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ee TRE MarRINE REVIEW . THE LARGEST LOG RAFT Stella, Wash., Aug. 10.--(Special Correspondence.)--The announcement that the largest log raft yet constructed anywhere in the world will be built on the Columbia tiver and towed to San Francisco and thence to Shanghai, 'China, has served to arouse no small degree of interest in maritime circles on the Pacific coast and incidentally has resulted in a renewal of the opposition to. these 'large ocean-going rafts journey from 'the: mouth of the Columbia river to San Francisco, The raft for the Orient will be constructed by a new company just organized under the laws of British Columbia, but which is a branch of the Robertson Raft Co., of San Francisco, which has built many of the large rafts. and at the head of which is Mr. Hugh R. Robertson, formerly of St. John, New Brunswick, the inventor of the cigar-shaped raft. The largest raft con- which has all along been manifested by many ship owners and vessel masters. The shipping | men who look upon the rafts as positive menaces_ to navigation and who contend § that they. should be prohibited from going,to sea are rather, exercised 're- garding. the prospect-. ive enterprise, not. so much because of the unusual size of the proposed raft as by reason of the fact that this' will "be 'the. frst attempt to tow one of the giant rafts across the 'ocean, and if suc-°. cessful, will doubtless result in @ regular trans- Pacific 'trafic with these un- wieldy | vehicles of lumber transit such as is at present 'maintained between the Pacific Northwest and San Fran- cisco Bay. . The tact that since the accidents to' "the first few Tatts constructed on the western coast there have 'been no serious mishaps has not served to placate pee maritime interests opposed to FLOATING 'CRADLE IN WHICH LOG RAFT Is CONSTRUCTED. structed up. to this 'time was over 7oo ft. in length and .5o. ft. wide, and contained about 600,000 ft. of "spars and piling, equi- valent to 8,000,000 ft. of lumber, board meas- ure. The raft designed for the 'Chinese port will, according to pres- ent anticipations, con- tain the equivalent of 10,000,000 ft. of lum- ber,':or 25 'percent in -excess of the record construction up to date." If_as proposed, however, 'the new raft is constructed here or at some other point on the Columbia fiver jin order to -be adjacent to. the fir timber which will be utilized, it 'may be neces- sary-to.put most of this increase into length since sthe necessity for 'towing the raft for some distance in the river renders it inadvisable to have a breadth much in excess of 60 ft, whereas there will be increased danger of groundings if the raft draws more than 23 ft. of water. In view of-the fact that this will be the first attempt to 'tow one of the large tis form df rafting. In rebuttal it is ,point- ed out that in the case Of. the. rafts. which were. broken up -by storms stray logs were cast up at points-as far away as the Hawaiian Islands and the Mexi- can. coast, and. «the premise is advanced that some of the ships which have -- within late years mysterious- ly disappeared in the North Pacific ocean owed their doom to stray logs from dere- lict raits, On the other hand the. raft builders claim that with the lessons taught by long experi- ence they have become so proficient in raft construction that the element of 'danger 'has been eliminated to as great an extent as it can be ii any maritime enterprise, and furthermore, that the risk involved is, in 'proportion to the length of the voyage to China, no greater than that entailed by the BUILDING A LOG RAFT. LIFTING THE BIG STICKS INTO THE FLOATING CRADLE. rafts across 'the ocean there is 'considerable speculation as to what premium will be placed upon the risk by the marine under- writers. The insurance men have never looked with any great favor upon the big rafts and even 'in 'the 'case of voyages from here to San -Francisco have fixed arate of 10 per- cent. The result has been 'that the ~ratt builders have seldom felt justified in taking Out' a: policy. upoh 2a raft - for: "more .than about one-third of its valuation, their aim being to merely guar- antee reimbursement for the actual cost of construction and without considera- tion of the prospective profits which are said to some- times run as high as $20,000 in the case of a single raft. It is not unlikely that a new time record will be estab- lished in the construction of the raft which is also to be