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ae 28 }. MARINE REVIEW AND MARINE RECORD. SHIP BUILDING ON THE CLYDE. Orders for Five More Turbine Steamers--Complaint Regarding New Mail Contract --England Buys Chilian Ironclads. Glasgow, Dec. 7.--The contract for the second of the two turbine steamers for the Allan Line's Canadian service has now been placed with Alex. Stephen & Sons, Glasgow. This new ves- sel will be a sister ship to the Victorian, now under construction in the yard of Workman, Clark & Co., Belfast, and already de- scribed. Both vessels will be larger and considerably faster than the Bavarian and the Tunisian, at present the largest and fastest - steamers in the Canadian trade. In addition to this turbine, Wm. Denny & Brothers, Dumbarton, have booked orders for four tur- bine steamers besides that for the Union Co. of New Zealand. The vessels are all for Colonial owners, and will be of very much the same size as the Union Co.'s steamer. 'It is evident that the statistics of Scottish shipbuilding for 1903 will be far below 1902. The eleven months' figures now show a decrease in Scotland of 88,526 tons, and on the Clyde of 80,126 tons. December will not wipe off this. difference, nor will the industry be characterised by much activity for some time to come. The contracts during November would have been insig- nificant but for five turbine steamers placed, and there seems little prospect of new work for regular cargo carrying lines. The yards which do admiralty work are now slackening off, and the paid-off list of workers increases. The labor world (except at Dundee, where the engineers are squabbling) is meanwhile quiet. Scotch launches during November were twenty-one vessels of 29,219 tons, as compared with 'twenty-two vessels of 45,819 tons in October, and with thirty-two vessels of 48,549 tons in Novem- ber of last year. To the total the Clyde contributed seventeen vessels of 26,471 tons, the Forth one vessel of 1,513 tons, and the Tay three vessels of 1,235 tons. oe _ There are in the list of November vessels an unusually large number of dredgers and barges. Of other vessels three are twin- screw steamers and nine are single-screw. There are no sailing vessels, fishers or yachts. Of the vessels one was over 6,000 tons, two between 4,000 and 5,000, two between 2,000 and 3,000, four between 1,000 and 2,000, three between 500 and 1,000, and nine be- tween 100 and 500 tons. Of the total tonnage 2,210 tons are for Egypt, 1,513 for Spain, 1,000 for South Africa, 140 tons for South America and the rest for British owners. The following were the most notable items put into the water: Marathon, a twin-screw steamer of 6,770 tons, with en- gines of 1,225 horse power, built by Alexander Stephen & Sons for George Thompson & Co., Aberdeen and London; Tweeddale, | screw steamer of 4,100 tons with triple expansion engines of 1,800 I. H. P. by David Rowan & Co., built by Russell & Co., for Glas- gow owners; Volga, screw steamer of 4,000 tons, with triple ex- pansion engines of 1,700 J. H. P. by Rankin & Blackmore, built by Russell & Co., Port Glasgow, for Glasgow owners; Chinua and Linan, twin-screw steamers of 2,198 tons with engines of 1,500 I._ H. P., built and engined by Scott & Co., Greenock, for the China Navigation Co.; Cabo Corono, screw steamer of 1,513 tons, with engines of 850 I. H. P. by Blair & Co., Stockton on Tees, built by the Grangemouth & Greenock Dock Yard Co., Grangemouth, for Seville; Princess Patricia, screw steamer of 837 tons with triple expansion engines of 1,200 I. H. P., built and engined by the Caledon Ship Building & Engineering Co., Dundee, for Glas- gow and Liverpool coasting trade; Thelma, screw steamer of 375 tons, with engines of 350 I. H. P. by Ross & Duncan,. Govan, built by the Ailsa Ship Building Co., Ayr, for Warrington own-. ers; Levant, cable-repairing steamer of about 300 tons, with en- gines by Muir & Houston, built by George Brown & Co., Green- ock, for the Eastern Telegraph Co., London; Yurimaguas, screw steamer of 140 tons, with engines of 300 I. H. P., built by Mur- doch & Murray, Port Glasgow, for service on the Amazon; Nep- tune and Rhamses, sand pump dredgers of 1,105 tons, with en- gines of 1,000 I. H. P., built and engined by Lobnitz & Co., for the Campagnie Universelle du Canal Suez, Port Said; Duiker, twin-screw suction hopper dredger of 1,000 tons with engines of 1,000 I. H. P., built and engined by Fleming & Ferguson, for the government of Cape Colony; hopper, No. 23 twin-screw hopper steamer of 230 tons gross and 1,200 tons carrying capacity, with engines of 1,400 I. H. P., built and engined by Fleming & Fergu- son for the Clyde Navigation Trustees; Craigiehall, twin-screw barge loading bucket ladder dredger of about 750 tons gross and 1,080 tons deadweight, with two sets of three-cylinder three-crank compound surface-condensing engines of 1,400 I. H. P., built and engined by Wm. Simons & Co. for the Clyde Navigation Trus- tees; four barges of about 400 tons each, built by D. & W. Hen- derson & Co. for shipment to the far east. The most important of the new orders announced in Novem- ber were for five turbine steamers. Wm. Denny & Bros., Dum- barton, are as said above to build four for Colonial owners, and Alex. Stephen & Sons, one of over 12,000 tons for the Allan Line. The sizes of the new Dumbarton turbines have not been stated, but they will resemble the turbine steamer which the firm are al- ready building for the Union Co. of New Zealand. Robert Dun- can & Co., Port Glasgow, are to build two fairly large steamers for the Lyle Shipping Co., Greenock; and Mackie & Thomson, Govan, a steamer to carry about 870 tons for the Main Colliery Co., Bristol. The total of new tonnage booked is about 40,000 tons. QUESTION OF MAILS. _. Probably as much interest is being taken on your' side as here in the new contest with the Anglo-American mails. Present ex- [Dec. 17, ¥. periences will make it a difficult matter for the postmaster-general of the United States to defend the new policy as to the convey- ance of the Saturday mails from New York to Britain. For many years these mails have been carried by the Cunarders, the liners of that company which sailed on the Saturdays being the fastest on the Atlantic route. When the American Line, about a month ago, altered their day of sailing from Wednesday to Sat- urday, it was announced that the American mails would in future be given to the St. Louis and her sister ships, on the ground that as these steamers sailed direct to Southampton, a saving of two days would be effected. But this is not the case. At the first trial, when the Philadelphia carried the mails which would have gone by the Etruria, the bulk of the letters by way of Southampton and the letters by way of Liverpool reached London about the same time. On the following week with the Campania and the St. Louis, a similar result occurred. Although the Cunarder, by waiting for the Australian mails, did not get away from New York till/5 p. m. on the 14th, six hours after the American liner, - she reached Queenstown at 3:20 p. m. on Friday the 20th: and Liverpool in the early hours of Saturday morning, enabling her Australian and specially marked American correspondence to reach London in time to be included in the 12:15 p. m. delivery of that day. The St. Louis, with a half-dozen hours' 'Start, reached Southampton at 6:40 a. m. on Saturday, but her mails did not get to London till 10:34 a. m., and were sent out along with those brought by the Cunarder. Last week both the Umbria and the New York arrived at Liverpool and Southampton respectively too late on Saturday night to allow of any distribution of letters that day. In each case the Cunarders were handicapped by the want of a special train at Queenstown for the conveyance of the special mails they carried. Had such a train been provided, as was always done under the old arrangement, the letters by the Queenstown-Liverpool route would have reached their destina- tions much more speedily than they did. Those brought by the Campania might have been delivered in London by the early morn- ing delivery of the 21st, and replies could have been sent to the United States by the outgoing mail of the same day. The letters were distributed in Glasgow at 3:30 p. m. but if there had been a postal special train an earlier delivery could have been made, and answers returned by the American mail which closes here at 1:15 p. m. on Saturdays. The American Line is now proposing to land the Saturday's mails at Plymouth instead of Southampton, and in this way expedite delivery in London. Meanwhile the British public has not gained by the change made by your postmaster- general. I have referred in previous letters to the shipping projects of the Canadian Pacific Railway Co. as they are disclosed here. They are now about to establish a new European service, started with a steamer to be despatched fortnightly from London to St. John, New Brunswick, via Antwerp. The service is to be confined to freight traffic for the present, and will compete principally with the American Line. Since the C. P. R. acquired, six months ago, the ships of the Elder-Dempster group for the purpose of opening up European connections, they have started a fortnightly passenger amd freight service from London and Bristol to St. John; and a service between New Orleans and England in the cotton trade. The London and New Brunswick line will thus be their fourth new service within six months. Two ironclads ordered by Chili when on the verge of war with Argentina, but which cannot be made use of on account of the terms of peace, have been purchased by the admiralty for the British navy. One of them, the Chilian battleship Libertad, which was built, engined, and armed by Vickers, Sons & Maxim, Bar- row-in-Furness, has been having her speed tests here. The other vessel, named Constitution, was built by the Armstrong- Whitworth Co. and is now on the Tyne. The price of the two ships is £1,875,000.' When the admiralty previously declined to buy the price asked was £2,200,000. WE MUST HAVE SHIPS. Forty years ago we had only one-fourth as much foreign commerce to transport as we have now, yet we actually carried in American bottoms forty years ago three times as much foreign commerce as we carry today. The United States will never attain its full dignity as a com- mercial nation until it develops an ocean mercantile marine com- mensurate with the dimensions of its enormous foreign trade. To surrender that trade into the hands of ship owners of other coun- tries is absurdly incongruous with our enterprise as a people, and at humiliating variance with our procedure when, as a young, weak power, we furnished ships for a large portion of the busi- ness done by the world on the ocean. If that highly creditable result can be again brought about through a well-devised sub- sidy system, no American who takes pride in the national prestige will begrudge the money thus spent, for every dollar of which the country at large will get a rich return. The country, pro- gressive and alert in all other directions and keenly alive to the value of protection for its manifold home interests, has utterly neglected the needs of its mercantile marine and allowed its ocean carrying trade to be almost completely monopolized by the ves- sels of other countries, which reap a rich reward in the millions of dollars paid by us for freight and passage, nearly every dollar of which goes and remains abroad. This short-sighted policy is entirely at variance with the shrewdness in business affairs gen- erally for which the American people are proverbial--Troy (N. Y.) Times.