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MARINE REVIEW. | 04 FRANK E. KIRBY'S NEW STEEL LIFE BOAT. Mr. Frank E. Kirby of Detroit, who is best known as the designer of nearly all the large side-wheel passenger steamers of the lakes, has made arrangements for the building of a type of steel life boat, upon which he has been at work for a long time past, and which is the outgrowth of a special study of life boats in connection with the construction of large steamers for both passenger and freight service. The first boats of the new type to be built (they are illustrated herewith) are to be used on the Eastern States and Western States, now nearing completion at Detroit for Detroit and Buffalo service, and which are the largest side-wheelers ever built on the lakes. The same type of boat will be used on the new excursion steamer Columbia, and on a large freight and passenger steamer as well as a freight steamer to be 'built for the Erie & Western Transit Co. (Anchor line) of Buffalo. The present type of steel life boat has wooden keel, stem and stern posts, which rot quickly and are difficult to repair. The plating worked fore and aft is seldom in fair lines, and on account of the seams, and hav- ing no supporting frames inside, are very weak athwartship. The Kirby improved boat has an iron keel, stem and stern post in one piece, to which are welded the hooks for hoisting in. The plating is uniformly 15 in. wide, worked diagonally, double-riveted throughout, and even with in- different workmanship it is impossible to make unfair seams. The seams add considerably to the athwartship strength, which is further increased by heavy oak frames worked under each thwart and over the footlings which they hold in place. The footlings and frames can be removed, if necessary, for painting, as they are not fastened through the plating. They are held in place by shores set under the thwarts which have con- siderable spring. The air tanks will float the boat when she is full of water. The model of the boat is-full as possible and she has a fair form. She is unstable in any position except on the bottom, and is, therefore, self-righting. No rudder is fitted as it is looked upon by the designer as a useless appendange for life boats. CURRENTS OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN. Prof. George Davidson, of the University of California, president of the Geographical Society of the Pacific, in a recent address on "The Currents and Climatology of the Pacific," said that the equatorial current in the Atlantic that moves westward into the Gulf of Mexico and sweeps northward as the gulf stream and curves across to warm the shores of Europe had its counterpart system in the Pacific in the equatorial current that starts about at Panama and moves westward to the Philippines, is deflected by those plateau-like barriers, turned northward along the Jap- anese coast and sweeps in a great upward curve back across the Pacific as the Japan stream to warm the northern shores of this country, and come down and deflect southwestward, to be redrawn into the equatorial current for another trip across to the Philippines. But, while the two big oceans have similar ocean currents, their shores are different. The Pacific, beginning at Cape Horn, extending up the coast to the Aleutian islands, over to China, Japan, the Philippines and ending way down at Tasmania, is bounded by a mountain wall close to the shore ranging roughly from 5,000 to 15,000 ft. in height and having no fewer than 350 active volcanoes in a distance of 20,000 miles. Prof. Davidson also explained that the equatorial current moves westward because the earth is turning eastward all the while, and the ocean, being a movable surface on a solid body, really hangs back a little, and that action results in a western trend of the waters at the equator, where the.surface of the earth is moving the fastest, and this western movement along the equator draws into it from north and south the cur- rents coming from the polar regions. Off Japan this equatorial stream of warmer water is from 500 to 600 miles wide, moves eighty miles a day and gives the shores of Formosa a temperature of 86°. After it curves back across the Pacific and warms the colder northern coast it moves southward. Because the greatest coast rainfall is at Cape Flat- tery, and there it is 125 in. a year, Prof. Davidson inclines to the opinion that there the Japan current, with its rain-bearing vapors, must strike its midstream. As this current passes San Francisco it widens to 1,000 as and has given up a good deal of its warmth to the chilly coasts of the north. : Prof. Davidson has a record of some seventy Japanese junks carried away in typhoons and left to drift with the Japan stream, and the wrecks, a few of them with men on board, show where the stream strikes all around the great curve and away around to the Hawaiian islands. He spoke of one junk that had been picked up 300 miles southwestward of Santa Barbara, with three survivors of a large crew, after drifting for 517 days in the Japan stream, thousands of miles. From that drift the rate of the movement of the stream was found to be ten miles a day. Prof. Davidson told of a so-called tidal wave that had struck the Pacific coast, and explained that it was an earthquake wave from Japan. It crossed the Pacific ocean, about 6,000 miles, in eleven and a half minutes, and made itself felt way up into the Tuolumne river and in San Francisco and San Diego bays. From that wave rate the scientists com- puted the average depth of the Pacific between San Francisco and Japan to be between 2,700 and 2,800 fathoms, and they established this before the ocean cable layers in the Atlantic had learned the depth of that ocean. SHIP BUILDING IN PHILADELPHIA AND VICINITY. _ _Philadelphia, May 7.--The torpedo boat destroyer Chauncey has been in dry dock in Baltimore for the past few days having her bottom scraped and painted in preparation for the official trial, to be run this week over the Barren island course in Chesapeake bay. The speed requirement has been amended to read 28 knots, instead of 29, stipulated in the original contract, and the Neafie & Levy company, builders of the vessel, are now more confident regarding the outcome. Their first boat, the Bainbridge, managed to make 28 knots, notwithstanding defective blower apparatus. Since the draft apparatus has been remodelled on the Bainbridge, Barry and Chauncey ship builders in this locality assert that with the original design of these vessels 29 knots was possible, but so many changes were - decided upon by the government while the boats were building that their displacement has been materially increased to the detriment of their speed. In the imposing array of contracts which it has on hand at present the New York Ship Building Co. presents a scene of busy activity in startling contrast to the desolate and waste land on which in less than three years it grew into existence. Six big merchant vessels are on the ways in various stages of completion, and launches will follow at short intervals this summer. The new tanker, J. M. Guffey, is now complete and has been dry docked at Wilmington for a final cleaning and painting. The keel of the new tanker building for the J. M. Guffey Petroleum Co. is down and rapid progress is being made in framing the vessel. This vessel will be of 2,500,000 gallons capacity and will embody every modern device for ships of her kind, including oil burning furnaces. The New York company, having its new plant now practically com- plete, will without doubt enter a bid in the next letting of contracts for naval vessels. Its present equipment is sufficient for the construction of the largest battleship likely to be authorized, and it is prepared to com- pete with any ship yard on the Atlantic seaboard. : The Russian battleship Retvizan has sailed for Kronstadt, via Cher- bourg, France. Her departure was to the accompaniment of renewed assurances of good will from 'Capt. Stchensnovitch and his staff, and regret in that they were finally obliged to leave this city, of which they have been residents for the past four years. Chief Engineer Cox, attached to the Cramp yard, accompanied the Retvizan and will remain on board until the operation of the boilers and engines has become thoroughly familiar to her engine room force. In addition to the rapid work under way at the Cramp yard on the Pennsylvania, which was mentioned last week in this correspondence, the battleship Maine is not neglected. There is every probability that the Maine will be sufficiently advanced to permit of a builders' trial trip within two -- months. The engines and boilers have been installed and a dock trial can be undertaken at any time. The Cramp erecting shop is busy at present . with the engines for the Colorado and Pennsylvania and on the prelimi- naries for those of the cruiser ordered by Turkey. The latter vessel has been started in the ship yard, but as there is no time clause in the contract no great effort has been made to hurry construction. THE PERTURBATION OF JOHN BULL. Henry Labouchere in this week's Truth, London, under the heading of "Morganeering and the Moral," tells the British nation that its su- premacy in trade and commerce is not only threatened but doomed and that it will take all the best efforts of which the empire is capable to pre- vent a retrograde movement. He says: "To the impartial observer it is a trifle amusing to watch the per- turbation of John Bull at the march of the American capitalist. For a generation or two past the gospel of salvation of mankind by the agency of British capital has been preached with sincere conviction by British politicians. British men of business and almost every British man in every British street, whether it was a dying nation in Europe or Asia, a rickety republic in South America, an unreclaimed region of Africa, peo- pled by idolators and cannibals, or even a poverty-stricken British colony, said that the means of regeneration were the same--let British capital and enterprise exploit the patient thoroughly and there would be an end to all his diseases, political, economic and social. Americans, in their turn, now aspire to regenerate the world by American capital and American enter- prise. They practice upon us the doctrine which we so long applied to the rest of mankind. They acquire our underground railways with the kindly view of showing us how to work those antiquated undertakings profitably. They propose to provide poor old London with tramways and tubes which its people are too poor or too stupid to construct themselves. They acquire half the tobacco trade of these islands to confer upon us the benefits of being supplied with American goods on American prin- ciples. Lastly--for the present--they laid sacrilegious hands on the ship- ping, by means of which 'Britannia rules the waves.' No wonder John Bull is in a comic state of consternation. The world from his point of view is being turned completely upside down. He is no longer 'on top,' but underneath. 'Instead of the exploiter he is becoming exploited. Yet by utilizing to the best advantage our resources in raw material, capital and labor we can hold our own, even if we are forced to see Germany and America increase their output faster than we can. At the present crisis of our economic history, what are the objects which chiefly occupy our minds? They are the regeneration of South Africa by the introduction into that accursed land of British capital and labor, the expansion of our army at the expense of the labor market, squandering time, money and energy on the empty ostentation of the coronation ceremony, which will suspend industry, dislocate trade and divert public thought from matters of pressing and vital import." Dorr, Whittlesey & Lee, Camden, N. J., have purchased the old ship yard and water front of Lewis H. St. John at Mariner's harbor, Staten island, for, $60,000, and will put in facilities for the building of large vessels. The Baltimore Marine 'Railway Co., Baltimore, Md., launched the fishing steamer Atlantic for the Atlantic Construction Co. of New' York last week. The vessel is 140 ft. long, 24 ft. beam and 12 ft. depth of hold.