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INTRODUCTORY The remarkable growth and development of commerce and navigation on the Great Lakes is without parallel, both in its rapidity and extent. Competition with railroad transportation, particularly in the handling of bulk freight, has totally changed conditions previously existing. The low prices at which mild steel structural materials are now produced has developed in a wonderful way the art of steel shipbuilding on the Great Lakes, and this, together with the necessity of rapid service and safe operation on these narrow and crowded waters, has forced forward the use of steam power to the exclusion of sails. The altered condition of trade has very largely changed the types of vessels required, and has necessitated revision in the methods and detail of construction, both in steel and wood vessels; which, in turn, makes it essential that the system of classification heretofore existing should be thoroughly reviewed and made suitable to the new practice. , To this end the founders of Great Lakes Register have established a Classification Department, with a force of experienced hull and engineer surveyors, who are engaged in making a detailed inspection of all vessels now navigating the Great Lakes, that a correct discrimination of their structural worth may be obtained and established. Mechanical appliances at the various lake ports for the rapid handling of cargoes, are perhaps unequaled in any other part of the world, and the construction of the lake freighter must be such as to meet these modern and improved methods and conditions. The greatest economy has been obtained by the rapid terminal facilities, and the ability to transport with the least operating cost the greatest tonnage; by the introduction of powerful steam vessels carrying their own great cargoes and in addition towing their consort barges. With a view to assist the lake architect and builders in establishing a uniform system of construction, the Classification Committee entrusted with the compiling of rules and tables for the building of lake vessels has called to its aid reliable standard ocean classification rules as a foundation for the work; but the peculiar requirements in the modern lake cargo carrier call for a radical departure from ocean shipbuilding practice. We would cite, for example, the arrangement and distribution of cargo hatchways. The technical reader will readily see the value of careful distribution of material in a single-deck steel steamer, 430 feet long, 50 feet beam, and 29 feet moulded depth, with 14 transverse hatchways, each 33 feet by 8 feet, spaced 24 feet centers. These unprecedented deck openings, together with the corresponding arrangement of second deck and hold beams, with a 6-foot water bottom and machinery in the extreme stern of the vessel, is a departure from ocean shipbuilding. But guided by and with the assistance of ocean standard rules, the Committee gives to the public Great Lakes Register, feeling confident that its rules and tables will assist the shipbuilder in readily arriving at the desired method of construction, and that vessels built by its rules and classed in the Register will have the confidence of the underwriter, owner, and public in general.