it is true, but it does not want to 'be upbuilt at the cost of another and equally important interest. The Isthmian canal is a necessity to the complete development of American trade. The markets of the orient are about to be opened. New York will continue to be for many years the principal outlet for REVIEW. [August 30,; © American shipping. It will need the canal to reach the east. Money should be appropriated for the upbuilding of shipping, but it should not be money which is needed for a commercial waterway. One must reduce figures to the simplest proposition to make the layman understand the real greatness of the British isles in the world's maritime trade. The figures show that considerable over 2,000 vessels a day enter and clear the ports of Great Britain. That is nearly ninety vessels an hour for every hour in the twenty-four hours of the day. This is a stupendous showing and is the very marrow in the bone of England's strength. Following are the tonnage entries of the United Kingdom at various periods: Year. Sea-guing. Coasting. Total. 1801 1;720,000 6,000,000 7,720,000 1810 2,070,000 7,000,000 9,070,000 1820 2,110,000 8,000,000 10,110,000 1830 2,940,000 8,240,000 11,180,000 1840 4,720,000 12,600,000 17,320,000 P8505 2 7,250,000 21,510,000 28,760,000 1860 12,350,000 24,400,000 36,740,000 1870 18,320,000 28,850,000 47,170,000 1880 29,070,000 36,140,000 65,210,000 1888 33,950,000 47,570,000 81,520,000 1898 45,125,334 55,422,029 100,547,373 Diplomats at Washington have finally succeeded in getting around the treaty of 1817 sufficiently to permit the auxiliary gunboat Hawk to be sent to the great lakes as a training ship. The gunboat, which is now at the navy yard at Norfolk, Va., is being handsomely fitted as a practice ship for the Ohio naval reserves. Secretary Hay recently notified Gov. 'Nash that the Reserves could have her. A crew will be selected by Gov. Nash from the Ohio naval militia to bring the boat to the lakes by way of the St. Lawrence river. The boat will probably be stationed at Cleve- land. A:San Francisco dispatch says that application has been made by the Risdon Iron Works for space on. the water front, near the Risdon plant, for a great floating dry dock which is intended to be the largest of its kind on the coast and one of the best in the world. The company's plant is being put in shape to turn out ships of the very largest size. LAKE HULL INSURANCE. COLLISION LOSSES MAY CUT DOWN PROFITS--DISCUSSION REGARDING EXPER- IENOE OF UNDERWRITERS WITH THE BIG STEEL FREIGHTERS. Buffalo, Aug. 29.--Speaking with some concern regarding losses this season from collision, prompted by the sinking of the steamer Specular, a leading marine underwriter lately took quite an unfavorable view of the situation generally. He said that the losses from this source alone were so much greater than last season, and more than the average, that a few more of the sort would mean a severe reduction in the margin of earn- ings that is still supposed to stand on the books as regards the hull busi- ness. But after all it is of small account that the losses from collision are more than they were last season, for they were phenomenally small Loe and really had much to do with the good report made of the season's usiness. Should there be much more of collision loss, or indeed in any other branch of hull insurance, it is intimated that some figuring will need to be done to find how the balances stand, which is a sufficient indica- tion that nothing of the sort has been done yet and that everybody felt safe up to a comparatively recent date. There is no real expectation, apparently, that there will be a loss on hull insurance this season, though it is now quite likely that it will not be so very profitable. I find that the big rush in favor of steel hulls, especially the 400 and 500-footers, has been overdone, at least from the standpoint of certain good insurance authorities, and if there is not a somewhat radical adjustment of rates, with steel vessels set: well up, it will be because there is too much competition in the business somewhere, for they have proven very expensive to the companies. It was, of course, expected that they would give the underwriters a deal of trouble from stranding; they could not do otherwise unless wooden jackets were provided for them, and that idea has not been in favor of late, though it was hoped that some other good feature would make its appearance, at least as regards steel vessels, in the light of an investment. What is apparently _the most unexpected feature of it all is that the big vessels are not better sea boats than they are. An underwriter puts it in this way: When these boats began to come out we supposed that they would pay no attention to ordinary storms, but would' put out into the middle of the lake and go on about their business, but they do nothing of the sort. A 30-mile wind and they are making for shelter, precisely as the smallest craft would do. To say that we are disappointed would be put- ting it mild. This may be thought a small matter at first, but it means a good deal, for from it we get such strandings as the Harlem and the Arthur Orr, each of which made a big hole in the earnings of the year. Since that time a big steamer has piled herself upon Isle Royale, and not so very heavy a gale at the time either. The captain was asked how he came to get ashore and he replied, as a matter of ordinary information that'he was running for shelter behind the island and got too close to it." Well, the steel vessels do not go to the "bone yard" after a term of years anyhow. It takes a dip into deep water to close their career, which is the reason for their running the wooden vessel out, added to the practical giving out of ship timber. Still if the insurance inter- ests have overdone their side of the competition and assisted too much in the effort to get rid of the wooden bottom there will be a grim sort of satisfaction on the part of the owner who has been obliged to carry his own insurance of late on account of the rate on wood that could not be paid, There is not much prospect of such rates coming down, as the wooden fleet is today and as it will be next season and the season after. If it has been discovered that the steel vessel must have a new bottom every few years the business it is in will have to pay for it. It is too late to make any further comparisons with wood. JOHN CHAMBERLIN.