The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

384 THE Marine. REVIEW October, 1909 Ore Handling on the Atlantic Coast Inauguration of Improved Modern Equipment Displacing Older Methods HE use of foreign ore in Ameri- can iron-making dates from 1875, when the first cargo, shipped from Spain, was re- ceived at Baltimore. By 1907 the imports had _ reached in round + figures. 1,230,000 'tons, falling off for 1908 to 777,000 tons, exclusive of manganest, pyrites, etc. For 1909, the total. imports will prob- ably considerably exceed those of 1907, which is the record year. The ports of origin are widely scattered: Poti, in the Black Sea; Seriphos, in the Grecian archipelago; Cartagena, Bil- bao and Saguntum, in Spain; Benisaf ana'. Algiers,. m Africa; Narvik, . in Sweden; Wabana, in Newfoundland, and Santiago and Daiquiri, in Cuba, and practically all is unloaded at Phila- - delphia and Baltimore. Of the 1908 totals, 583,000 tons came from Cuba, of .which the Juragua Iron Co, a subsidiary of the Bethlehem Steel Co., shipped 329,000 tons, and the Spanish- American Iron Co., a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Steel Co., 254,000 tons. Practically -all of the latter came to Baltimore, which received 46 cargoes, of 249,000 tons, while Philadelphia re- ceived from Cuba 75 cargoes, of 330,- 000 tons. Of the remaining 194,000 tons, about 126,000 came from Spain, 48,000 from Newfoundland, and 4,500 from Sweden, and the balance scat- tered among the various other ship- ping. ports. The importations from Sweden for 1909 will exhibit. a strik- ing increase, as it is expected that the amount will reach nearly 200,000 tons, - on the basis of shipments up to Aug. 1. Outside of Philadelphia and Balti- more, only 11,000 tons were discharged at all. other. ports in 1908... The total for Philadelphia was, therefore, about 517,000 tons, of which about 440,000 tons were handled over the Philadelphia & Reading docks and the balance by the Pennsylvania railroad at Girard's Point. At Baltimore the ore is handled by the Pennsylvania railroad at Sparrow's Point. Points of Destination. Practically none of this ore finds its way over 100 miles from tidewater, Harrisburg being the westerly limit, where it meets lake ores on even terms. The average ore train from _ tide- water cannot handle more than about one-third the weights moved by sim- ilar trains from lower lake docks, Bie 1--Tur Trame: which is of course a powerful factor. From Philadelphia the Reading rail- road distributes to Bethlehem, Swede- land, Pottstown, Catasauqua, Hoken- dauqua, Hellertown, Donaghmore, Birdsboro, Reading, Emaus and Tem- ple. From Baltimore the Pennsylvania railroad distributes to Harrisburg, Steelton and Lebanon. The entire ore business is carried on in foreign ships; an American ship is almost never. seen in the trade, and of the total tonnage, about 80 per cent is British. The average cargo is about 4,500 tons; the largest reach 6,000 tons, and come -chiefly from Spain. This will, however, be modi- fied in time, as the Cuban docks are enlarged and shipping and unloading facilities improved, though one of the Cuban loading docks of the Spanish- American Co. can now handle ships up to about 5,500 tons capacity. This is seen in the average of the Baltimore cargoes, which is, for 1908, 5,400 tons, while the average of the Philadelphia cargoes is 4,400 tons. Two new ship- ping ports in Cuba are being opened up by the Spanish-American Co.: one called Felton, after the president of the Pennsylvania Steel Co. on Nipe bay, on the northeastern coast, on which work is being actively pushed, and the other named Nimanima, about 9 miles west of Santiago, from which the first cargo of ore, 5,000 -- tons, reached Baltimore Aug. 7. Crude Methods. The ships employed mn the trade are chiefly, in fact almost entirely, of the standard tramp type, seen in Fig. 1, which does not lend itself to rapid work. The unloading appliances with which such wonderful records are made on the docks of the lakes could not be employed with these ships at all. Al- most all have laid main decks, with stanchions, and with shaft tunnels in the after holds. The hatches are nar- row and the tank tops and floors light and no two ships have hatches alike, either as to size or spacing. For this reason the old one-ton bucket, with shovelers in the hold, has held _ its own. The dock managers are fully alive to the crudity of the methods employed, but unless the type of ship and the dock rigs can be developed together, as has been the case on the lakes, actual advance must be slow, 'and this .will probably only come about with the building of ships for the ore ii Le alt i aS aces aaa a i kk 4