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"TRAE Marine. REVIEW 201 ks. ww Map oF ProposeD IMPROVEMENT TO DUWAMISH RIVER, SEATTLE. & Shipbuilding Co. The government dock is at the navy yard, Puget Sound, Bremerton, Wash., 16 miles from Seat- tle. This dock is available for mer- chant vessels when not in use by ships of the navy. It is the largest dry dock on the Pacific':coast. dt 45. over 600 ft. long and has a capacity for ships up to 25,000 gross tons. The Moran company's dock is at Seattle. It is a floating dock, 200 ft. long, 54° ft.-3 in. wide in the' clear, with a lifting capacity of 2,600 tons. The marine railway operated by Hall Bros. Marine' Railway & Ship Bulldnge 'Co,, is at. HKagle°': Harbor (Winslow post office) 9 miles from Beattie. lt is one of the largest ma- rine. railways in the country. The leneth of the cradle is. 325; it, the draught is 23 ft. aft and 20 ft. for- ward. The beam is 79 ft. and the capacity 4,000 tons dead weight. The dock of the Heffernan Dry Dock Co is' of the floating type. It is 385 ft. in length, 100 ft. beam and 8,000 tons capacity. It is situated at Quartermaster Harbor, mear. Seattle; and is operated in connection with the Heffernan Machine Works, Seat- tle, In connection wit], each of these docks there is operated a completely equipped plant for the repairing of ships and machinery. The Moran Co. and Hall Bros. Marine Railway & Ship Building Co. also operate exten- Sive plants for the construction of new vessels. _ The foregoing outlines the splendid natural advantages of Seattle harbor, the growth and extent of the city's marine commerce and the facilities now available for handling the traffic. There remains yet to be considered the needs of the future and the steps that are being taken to meet these needs. is. growing ata <Surprising rate; it the shipping continues to increase at even half the present rate, it will not be many years before the 20 miles of shore line now available for docks and warehouses will be inadequate. The water front of Greater New York amounts to 445 miles; the dock front- age is at present 62 miles in length. It may be a good many years before Seattle is as large as New York, but at the present rate of growth it will not be many years until it is half as large. In spite of these facts the city, as a public body, is doing very little toward the improvement of its harbor. Several large improvement projects have been proposed and are at present being agitated.' One is the construc- tion -of a sea wall between King street and Smith cove, filling in the >roperty between the wall and high tide; another is the building of a 25- ft. ship canal from Salmon through to Lake Union and Laxe Washington, making these two bodies of water practically part of the har- bor;,a_ third project involves deepen- ing the east and west waterways and the straightening aue deepening of the Duwamish river to its sources, providing a 16-ft. channel 150 ft. wide to the source of the river. It is noi within the purpose of this article to go into the merits of these various plans concerning which there has been a great deal of local discussion and tecrimination. The solution oz The commerce of the city , bay | the problem is a purely engineering matter. The fact remains, however, that at present the weakest point in Seattle's splendid harbor system 1s the jack of intelligent, systematizea and unified effort toward providing larger and better facilities for the future. Provision for future growth 'must be made somehow; it would be best to have the execution of the necessary work in the hands of a cen- - tralized, expert body, endowed with sufficient skill and wisdom. to act for the best interests of the com- munity and with authority to work out a unified scheme. Already steps hive been taken toward this end. It is safe to assume that the city will not suffer its hard-earned precedence to wane because of insufficient or thoughtless provision for the future needs of its marine commerce. QUICK TIME FROM HONG KONE, 1a The first targo from the far east via the new Tehuantepec-Orient route arrived in New York on june 1 by the steamer Lewis Luckenbach. The steamer Erroll, of the Mexican-Orien- tal Steamship Line, Ltd., which in- augurated the new service, left Hong Kong April 8, and after calling at ports in Japan made a good passage to Salina Cruz, Mexico. Her cargo was promptly trans-shipped across the isthmus to Puerto Mexico and brought here by the connecting steamer of the American- Hawaiian Steamship Co. The time in transit through to New York was: From Hong Kong, 53 days; from Kobe, 45 days; from Yokohama, 43 days. The cargo ar- rived in. first-class condition. S