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TAE Marine. REVIEW 29 elaborate arrangements now being made for the con- struction of the engine and erecting shop, which is to have a length of nearly 1,100 ft., the iron and brass foundries, the pattern makers,' joiners, and cabinet makers' shops, and the building sheds leave no doubt as to the complete- ness of the works when finished, or of the intentions of the directors to leave no stone unturned in the provision of the latest and best, and their determination to make Birkenhead rank with the very best yards in the wozcld. A 150-ton crane is not the least important appliance, and it is significant that this provision will enable the com- pany to handle the huge weights to be found in the ex- press Cunarders when they come into commission. All the driving power in the works will be electrical and a large capacity Mond gas installation is now erected. In addition to the eight building berths already mentioned, there is, of course, the existing accommodation for nearly half a dozen smaller craft at the present yard of Cammell Laird & Co., as well as the dock in which some of the finest battleships in the British navy have been built, and in addition graving docks in which repair work has been carried on since the establishment of the yard. There are also two new graving docks of 708 ft. and 864 ft. respectively almost completed in the new ship building yard. The construction of the new White Star Iiner Adriatic, by Messrs. Harland & Wolff at Belfast is proceéding rap- idly, and the work is said to have reached one of its most interesting stages. The immense size and graceful lines of the vessel are becoming more in evidence every day as the plating. of the shell: and the other' parts of the~vast structure began to cover up the frame- work of the hull... At present the Adriatic is about three parts plated and about one-half riveted. The total number of plates throughout the ship will be close on 20,000, each about 32 ft. long and 5 ft. broad. The dimen- sions of the Adriatic exceed those of the Baltic by some feet, consequently she will be, when finished, the largest liner the world has ever seen. She will hold that honor until the advent of the Cunard express turbine liners. BUFFALO SHIP YARDS BUSY. Buffalo, Feb. 1o.--The Buffalo ship yards are _ tak- ing in hand the members of the winter fleet that were. 50. tetribly.. knocked to pieces by the. big waves that they encountered on their last trip down: -with -erain, Of course it is. not such avery hard problem to refit them, but the loss they sustained in an instant of time was something that would be re- garded as a fortune if it could only come to someone in a lump as it went out. A first inspection of some of the vessels gave the builders an idea that $20,000 apiece would about stand for the wipe the wave that hit them above deck would cost, but since some of them went into dock it is estimated that $10,000 will do the work. As a rule the upper decks were more or less displaced and the iron deck house went down like eggshells, but they were well enough fortified by the next deck to save the grain from more than a minor wetting, though the H. B. Nye had to stand about 17/000 bushels of wet or jetti- soned flaxseed. The force with which these waves were driven against the vessels and the height some of them must have risen above deck is something hard to under- stand when one thinks of the usually calm, level state of the wafer in the lakes. There is a theo-y that long, vessels, that are able to ex- tend from one wave crest to another and never be the victim of a single one at any time, are much more sea- worthy than shorter ones, which may have to sink far down in the trough of a wave at times and cannot rise in time to overtop the next breaker that comes in, but there must be cases where the conditions serve all craft much alike. At least the big steamers did not escape such storms as we had on the lakes last fall. , I hear some complaint of the endless extension of the length of vessels, and some prediction that 600 feet, with no additional breadth of side to match so much leverage is not going to bring results that warrant the effort to bring down a whole season's business at a time. It is a fact that some of the ocean tramps are no further out of water than our freighters are, but they are down deep in the water and breaking in two is out of the question. It is this depth that makes it next to impossible to bring an ocean boat to the lakes, and it is the lack of it that makes a lake boat unsuitable for the salt water. When the steamers Roanoke and Westover came up from Tampa bay some 20 years. ago, they were able to carry only about 600 tons of freight, but they drew so much water that they were suitable to enter only the deepest lake harbors. The wave that struck the steamer E. C. Pope must have been delivered broadside fashion for it shoved her over far to one side, driving one. side badly in and push- ing the other side correspondingly out. No one would suppose that mere water in motion would be able to overcome the resistance of so much metal as is presented even above the water line, by one of these modern lake steamers. None of the inspections of vessels that were smashed down by waves has as yet come in for the Lloyds Reg- ister, and there is some curiosity as to how the inspectors will regard the accidents of that character. If they look on them as the result of storms that were not likely to | occur often, there will be no special recommendations, but if the upper works are thought to be too light, that will be another matter. It seems that the practice of plac- ing the captain's bridge so far forward as is sometimes done, will not be popular if such storms are to be com- mon. It would be safer and more "ship shape" anyhow, to locate it well amidships. As to the lengthening of vessels it has all along been held that to add 72 ft. to a steel hull was not likely to weaken it if properly done, but now that there is a move to add 96 ft. I hear some criticism from experts, It is not claimed that the work cannot be done as usual, but it is likely to produce a boat that is out of all proportion. She will not have the beam to correspond with her length, and besides steering badly will be unwieldy in other ways. The notion that such new work does not jibe well with the old, is a mere remanent of the experience in length- ening wooden hulls. Nobody at: all up in the business pays any attention to it, but there are other considera- tions that must not be overlooked. Possibly it will be necessary to make the experiment a few times before it is entirely safe to be very positive in the matter. The Buffalo ship yards are very busy. The labor trouble. at the Buffalo yard is over, and a force of 800 men is on. The Empire yard is also doing all it can. The Ericsson Line, Philadelphia, will soon let contracts for the construction of two passenger steamers for out- side service between Philadelphia and Baltimore. The steamers will be 300 ft. long and 4o ft. beam. They will be: fitted with triple expansion engines and water-tube boilers. The steamer Tiverton building for the Swett-Daven- port Lumber Co. of San Francisco was launched from the Hitching's yard, Hoquiam, Wash., recently. The steamer is 172 ft. over all, 160 ft. keel, 36 ft. beam and 12 ft. 8 in, deep.