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bs . MARINE REVIEW: AND MARINE RECORD. = a -- DZ mee a = ay j a. BP GG EZ A FINE SHIP YARD. In the new plant of the Great Lakes Engineering. Works, on the Detroit river just below the city of Detroit, where the first keel, that of a large steel steam freighter, is to be laid within a couple of weeks, the shipping interests of this section of the country have a ship yard of which they may justly feel proud. There are no frills to it, no elaborate waste on dreams of the fu- ture--simply evidence in all its parts that the men who built. it had first in mind the thought of arranging buildings, tools, berths and slips so as to insure low costs in handling material; then they set out to profit by the best experience in this regard they could find throughout the country, and they were in position to take full advantage of this experience, as their work was from the ground up, in all respects a new plant. Looking at these works from this latter point of view, it is no discredit to the other ship yards of the lakes, most of them built up piece-meal through a long period of years, to say that none of them are to be classed with the new Detroit-river establishment. If there are ships to build on the lakes in the next few years, and there cer- tainly will be many of them as in the past, notwithstanding the present fear of dullness, such a yard as that which the Great Lakes Engineering Works is now opening up, with all its advant- ages from a cost standpoint and with the practical and business- like methods that have been pursued in organizing it, should have*a fair share of the orders." . Chee = Such are the impressions I gained after. being afforded an op- portunity, when in Detroit a few days ago, to make a hurried ex- amination of the new ship yard. I was told by some of the princi- pals. of the company that' they are not anxious to make a stir about what they are doing until they are fully under way and was in fact requested not to at this time enter into an extended de- scription of the buildings or their equipment. It may be said briefly, however, that with an expenditure thus far of not quite a million dollars, this mcluding the purchase of the old Hodge works,. which is a valuable machinery plant operating at good profit, the company is about to put down a keel in a ship yard : that is expected to handle 180 tons of material a day; and with probably 'less than half a million more, completing the expendi- ture originally planned, the: ship yard will be entirely finished and a steel floating dry dock of 500. ft. length, 100 ft. width and 5,000 tons capacity built at the works as an adjunct from the im- portant standpoint of ship repairs. In view of 30 ft. depth in one of the two 800-ft. slips on which there will be berths for three new vessels, the floating dry dock, carrying any size ship need- ing repairs, may be taken up to the very door of machine shop or plate and angle sheds, within easy reach of all the tools and the entire overhead crane system that is used with such great advantage in new construction. The manner in which the travel- ing crane system, with independent pneumatic lifts at the large tools, covers all the handling of material, from the stock yards 'to the building berths and to the deep slip in which the floating dock may be operated, is the admirable feature of the works, es- pecially when viewed in connection with the shop arrangement ; and in the matter of tools it may truthfully be said that there are none better or larger in any ship yard of the country--all modern ° and put down on massive concrete foundation. Especially re-*' markable among the tools are large sets of plate planers and rolls. The rolls are 30 ft. long, the top roll 28 in. in diameter. A pipe threading tool in the building known as the pipe and sheet metal. shop will handle pipe up to 12 in. diameter. In the power house, which contains three boilers of 300 H. P. each with foundation for a fourth if it is required, provision has been made to store, if it is deemed advisable, thirty days' supply of coal (450 tons), and the handling of the coal, whether in full supply or not, will be at all times automatic. Coming into the yard in bottom-dump railway cars, the fuel, by means of.a hopper arrangement just outside the power house, is carried by an end- . less chain of buckets to a large cylindrical steel storage receptacle above the boilers and fed to the furnaces by automatic stokers, the boilers thus requiring the attention of but one man. The ashes are also carried away from the furnaces by the same auto- matic device. As the works. will be independent of the city of Detroit 'both as to water supply and fire protection, the power house includes apparatus for purifying water for the boilers and a complete fire system. But from a fire standpoint the company will very probably profit by a saving of insurance, as the build- ings, well separated, are all of heavy steel frames with corrugated iron hawsings, excepting the commodious and_ well-arranged office building, which is of brick. Two engines of 225 H. P. each in the power house were built at the company's machine shop in Detroit where the greater part of the power house equipment was turned out. There are also three 375 K. W. generators and two vertical, two-stage, 3,000-ft. air compressors, these to supply [Oct.:8 Cy, ( \ ? BA UNTIED US (ES power for the numerous independent 'electric motors and pneu- matic tools that will be used so generally throughout the works. An attractive part of the plant is the spacious mold loft, the great unincumbered: second story of a building 240 by '55 ft., on the ground floor of which are the joiner shop and' storage de- partment. In the joiner shop all the machines are driven by in- dependent motors, and here, as is the case everywhere throughout the plant, even at the forge and in the bays where shapes and plates are handled, there is an abundance of daylight: Another building, not at all unimportant, will be devoted to the. making of rivets and to ship yard tools, and in: still another' part of the property, far removed from the main buildings, is a paint shop. All along the Detroit river frontage in the company's 85 acres of land there is a least depth of 22: ft. of water and in some places the deat My 47 th: 'J. M. M. IRON ORE SHIPMENTS--LAKE FREIGHTS. Shipments of iron ore to Oct. 1 of the present year are 19,- 376,493 gross tons, as against 20,708,000 tons to Oct. 1, 1902, or a decrease of 1,332,117 tons. The shipments during September fell off 710,441 tons in comparison with September of last year, being 2,046,639 tons, as against 3,657,080 tons for September, 1902. Here, therefore, is an adequate measure of what the total shipments are likely to be. They are not likely to exceed 25,000,000 tons, which would be allowing 2,801,753 tons. for each of the months of October and November. With furnace stocks heavy, with Lake Erie docks crowded and with the,ore movement so well in hand by contract vessels it would not appear as though there was so much in the ore trade for the wild carrier during the balance of the season. Rates are steady for the reason that there is nothing to be gained by cutting them. Inquiry shows that of the ore com- . ing down the usual percentage is* going directly to the furnaces. Sixty per cent. of the ore handled over Pennsylvania docks dur- ing September went directly into cars. Iron ore docks at all Lake Erie ports have been unusually free of vessels during the week, as the recent strike caused a bunching of Steel Corporation ves- sels at upper lake ports. On Saturday last only one vessel was - unloaded at the three big docks of the Pennsylvania company at | Cleveland, Ashtabula and Erie. .The Steel Corporation vessels are competing in all trades and are taking coal and grain freely. Or- dinarily the coal:trade is confined to the smaller carrier, owing © to its adaptability to all docks: and prevailing stages of water, - but of late many of the big 6,000-ton carriers have wriggled their way to coal docks'*that 'are unaccustomed to creatures of such bulk. In their shipments for the season Duluth, Superior at Two Harbors are still ahead of last year, though September shows a _ falling off, which means that there has been a great shrinkage in shipments..from Ashland, Marquette and Escanaba. TWENTY MILLION 'MARK IN LAKE COAL SHIPMENTS. : It is probable that the movement of coal on the great lakes this season will come close to the twenty million mark. A report from the government bureau of statistics. gives 13,323,755 net tons as the total to Aug. 30, the figures including coal taken » aboard vessels for steaming purposes. Of this total 9,868,860 tons was soft coal and 3,454,895 tons hard coal. Out of 2,910,639 net tons of shipments to domestic and foreign ports in the month of August, 2,159,072 tons entered into coastwise trade and 751,567 tons into foreign trade. Of the August shipments 1,995,477 tons were. soft coal and 915,162 tons hard coal. A dispateh from Chicago is to the effect that lake travel out of that city is to receive material encouragement next year by the addition of a new passenger steamship line that will make the territory between Manistee and Ludington more accessible. By the passing of control, of the Manistee, Ludington & Milwau- kee Transportation Co. to the ownership of the Michigan Salt Transportation Co. the three passenger and freight steamers of the former line are made available and it, is said that two other fast steamers are to be built during the coming winter. The new fine will begin operations between Chicago, Milwaukee, Lud- ington. and. Manistee with the opening of navigation next year. It is the understanding that the two new boats will run from Chicago to Ludington and Manistee direct while two of the steamers 'just, purchased will continue the route between Milwau- kee and the east shore ports. The three boats taken over are the Pere Marquettes Nos. 2, 3 and 4. Capt. Darieau. of Simcoe island, Ont., has bought the To- ledo schooner Metzner. |