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456 sels drawing 14 ft. of water could run from St. Louis to New Orleans. It is well known that the battleship Mis- sissippi ascended the river to Natchez during the present year. Valley Transportation Co. is profiting by the Apparently the Mississippi example of Europe. The Rhine, on a depth of 9 ft. on its lower reaches and 3 ft. on the upper, carries 45,000,- The Elbe on a depth of 6 ft. above Hamburg 000 tons of freight a year. and 4 ft. in Saxony and Bohemia car- ried 20,000,000 tons of freight a year. The Oder at its upper end at Breslau annually 3,500,000 tons of freight on a draught of only and Kosel 'carries 30 in. This little stream carries more traffic than the through the employment of modern entire Mississippi barges and tow boats and efficient ter- minal handling apparatus. It is well known that one of the geat obstacles to the success of the old packet boats in the river was the lack of facilities for promptly handling ~ freight. it all, and he was frequently useless The negro roustabout supplied or nearly so. The purpose is to es- tablish cranes at the principal landing places for swinging freight from the barges into the warehouses or freight cars and to erect sheds for storage with every facility for the safe and economic transfer of cargo. The plans appear to be well thought out and the project is certainly backed by some of the most successful, in- fluential and progressive men,.of the west. If adequate transportation facili- ties are provided there can be little Much freight that is now dragged 'by the railways over the hills to the seaboard will find a more natural outlet through the rivers. doubt of patronage. The progress of the enterprise will be watched with interest. Captain R. Jollie of the steamer E. J. Buffington reports to the Cleveland branch hydrographic office that the conical gas buoy marking the upper en- trance to the downbound channel through tie St, Clair' Flats: canal is not 'burn- ing very brightly and can scarcely be seen 200 ft. in clear weather. that the red light on the end of the breakwater at Two Harbors shows very dimly and cannot be seen at all in thick weather, Also-- TAE MARINE REVIEW - - November, 1909 New Ship Yard at Ashtabula EREWITH is published the H plan of the new ship yard which the Great Lakes En- gineering Works of Detroit will establish at. Ashtabula, the citizens of Ashtabula by a vote of 2,916 to 44 having authorized the the city in the sum of $390,000 to improve the river for the purpose of making the site available. The site was donated to the company 'by the city after it had been secured from the Pennsylvania company, in exchange for "Pot 'parce. Pomt 'park "is 'lo- cated on a hill in qa direct line with the Pennsylvania conpany's lake front docks, The Pennsylvania company is now leveling the hill with a steam shovel in order that more tracks may be laid to its docks on the lake front. The relative location' of docks and ship yard are clearly shown in the accompanying sketch, Fig. 1, the dotted line representing the amount of dredg- ing that the city must do for the ac- commodation of the ship yard. It will be seen from the general plan of the proposed ship yard, Fig. 2, that the Great Lakes Engineering Works has in mind the establishment of a plant of a modern and _ capacious character. Two dry docks, each 650, ft. log by 100 ft. wide, will be arranged side by side and _ served by a complete track and crane sys- tem. The docks will be of reinforced concrete construction and the pump- ing plant will be of the latest type, equipped with 36-in. centrifugal pumps. A great turning basin will be dredged directly in front of the docks capable of winding the largest of lake craft. The ship yard proper has a large wa- ter frontage as shown on the plans. The building berths run parallel to the Ashtabula river, which will be made 175. ft;- wide in' front of the building berths. Boats will be launch- ed into the river. The company will do away with the usual type of shear legs and will adopt the tower crane system as now used in some English, German and Italian ship yards. Reference to the drawings will show that study has been given to the economy of handling material, All buildings and departments are arranged most conveniently and the system of railroad and yard tracks is compre- hensive. Material entering the yard will move always in one direction un- til it is landed on the building berths. The yard tracks will be served by the usual heavy type of locomotive cranes. During the past few years the port bonding of . of Ashtabula has undergone great de- velopment. To understand. how great this is it is only necessary to_ recall the changes that have taken place with- in the last few years. It has become unquestionably one of the most stra- tegic points for a ship yard on the whole chain of lakes. From a small beginning the port of Ashtabula has been gradually developed by the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern and Penn- sylvania companies, the former oper- ating wholly on the east side of the river in the harbor territory and the Pennsylvania on the west side. The Lake Shore developments have been Fic. 1--PiLan or Harsor. much heavier than those of the Penn- sylvania, presumably because the latter company has access to. other ports such as Erie, Cleveland, Sandusky and Toledo, while the Lake Shore has con- centrated its lake business at Ashtabula alone. The first development of Ashtabula harbor was for handling coal from the Pittsburg district by dredging out the so-called river, merely a creek, from its mouth inland sufficient for the vessels then sailing to get to the docks. The loading of coal in the early days was accomplished by means of large buckets or tubs, holding from two to three tons each, and revolving cranes which handled the tubs from ae et eh BT ol