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24 MARINE REVIEW. DRUNKENNESS ON BRITISH SHIPS. IT PREVAILS TO A FRIGHTFUL EXTENT ON THE TRAMP STEAMERS AND SAILING VESSELS--PUBLIC DENUNCIATION OF A DEPLORABLE CONDITION OF AFFAIRS. There is probably no industry of like magnitude in the world where | sobriety is so much valued as in that industry which has to do with the movement of the immenge vessel fleets on the great lakes. There was a time, say twenty-five years ago, or even less, when drunkenness and rowdyism ran riot on the docks, when the average sailor was more or less of a drunkard, when indeed, fighting and drinking were the ordinary con- comitants of service; when the mate was often selected because of his reputation as a bully. All this is changed now. The rougher element has | been weeded out. A man who drinks at all cannot get a position of ordi- nary responsibility. For a master of a vessel to even enter a saloon is in -- some of the lines equivalent to his discharge. Those same powerful in- | fluences which today are directing the industrial development of the | country sought to remedy the old conditions on the lakes and succeeded. ; It would seem, however, in fact it is not denied, that the old condi- | - tions which obtained on the lakes years ago, obtain today in the British - mercantile marine. The British sailor is deliberately pronounced a drunkard. The British navy and the transatlantic lines are, of course, - excepted. There the discipline is such that it would soon break down the driiking" man. But the condition of the' mercantile marine' is' publich = | declared to be deplorable. The remedy will have to be in the method of recruiting. Sailors for the mercantile marine will have to come from the villages and farms and not from the slums of the city. The following from Fairplay, which is in itself a reprint from a daily paper, illustrates the point: : In Liverpool the other day at a meeting of the Marine Service Asso- ciation Capt. Lamb, a shipmaster of twenty-six years' experience on the Atlantic, made a speech Which, it would seem from the newspaper reports, dropped like a bolt from the blue among the members. The gist of what Capt. Lamb said may be summed up in the following paragraph: "Al- though { hate all foreigners I prefer them as seamen because of their superior sobriety. The British seaman is a drunkard. The British sailor cannot hold his own because of drink. It is not a question of seaman- ship, for when he is sober he can be depended upon and can put the for- eigner aside, but nine-tenths of the British sailors are drunkards." _ A St. James' representative has had a talk with Mr. Frank T. Bullen, author of "The Cruise of the Cachalot" and "The Men of the Merchant Service," on the subject matter of this speech. : "You are familiar, if anyone is, with the British sailor, Mr, Bullen, and no doubt Capt. Lamb's speech has engaged your attention?" ~~ - "Of course it has, and I endorse it. He is about right. I have said | the same thing over and over again, and been abused for my pains; but it. .is true, unhappily true. The British sailor is, generally speaking, a xe drunkard. I have known ships that have actually been delayed for twenty- four hours in port because the crew were all helplessly drunk. 'I may. mention a case which happened in my own experience. It was that of-a_ tramp steamer. She sailed out of the port of London. Now, what do you. think was the state of matters on board that vessel? When she slipped her moorings every man on board, with the exception of the pilot, was the worse for liquor. Officers on deck, sailors in the fo'csle, engineers in the engine-room, and firemen in the stoke-hole--all were drunk. That happened in a steamer, but the sailing ship is the hell of the sailor. There are splendid exceptions, but the bulk of sailing ships are under-manned, the men are badly fed and badly housed. Undermanning in steamships does not matter so much, but it is a serious affair where huge stretches of canvas have to be dealt with." : "And the British sailor, you think, is quite as bad as he is painted?" "I do not exaggerate. There is no occasion for it. There is no get- ting away from the fact that there is no finer seaman in the world than the British sailor; but take the average merchant ship and you will find that on the day of sailing nearly all the seamen go on board rolling drunk. They tumble on board at the last moment. Go down to the docks any day and you will see what happens. You will see the sailors in a drunken state, or in that worse condition when the liquor is dying out of them. The "master starts for sea, but he is often obliged to anchor until the men become sober. When they do get over their cups the chances are that the master has got to lick them into shape. The British sailor is a tough handful, and with a mixed crew of Englishment, Scotsmen, and Irishmen a master has a mighty stiff job; and of the three nationalities I confess a depraved Scotsman is worse to control than an Englishman and Irishman rolled into one. This matter of nationality reminds me that on board one vessel I sailed we had a man who came on board drunk in London, and did not turn to until we crossed the equator. He was a Swede. When © foreigners first join British ships they are all right, but the peculiar in- fluence of our ships often makes them as bad as the British seaman. Swedes and Norwegians particularly drink as heavily as the British sailors, but they are easier to handle than the British." Biter have said, I think, applies to three-fourths of the British ' seamen. hat of the royal navy?" , : "There you have an entirely different condition of things. In the royal navy you have the fine flower of British sailordom. You have disci- pline. That is the whole secret. In the mercantile marine there is no discipline. What I have said applies only to some tramp steamers and most 'sailing ships. It does not apply to the royal navy or to the great _ passenger liners. There is an entirely different set of conditions prevail- ~ing on board the great liners. A seaman could not be better off than on board a Castle liner, a White Star, or Cunard liner, or a Peninsular & Oriental boat. On these you have good grub, good wages, and continuity of employment. All the things we want to see made universal' the seaman has there. The result is that the men try to keep their berths, and they do not go on board drunk. In the tramp steamer and the sailing ship-- and sailing ships are far more numerous than is generally supposed--there is no continuity of service, and the conditions, generally speaking, are such that there is little comfort and no discipline on board. In the royal navy, for instance, you have perfect discipline. A seaman knows that as the night follows the day, punishment will follow disobedience, In the mercantile marine a man can do what he likes, and who can punish him?" [July 4, "Then what does this condition of affairs tend to when a seaman is anxious to lift himself out of these drunken and disorderly surroundings? "It simply tends in one direction. Either a seaman finds a place in one of the great liners or he leaves the sea altogether. Ship owners and philanthropists may say what they choose, but that is the effect. The life on board the average tramp steamer or sailing ship at present is not worth living. Not until the people of this country realize its importance and insist. upon its being lifted out of its present condition will the mer- cantile service be improved. I do not believe there is a civilized country in the world where you will find more ignorance of the condition under which the sailor lives than in Britain. Why, in America, away even in Wisconsin or Colorado, you will find more knowledge of the sailor and his ships than' you will in the most populous centers of this country. The British people, in fact, do not realize the immense importance of the mercantile marine to our daily life. They do not understand that if our oversea traffic were suspended for a single week the price of the ordinary loaf would rise to two, shillings or more." FROM STEEL CORPORATION REGARDING STRIKE. The strike in the mills of the American Sheet Steel Co. and American Steel Hoop Co. does not appear to be regarded by the United States Steel Corporation as of unusual significance or importance. After a discussion of the matter by Judge E. H. Gary and Charles M. Schwab the following statement was issued from the office of the. executive committee: "The United States Steel Corporation is simply a stockholding com- pany and does not in any respect direct the management of any company in whose stock the former is interested. Information has been received from the offices of the American Steel Hoop Co. and the American Sheet Steel Co. that questions have been under discussion by them and repre- sentatives of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel & Tin Workers growing out of the request by the latter to extend union labor into mills in which union labor has not heretofore existed, and that the officers of the two companies above named have expressed their willingness and prompt- ly signed the Amalgamated Association's scale for the mills in which the union has heretofore existed, but not for other mills. No question as to the amount of wages is involved." One of the executive officers makes the following additional state- ment: Ae "We do not regard the strike of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel & Tin Workers as of very serious import. In the first place none of the Carnegie companies nor the tube company is union and only about half of the workmen in the sheet steel plants belong to the union: In fact about 60°per cent. of the iron and steel workers of our .corpora- tion are non-union men. In the second place the wage scale of the tin plate workers has already been agreed upon and these men will not strike. Therefore, but a small percentage of employees is likely to go out at this juncture. July 1 has for a number of years been the time fixed by the iron and steel operators and workmen for the adjustment of wage scales and other matters between them. It has become almost customary in many mills for'a shutdown at this period to take place while questions of differences were being arranged. A year ago many of the tin plate mills were closed down about six weeks on this account. The workmen them- selves have come to look upon this period of the year as a good time for a vacation after eleven months of continuous labor. The men realize that _ they 'are: now receiving the highest wages ever paid in their branch of work. They also realize that the wage scale formulated by the Amalga- mated Association has been accepted by the corporation. The only trouble is over the demand that non-union mills be treated as if they were union mills. This naturally the steel corporation refuses. It is not believed that the Amalgamated Association seriously considers that this demand on its part will be-acceded to. It is altogether probable that the associa- tion, after a few weeks, will recede from its position and the men will return to work at the wages agreed upon. At any rate the strike will not «seriously affect the business of the United States Steel Corporation. It has, men enough and mills enough which it will be able to continue in operation to keep fairly well up with its contracts." ADVANTAGES OF MECHANICAL DRAFT. In the Engineering Record of recent date Mr. Henry C. Meyer, Jr., says: 'Draft produced by fans possesses many advantages over chimneys ordinarily proportioned. Probably the greatest of these is the fact that it is possible to regulate the speed of the fan so that the proper rate of combustion for the amount of steam required is maintained entirely inde- pendent of the. weather conditions. Another important advantage is the ability of the fans to create a much greater draft than is possible with a chimney, Steam engines for driving fans are frequently fitted with valves arranged to govern the speed of the engine according as the boiler pres- sure varies, increasing it as the pressure falls and reducing it as it rises above the normal. Mechanical draft enables economizers to be placed in the flue.and reduce the temperature of the escaping gases by heating the feed-water far below the temperature that is necessary in a chimney to create a draft. The reduction in draft due to the use of economizers is a much. greater percentage of the available draft with a chimney than it is of the draft where fans are employed. Again, the greater draft of fans enables cheap-low-grade fuels to be burned that could not easily be used with chimney draft, and the saving that the fuels bring about in some lo- calities is a very considerable sum of money. Still another point in favor of mechanical draft lies'in the portability of the fans in case a change of:- location is desired."' The, British naval program: contemplates the construction of three battleships, six armored cruisers, two third-class cruisers, ten torpedo' boat destroyers, five torpedo boats, two sloops and five submarines. The latter, however, ..were ordered and work begun on them last year. Noth- ing can be learned regarding the design of these boats, though the impression prevails that they are Holland boats. The naval bill calls for an expenditure of £9,000,000 for. new construction, Owing to the strike among the machinists wore has i ' : , as been entirel suspended upon the California, South Dakota, Wyoming, Tacoma ee Milwaukee, building for the United States n : Works, San Francisco. avy at the Union Iron