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20 i DEVOTED TO EVERYTHING AND EVERY - INTEREST CONNECTED OR_ ASSO- CIATED WITH MARINE MATTERS ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. é Published every Thursday by - The Penton Publishing Co. CLEVELAND. BU BAUO coo 6 cise ce chee cece © 932 Ellicott Sq. CHICAGO hpi piecess ss 1362 Monadnock Blk. CINCINNATI .......First National Bank Bldg. NEW YORK ..........1005 West Street Bldg. PITTSBURG «5... Sle eG. 521 Park Bldg. DULUTH 62.555 veeceeeee411 Providence Bldg. Correspondence. on Marine Engineering, Ship Building and Shipping Subjects Solicited. Subscription, U. S. and Mexico, $3.00 per annum, Canada, $4.00. Foreign, $4.50. Subscribers can have addresses changed at will. Change of advertising copy must reach _ this office on Thursday preceding date of publication. The Cleveland News Co. will supply the trade with the Maring Review through the regular channels of, the American News Co. European Agents, The International News Company, Breams Building, Chancery Lane, London, E. C., England. Entered at the Post Office at Cleveland, Ohio, as Second Class Matter. November 14, 1907. SURVEYS OR STRANDINGS-- WHICH? We notice in the report of the three new shoals discovered im the Straits the lake that . the soundings for navigators' charts .were of Mackinac by Search, survey steamer | original made in 1851, over half a century. ago. We notice moreover that the original work was done by sounding, and that the present method of the lake survey is' by sweeping. Wrecking masters know that it is a 'hopeless task to look for a wreck by sounding, so they drag for it, and find it. The difference betweeh sweeping and dragging is this: in dragging, a cable or weighted line is drawn by two tugs, one at each Trae Marine REVIEW end, and it slides along the bottom; in sweeping, a tug and two launches move a small cable half a mile long, sidewise through the water, and this cable is buoyed and held at a depth of 30 ft, below the surface, so that. any shoal, pinnacle or wreck with a less depth than 30 ft. over it is lo- cated. The work of the lake survey in the middle of the last century was good, but this modern method of looking for obstructions is so much better, that the present surveys are finding many dangers not revealed before. Of course in some cases shoals have been built up by storm currents and by ice, and vessels have been sunk and lost in the more than half cen- tury since the original surveys. In other cases wrecks have been blown 14-t. up and leveled for navigation, but at the present time with 20-ft. navigation, and with 22 or 25-ft. navi- gation in sight, these old forgotton hulls as dangers to the deep-draught car- are coming into - prominence riers. Whatever the cause, this sea- son's sweeping by the lake survey has demonstrated that there are more things on the vessel tracks than mas- ters dream of. It' is a good thing to find these menaces and set them down on the charts, and buoy them out where nec-. essary, but the only question is how best to find them. but we cannot think seriously, that it is best to'let the vessels find them, by bumping them, or stranding on them, Some have said, or tearing out their bottoms, or by wreck- ing on them. This method puts the cost of finding the shoal, reef or wreck, as a direct tax on the vessel intetr- - ests--and on the lives of those fol- lowing the lakes. The lakes are full of shoals found in. this sweeps its own path; and every in- way, because every vessel crease in draught means that each vessel is sweeping deeper, and find- ing things safely passed over on less- er draughts. The Haskell shoal in the St.. Law: rence river was discovered by the _striking and sinking of the steamer Wok. Haskell, with a loss of $50,- 000.:: The Bay State and Granite State -- shoals in the same river were found by sinking steamers of the same names. The Seneca, Waverly and Grecian shoals in Lake Erie bear the names of' the steamers finding them, so do the Harlem and Corsica in Lake The discov-: ery of the Hutchinson shoal in Lake shoals Huron. Superior, with a damage to ship and cargo of a quarter of a million dol- lays; is very fecent. We do not agree that this is the Is, but want to see the lake survey sweep proper way of finding shoals, more extensively. During this season only three out of their five steamers. have been in commission, and these have been under-manned, and inade- quately equipped for covering large ite reason of this ig that congress reduced the appropriation, areas. giving the survey only $75,000 instead of the $125,000 needed. As the lake survey' is part of the maintenance- of-way force of engineers needed to care for the lake transportation sys- tem, and as this system is vastly im- portant 'and pays big dividends to the people, it looks as if congress should deal liberally in keeping its staff efficient. We expect the reason for retrench- ment is that vessel interests have not presented clearly to congress, the practical service rendered by the lake survey to the great lakes. TURBO-ELECTRIC PROPULSION. The article on "A Motor Driven Liner" in the Martine ReEvIEw of Oct. 31 might give the impression that the subject of turbo-electric propulsion is new. As a matter of fact, while still in the experimental stage, the idea has been worked out and incorporated in the plans for the two twin-screw fire- boats for the city of Chicago now under construction by the Manitowoc Dry Dock Co. from designs by Bab- cock & Penton, engineers and naval architects, Clevelahd and New York. In these boats the idea is carried a step father however, by coupling the centrifugal fire pumps to the turbo-gen- erator shaft. In responding to.an alarm the pumps simply run idle, the suction