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1901.) MARINE REVIEW. 23 is very interesting. This chipping was done at the rate of 1 ft. per min- ute, using air at 80 lbs. pressure per square inch. The work was done on %-in. boiler plate of unusual toughness. It would be impossible for a man with an ordinary hammer and cold chisel to take off chips of such thickness. The third illustration shows men at work with Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 chipping hammers. FUTURE OF THE SUBMARINE BOAT. AN INTSRESTING PICTURE OF THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE UNDER-WATER ORAFT, BOTH IN WARFARE AND FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES, IN SUCH SHORT RUNS AS THE ENGLISH CHANNEL SERVIOE. John P. Holland in the North American Review. (Copyrighted, 1900, by the North American Review } When the first submarine torpedo boat goes into action, she will bring us face to face with the most puzzling problem ever met in warfare. She will present the unique spectacle, when used in attack, of a weapon against which there is no defense. You can pit sword against sword, rifle against rifle, cannon against cannon, iron-clad against iron-clad. You can send torpedo boat destroyers against torpedo boats and destroyers against destroyers. But you can send nothing against the submarine boat, not even itself. You cannot fight submarines with submarines. The fanciful descriptions of the submarine battle of the future have one fatal defect. You cannot see under water. Hence, you cannot fight under water. Hence, you cannot defend yourself against am attack under water, except by running away. If you cannot run away, you are doomed. ° Wharves, shipping at anchor, the buildings in seaport towns cannot run away. Therefore, the sending of a submarine against them means their inevitable destruction. Tomorrow, if we had a fleet of submarines big enough, they could protect New York harbor completely against an attack by the combined surface fleets of the world. But our shipping and our city would still be at the mercy of our enemies, if they had even one submarine, manned by a fearless crew of experts. You could not mine against her, for she would countermine. You could not close the harbor against her, even with a} net-work of torpedoes and chains stretched across the Narrows, reaching from the surface to the bottom of the channel.. From a safe distance she would simply send a torpedo against the net-work that would blow it to pieces, giving her all the passageway she wanted to go in and out. You could not chase her with a fleet of your own submarines, because you could more easily find a needle in a hay-stack than a 65-ft. cylinder in a place like New York bay. And if, by accident, you did find her, she would be out of sight in a flash. Then, too, the pursuing boats could never tell under water whether it was one of their own number or of the enemy. This difficulty might be met by sending only one submarine in pursuit; but, in that case, the prospect of finding the quarry would be - about as promising as dredging with a butterfly-net for a half-dollar that had been thrown into the bay. No; as nearly as the human mind can discern now, the submarine is indeed a “‘sea-devil,’ against which no means that we possess at present can prevail. She can pass by anything above or beneath the waves, destroy wharves and shipping and warships at anchor, throw shells into the city and then make her way out again to sea. She can lie for days at the bottom of the harbor, leaving only when she has used up all her stored power except what is required to carry her back to the open, where she can come to the surface a speck on the water. Some still insist, however, that these boats will never have value as offensive weapons. They say that these boats cannot live away from home, and that, therefore, they will never be available in making war on a country across the seas. They rank submarine boats simply as weapons of coast defense. That this is erroneous will soon be demonstrated. A submarine is now under construction that will explode this-theory. Not long after this article is published, she will start on a journey across the Atlantic. She will travel entirely under her own power. She will go first to Bermuda, a distance of 676 miles, then to Fayal, 1,880 miles, and thence to Lisbon, 940 miles, or a total of 3,496 miles. If it were deemed advisable, the trip could just as easily be made direct, without making a call at any intermediate port. This boat will go on the surface almost exclusively. Her chief motive power will be a gasoline engine of 160 H.P., that will drive her at the rate of nine and a half knots an hour. The engine wil) also generate the electric power that may be needed for submerged runs, and such work as may be deemed expedient in the harbors where she touches. Her crew will subsist entirely on the provisions she carries. The food will be cooked by electricity. The crew will consist of seven men, who will sleep in hammocks slung from the ceiling. _While this voyage will not be comfortable, judged from the standpoint of the regular trans- atlantic travelers, it will not entail any real hardships. During storms or dirty weather the boat will run awash, only her turret showing above the surface, and as the water will break over instead of against her, there will be no rolling, The boat will lie as steadily as a water-soaked log. She will be accompanied by a tender, probably a small tramp steamer. An extra crew will be carried on this tender, in case her own men find the confinement too much to endure for the sixteen days required _in crossing the ocean. This trip will show that it is possible to send a fleet of sub- marines against a foreign coast, as well as to employ them for defense at home. ‘ Within the next ten years we shall have made more progress in sub- merged navigation than has been made in the three hundred years that have just passed. Within that period I expect to see submarine boats en- gaged in regular passenger traffic. Owing to the well-defined limitations that surround travel under water, it is no difficult matter to forecast what the nature of such travel will be. For transatlantic travel submarine boats will never be possible commercially. Here and there, no doubt, such boats will cross, but the regular ocean carrying trade will always be con- ducted on the surface. For short trips, however, the submarine offers commercial advantages that will render it a dangerous rival of the surface- sailing vessel, if indeed it does not drive the latter entirely out of the com- petition in particular waters. Take, for example, the trip across the Eng- lish channel. No other water journey causes an equal amount of suffering. The most hardened traveler becomes seasick there. The fogs and heavy traffic are constantly causing collisions on that course, and the storms toss the stoutest boats about like cockleshells. Thousands are deterred every year by its dangers and annoyances from essaying that short voyage. The submarine will effectually remove all these objections. There will be no seasickness, because in a submerged boat there is abso- lutely no perceptible motion, There will be no smells to create nausea, for the boats will be propelled by electric power taken from storage batteries, which will be charged at either end. The offensive odor that causes so much discomfort in surface boats is due to the heated oil on the bearings, and to the escaping steam. There will be no steam on these submerged channel boats, and the little machinery necessary to drive them will be confined within an air-tight chamber. There will be no collisions, because 'the boats coming and the boats going will travel at different depths—say, one at 20 and the other at 40 ft. The water overhead may be crowded with large and small craft, but the submarine will have a free, unobstructed course. She will be kept absolutely true to this course by means of cables running from shore to shore. On these cables will run an automatic steering gear attached to the submarine. Storms and fogs will have no existenice for the traveler, for weather cannot penetrate below the surface of the water. There, everything is smooth and clear. The appointments on such a vessel will be finer than anything that can be furnished on the surface. There will be no dampness, no stickiness, Che passenger will enter a handsomely fitted cabin at Dover. Electric lights will make it cosey and bright. Neither the cold of winter nor the extreme heat of summer will be felt. The temperature under water is about the same all the year round. Almost without a jar, the boat will put off from her dock on the English side. Practically no vibration will be felt from the smoothly running machinery. Before the traveler fairly realizes that a start has been made, the boat will be fast at her dock at Calais. The three or four hours consumed will be passed in reading, in sleep or in social intercourse, as pleasantly as though the traveler were at home in his own drawing-room. The nervous old lady will have less to worry her than she would find on a drive through the streets of London or Paris. Her husband or son will find perfect comfort in a handsomely appointed smoking-room. This is no dream. It is simply the forecast ot a trip that I myself expect to make some day, and I am fifty-nine years old. It is so feasible commercially that capital in plenty will be founda ior its realization. 3 BUFFALO GRAIN SHOVELING QUESTION. _ Buffalo, Jan. 9.—Now that. the annual meeting of the Lake Car- riers’ Association is in sight and the question of handling the grain frem vessels at Buffalo is again an important problem to be solved by it, theie ought to be especial interest in looking over the season’s work and noting what has been accomplished, for if it has not been an improvement on the a system this is an argument in favor of returning to contract work. It seems to be the universal opinion that Supt. Kennedy has succeed- ed remarkably with the direct handling system. I find that even some vessel men, said not to be anxious to praise the system, are saying that the grain was handled more satisfactorily during 1900 than in any previous season. I must disclaim any end in view or any ax to grind in the matter. It is merely in the interest of good business that ‘mention is: made of it here. I had occasion sometime ago to declare that the shoveling has gone on so smoothly that scarcely anybody would have supposed that there was such a problem in existence. Our costly experiences of the previous season are all fairly forgotten. Of course, this could not have been possible unless the shovelers as well as the elevator, vessel and grain owners were anxious to avoid col-’ lisions and work to the best purpose. Here is an item in this connection that ought to go very far towards showing the attitude of the men: Dur- ing the season: of 1899 damage to the amount of $3,000 was done to the apparatus, while the sum total last season was just $18, and the men paid that, apparently without a murmur. It is so easy to tear out a pipe or derange the running of the machinery by nothing more culpable than the careless handling of the steam shovel, as it hisses back and forth through the grain, that a breakage so small must mean a great amount of atten- tion to business. It may be that this rate could not be maintained another season, indeed, it does not seem possible that it could, but it must be set down to the credit of the present management, for all that. There are more than 900 active grain shovelers in Buffalo harbor on the average during ‘the season. It would be impossible to cut down this number without injuring the service; and the pay, $2 per thousand bushels, is none too much for men who must lie idle so much of the year. It is claimed that now for the first time the pay has raised the shovelers to the level of other workingmen of the same grade. Whether this is be- cause the pay all goes direct to the men and there is no saloon mortgage on it may be left to someone else to settle. The amount of grain handled during the past season was 156,813,613 bushels. This includes 6,800,000 bushels of flaxseed and about 100,000 bushels counted twice by reason of lighterage, but does not include the cargoes from the season of 1899 handled by Supt. Kennedy or the cargoes of the Penobscot and Kearsarge—294,698 bushels—handled this year. There is still about 1,650,000 bushels afloat, waiting for the eastern market to take it. So the 900 men were paid a matter of $313,627.23 for their work, a manifestly large sum, though if the grain was worth 50 cents a bushel on the average it bore a valuation of $78,406,306.50, so that the men did not very sensibly reduce its value by their work. There were twenty-two elevators active during the season, counting the city as two and the Niagara three. These constitute the New York Central houses, Two large ones, the Eastern and Dakota, were burned during the summer and both are in course of reconstruction as fireproof structures and considerably enlarged. There has been an addition of 800,000 bushels added to the Electric elevator during the season, so that the harbor capacity has been considerably increased for next season, in spite of the fires. It appears that the shovelers are well pleased with the result of the season’s experiment and will take it up again without a question next season, if desired. What do the vessel owners say about it? JOHN CHAMBERLIN. The largest steamship to pass through the Suez canal up to the present time is the Grosser Kurfurst of the North German Lloyd’s Aus- tralian service. The vessel is of 13,182 tons.