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20 DEVOTED TO EVERYTHING AND EVERY, INTEREST CONNECTED OR ASSO- CIATED WITH MARINE MATTERS ON ane rae 'OF THE Lo endee Published every Paareday by The Penton Publishing Co. CLEVELAND. BOSTON: oc cicces ess cece 73-74 Journal Bldg. BU ao Os ic swe ewe eee sie ys 932 Ellicott Sq. CHICAGO...... ee ec eeks 1328 Monadnock Blk. GINCINNATI:...... First National Bank Bldg. NEW YORK. 35. i0052. 1005 West Street Bldg. PITTSBURG oe cos soon eee cs ee 510 Park Bldg. Bree ere ya Na cana es 302 Pioneer Bldg. Correspondence on Marine Engineering, Ship Busliing and Shipping Subjects Solicited. Subscription, U. S. -and Mexico, $3.00 per annum. Canada, $4.00. Foreign, $4.50. Subscribers can have addresses changed at will. Chanse. of Rivedising copy must reach this Sk office on Thursday preceding date i of publication. The Cleveland News Co. will supply the trade with the Marine Review through the regular channels of the American News Co. European Agents, The International News Company, Breams Building, Chancery ee Pondoa. Ee Ce ee, Entered at the Post Office at 'Cleveland, Ohio, as Second Class Matter. March 25, 1909. THE PANAMA CANAL. Lieut, Col.. George W. Goethals, chair- man and chief engineer of the Isthmian Canal commission, has prepared an ex- haustive paper on the canal problem. He reviews the efforts of the French com- pany to construct a canal and reviews the. various plans that have been pro- posed from time to time by noted en- gineers. Weis an advocate of the lock type of canal .as against the sea level type. two plans he says: la discussing, the merits of the "So far as the two prisms are con- cerned, for ease and safety of navigation the lock type is better because of the greater widths of channels, fewer and easier curves, and freedom from ob- jectionable' and _ troublesome both from the Chagres and its tributa- 'This must be admitted 'by all, but the exponents of the sea-level type con- ries. centrate their attention on the obstruc- tions and dangers that. the locks consti- tute in the lock type, and also on the currents, © THE Marine REVIEW dangers that will result from the fail- ure of the Gatun dam, forgetting that at least equally great disaster must fol- low the failure of the Gamboa dam. The lock in the sea-level canal is not men- tioned, probably because the danger is not so great, since there is but one. "Experience shows that the risks to ships in narrow waterways are material and important. the original Suez canal the delays and losses to commerce were great, and the danger to ships considerable; although the benefit of the widening is striking, this is true even now. Lt channels is well known that the narrow the lakes have been obstructed repeatedly by ves- connecting great sels aground or wrecked in such a man- ner as to block trafficy Even 'in the en- trances to our seaports there is a fre- quency of accidents, which illustrate the difficulties encountered in navigating nar- row and tortuous channels. "Accidents in locks have been relative- ly few, and none of a serious nature | Marys Falls The risks to ships in such a narrow water- have occurred at the St. canal during 54 years of its use. way, as proposed for the sea-level canal at Panama, far outweigh all hazards in the proposed lock canal, provided the lat- ter is built so as to minimize the chance This by providing every possible safety de- of accident at the locks. is met vice, by building the locks in duplicate and by the installation of a system by which the vessels will be controlled by powerful electric machinery on the lock thus the part of the vessel's crew or engine room walls, avoiding mistakes on staff, which once led tio an accident at the Manchester ship canal." The present lock designs provide in- termediate gates dividing the locks into lengths of 600 ft. and 400 ft. About 98 per cent of all the ships, including the largest battleships now building, can be passed through the 600 ft. lengths, and the total lock length will accommodate the largest com- mercial. vessels now building which are. approximately 1,000 ft. long and ee it beam. It should. be added that the commerce of the world is carried today by medium sized ves- sels. Only one of the many vessels us- In such a channel as ing the Suez canal is over 600 ft, long Concerning the general opposition to the lock type he says: "Increasing the width of. Culebra cut, as recently ordered, from 200 to 300 | is advanced as an argument to show that. the locks are too narrow. Ships do not navigate the locks in the sense that they do in the canal prism, and the wider the channel the easier will be navigation, On account of slides that developed in Culebra cut considerably more additional work was made necessary in the upper reaches of the divide than was contem- plated, and the advantages of the in- creased width to navigation were so great, compared with the relative amount of material to be removed in order to secure it, that the President ordered it, By this action the width of the locks is in nowise called into question. "The water supply for lockages was so exhaustively treated by the minority of the board that it has not been called into question by anyone "who has care- fully considered the report and data sub- mitted. therewith. Recently, however, the theory has been advanced that the water of the lake may seep through the adjacent hills or through the bottom, and is significantly referred to as a This emphasized by the seamy quality of the The French plans, were the result of mooted question. possibility is rock when exposed. with Bohio Lake, careful and protracted study and in- vestigation, and nothing of the kind was anticipated. The commission of 1901 was not in doubt of the resisting power of the hill covering such a flow. The re- port of the geologist on the general formation of the country does not lead to any such dread or fear. The reset- the hills of the same geological formation as the en- tire lake area, are not affected. by any such At. Black Swamp, an extensive area between Bohio and Gatun, the water stands above the which is within voirs, constructed in leakage or seepage. level of the Chagres, half the a mile, and also above sea level of the ui changed, clearly indicating no such leak- level water remains age. of the last dry of: the Chagres at Bohio -ijndicated a less dis- "Toward the close season certain measurements