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18 ITEMS OF GENERAL INTEREST. The Northwestern Steamship Co. and the Alaska Steamship Co. of Se- attle have consolidated. Operations have been resumed at the Canadian Ship Building Co.'s plant at Bridgeburg, Ont., over 250 men having been put to work. The name of the publication Technical Literature has been changed to The En- gineering Digest, owing to a misappre- hension by readers as to the nature of the contents. There is no change, however, in policy or in the character (Capt. J. N. Johnston has been ap- pointed shore captain of the 'Cleve- landCliffs Iron 'Co.'s fleet of vessels. Captain Johnston is the veteran mas- ter of this line and last year com- manded the W. G. Mather. Engineer Rear Admiral Henry J. Oram has been appointed engineer-in-chief of the British naval fleet with the rank of Engineer Vice Admiral in succession of Sir John Durston. The Canadian Pacific Railway Co.'s steamer Mount Temple, bound from Antwerp to St. John, N. B., with over 600 passengers and a large and valua- ble cargo, struck on the ledges at Iron Bound, on the west coast of Nova Scotia, and wiil probably be- come a total wreck. The passengers were landed safely. iihtes Spencers Nite. ©o:;, St... Paul "Minn., are installing on the docks of the Cunard -Steamship Co. at New York three of their portable electric conveyors to load the steamships Lus- itania and Mauretania. One of the machines. will be 60 ft. long and 3 ft. wide; the other two are 25-ft. ma- chines. The submarine boat Tarantula, one of the second submarine boat flotilla, traversed exactly 115 knots in the 12- hour endurance test held recently at Newport, R' I. This is considered a remarkable speed for an under-water fighter when the. weather conditions are taken into consideration. Her of- ficial speed record is exceeded by this performance. As the result of an involuntary. pe- tition in bankruptcy which was filed against the Williams-Whittlesey Co., boat builders at Steinway, L. I., the property of the company is to be sold at public auction to satisfy the 160 creditors who have filed claims. The schedules as filed with Charles A. Tip- ling, referee in bankruptcy in Long Island City, show liabilities amount- ing to $57,371.71 and assets valued at $8,191.01. The date of the sale has not yet been fixed. The Canadian Pacific Railway Co.'s steamer Mount Royal, which was long overdue at St. John, N. B., appeared ble with her hawk and Massassoit. THE Marine REVIEW at. Queenstown last week in a badly crippled condition. She left Antwerp Dec. 7 with 300 Hungarian emigrants and a crew of 100 men, but had trou- boilers and after en- countering a serious gale the trouble was so much aggravated that she was forced to put back for the Irish coast, which she made under her own steam, although at greatly reduced speed. The old war cruiser Marion burned to the water's edge recently in Visitation Bay, San Francisco. The Marion was launched in 1875, and was named to perpetuate the memory of the sloop of war Marion, the timber of which was used in the construc- tion of the new vessel. For a time she was in service on the China sta- tion but in 1896 she was given to the Naval Reserve as a training ship. A receiver was recently appointed was by Judge Lowell in the United States circuit court at Boston for the Maine Coast wiransportation = Co. -a" Maine corporation. The company carries freight between Boston and Maine ports and owns the two steamers Mo- The latter went ashore at Cutler's Harbor several days ago. The assets amount to about $25,- 000 and the liabilities to $20,000 in ad- dition to an issue of bonds amounting "to $120,000. Secretary of the Navy Metcalf, act- ing under orders from the president, has signed the orders assigning Sur- geon Charles F. Stokes to the com- mand of the hospital ship Relief, which is being fitted out at the Mare Island, Cal., navy yard, with a full hospital equipment for special duty with the battleship fleet. It is expected that Surgeon Stokes will start for the coast at once. Other medical officers will be assigned as assistants to the com- mander and arrangements will be made for shipping a merchant master and crew. With the sailing on Jan. 4 of the steamship Bunker Hill, a new vessel of 4,000 tons, of the New England Steamship Co.'s line, from Boston for New York, a second all-water freight route began operations. A _ schedule has been arranged which provides for three sailings weekly from each city, DicmtmpsmaAsm aid Out being made in 24 hours. The new company was or- ganized after a series of conferences between Boston merchants and offi- cials of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Co., the marine de- partment of which controls the three vessels which will be used in the ser- vice. Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co., Ltd. launched the first-class British battleship Superb, Nov. 7, at their yard\ on the Tyne. The Superb, although' somewhat larger than the Dreadnought, is of the same class and will have a speed of 21 knots. The propelling machinery has been made by the Wallsend Slipway & Engineering Co., Ltd.; there are to be four turbine-driven propellers and an astern turbine is also to be fitted to each of the four lines of shafting. Steam will be supplied by 18 boilers of the Bab- cock & Wilcox water-tube type and the machinery, with few exceptions, will be an exact duplicate of that of the Dread- nought. A new departure on the part of the British admiralty was marked by the re- cent sailing of the admiralty-owned tank steamer Petroleum for Port Arthur, Tex., for the purpose of importing a cargo of oil for use in meeting the in- creasing requirements of the British navy for oil as fuel, the mosquito fleet in par- ticular being largety propelled by this means. It is the intention of the admir- alty to establish a line of depots alcng the coast where torpedo boats may re- plenish their supply and a fleet of naval tank steamers which will bring the fuel direct from the oil shipping ports is con- sidered to be the cheapest and most sat- isfactory method of keeping these depots supplied. At a regular monthly meeting of the Maritime Association of the port of New York, held recently, a resolu- tion was adopted urging better pay for the life-saving service, in accord- ance with the bill now pending before congress. The resolution is as fol- lows: "The maintenance of the life- saving service at a high standard of efficiency is of the utmost importance to our shipping interests, and serious conditions at the present time exist 'in the service, due to the many va- cancies continually occurring and the difficulty experienced in filling same with competent recruits, to overcome which it is evident that some induce- ment must be offered to,insure the re- tention of capable men. There is now pending before congress a bill which provides a system of retirement, in- suring compensation to those who may become incapacitated through injury, disease, or by reason of age, which measure it 1s thought, if enacted into law, would quickly relieve the present critical situation and result in main- taining the life-saving service at the high standard which has caused it to be universally recognized as the lead- ing institution of its kind in the world." : The Independent Pneumatic Tool Co., Chicago, have removed. their San Francisco office from 11 Front street to 61 Fremont street.