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ESTABLISHED “1878. PUBLISHED EVERY avasply AT 144 SUPERIOR ST., (LEADER BurLpING), CLEVELAND, O. GEO. L.SMITH, IRVING B. SMITH, | WILLIAM L. McCORMICK, Goeec ce - PROPRIETORS. EDITOR, BRANCH OFFICE, Cuicaco, Inn, = - - = - 238 Lake Street. THOMAS WILLIAMS, Associate Editor, SUBSCRIPTION. One copy, one year, postage paid, - - - One copy, one year, to foreign countries, - Invariably in advance. ADVERTISING. Rates given on application. All communications should be addressed to SMITH & SMITH, 144 Superior Street, CLEVELAND, O. Entered at Cleveland Postoffice as Second-Class Mail Matter. CLEVELAND, O., JANUARY 9, 1896. THE RECORD is pained to announce the death, at New York, Monday, of Major James Clarence Post, who was recently appointed successor to the late Gen. O. M. Poe, in charge of the Sault canal and twenty-foot channel im- provements. Major Post had not yet taken active charge of the details of the work, and his sudden death again leaves this important place vacant. rr Capt. J.J. H. Brown will be unanimously chosen president of the Lake Carriers’ Association for the en- suing year. The choice is a happy one, and will tend to cement closer than ever the various interests of the Lake Carriers’ Association. The fact that the president and Secretary Keep, who will also be re-elected, are residents of the same port, will also be of advantage in carrying out executive’ work. rrr 0 ee 0 i THE third four-year term of Commodore George W. Melville, Chief of Engineers of the Navy Department, will expire on the 16th, and he will probably be reappointed for a fourth. Commodore Melville is a man who cannot be spared. He has all the details of the new navy so thoroughly at his fingers’ ends, and is so thorough in his administration that his reappointment is everywhere taken for granted. He may be an admiral soon. Some rather sensational headlines have been printed in reference to a combination of ore dealers, who have fixed the price for next year at $4 per ton, for Bessemer high grades. The price, while an advance of $1.10 over the rate of a year ago, is considerably less than the same ores sold for last summer, when ¢4.50 was obtained on some sales. It is understood that the ore taken at $1 from the head of the lakes now aggregates between 300,000 and 350,000 tons. Not a great deal of contracting will proba- bly be done for two or three weeks yet. —————— ED OD EEE Tue annual report of the condition of the New York canals will be found in another column. It is hoped that this will be’ read carefully,as Supt. Aldrich makes some very sensible suggestions and recommendations. He approves especially of improvements in the canals which will tend to increase the speed of boats, pointing out that this more rapid movement would as materially increase the capacity of the boats as would deepening without other improvements. He might have added that more rapid transit would also attract certain classes of freight most of which is now shipped by rai]. The lake in- terests, and especially the package freight liners, have a deeper interest in the Erie canal than most of them seem {o imagine, as canal freight for western points’ is most likely to be trans-shipped at Buffalo to the lakeboats, whereas, much freight shipped by rail from the east is billed by an all-rail route whenever a company which does not own its boats, can succeed in so billing it. THE MARINE RECORD. NEW YORK CANAL REPORT. Superintendent of Public Works (New York) Hon. George W. Aldrich has kindly forwarded to THE RxEc- ORD acopy of his annual report, which includes the financial statement for the year ending September 30, 1895, and tonnage for the season ending December Ds The whole number of tons carried upon the canals of New York during the season of 1895 was 3,500,314 tons, of which 2,327,481 tons was in transit toward tide- water and 1,172,835 tons was moved westward. Of these amounts 1,762,663 tons was through freight and 1,797,651 tons was way freight. The amounts carried by the several canals were as follows: Brie Canalis inj ve tote ale pene mentee ereiesn atic 2,356,084 Champlain Canali ee. ey eee yee erers 966,335 Oswero Canal. FR an rk ete rede 64,691 Black River Canali... ciciise ee) Sedan ee 64,154 Cayuga and Seneca Canal..........-..++00++0- 49,050 A Koyeedl Wainertsbuatieen ta ND Umer eben Mine airs weit mn tao 3,500,314 The financial report shows an expenditure out of the ordinary repair fund of $754,362.70. There was spent under especial appropriations $551,120.37. The superin- tendént states that his order made-a year ago, instruct- ing that the practice of locktenders levying tribute upon canal boat men for services rendered must be discon- tinued has been obeyed, and he thinks the system en- tirely stamped out. EXCESSIVE USE OF ‘‘SURPLUS’’ WATER. An important section of the report is that upon the use of “surplus’? water by mills and other establish- ments lccated along the line of the canal. ‘‘Karly in the history of the New York canals,’”’ he says, “‘it was be- lieved that a considerable revenue might accrue to the State by the leasing of the use of. this surplus water, and many leases were executed, a number of wh.ch are stillin force. The evil features which have developed and been fostered under the cover of this system have been manifold and far reaching. The money received for the use of this water, in past or present, is too small-an amount to benome an appreciable factor in canal receipts or management, and on almost every small stream into which water is occasionally dis- charged, mills and manufactories have been erected. As these interests have grown the canal has been de- pleted of water sadly needed for navigation, either as a result of powerful political or social influences brought to bear upon pliant officials, or by even more objection- able methods, such as bribery of the waste weir tend- ers and the opening of gates by night. Under the leases granted by the State, surplus waters have come to mean all the water that can, under any pretense, be ex- tracted from the canal, without reference as to how the canal or its navigation will be affected thereby. I have made strenuous efforts during the past season to restrain this abstraction within reasonable limits, and believe with very marked success; still there is much more to be achieved along the same lines another season.’ FILLING IN. Supt. Aldridge next deals with the effect on naviga- tion of the silt in the canal prism. The filling-up process, he says, has been going on for 25 years, and as the appropriation for canal repairs has been far too small for a general cleaning out, practically no clean- ing has been done for several years, except to remove bars formed by inflowing streams. ‘The result has been the gradual accumulation of deposits in the canals to an extent of not less than 2,250,000 cubic yards in the Brie Canal alone, anda proportionate amount in the other candls. If this was uniformly distributed across the prism of the Hrie Canal for its entire length the draft of the boats would have to be reduced from 6 feet to 5 feet 4 inches. That this reduction has ‘not been forced, he says, is due to the indomitable will of the boatmen, who have invented new means of propulsion, and have been able to keep open a narrow channel through which their boats could pass. IN THE INTEREST OF SPEED. Supt. Aldridge refers to the dilapidated condition of many of the structures of the canal, some of which were built halfa century ago. He says: ‘‘I am of the opinion that in all improvements of the present canal, short of the deep waterway or ship canal, the central idea should be such an improvement as will enable a large increase to be made in the speed of loaded boats. If this is accomplished, then the carrying capacity of a single tow of boats is increased in the same proportion steamer Jim Sheriffs. that the speed is increased. ‘The cost of an imp ment of a canal of the present width so as to greatly i crease the width and carrying capacity of the boat: navigating the same would be out of all proportion the results obtained; but if practically the same res are reached at moderate cost by snch construction will double the speed, then the boatmen will be placed in such relations to the carrying trade as will enable them to compete with other systems. The superintendent dwells at length upon the atti tudes of the railroads to the canal, and practically sa that only one construction can be put upon their cut of 50 per cent in freight rates between Buffalo and New York at the eve of an election in which the people o the State were to vote upon a $9,000,000 appropriation — In reference to the appropria-_ for canal improvement. tion, he says that this will not relieve the legislature from the responsibility of providing for spec'al and emergency needs, and criticizes the practice which has — heretofore obtained of making especial appropriations for specific improyements, which results often in a surplus in one and a deficiency in another, without authority to transfer funds. He suggests that appro- priations hereafter be made by divisions for the pur- pose of extraordinary. repairs and for purposes not pro vided under the act of. 1895, and vesting authority in the State Engineer and- Superintendent of Public Works to determine the nature and scope of the improvements. rrr 0 cc FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. The steamer Penokee was sold at Detroit last week to J. M. Harvey for $3,100. John and Ida Hammel, of Milwaukee, have sold the schooner Badger to P. W. Kirtland, of Green Bay, for a nominal consideration. John and R. P. Anderson, of Racine, have sold the little schooner Merchant to Samuel and Claus Jorgen- son, of Milwaukee, for $600. ' Peter J. Baltes, of Oswego, and R. C. EKastridge, of Buffalo, have bought the excursion steamer Ideal, and will run her out of Oswego next summer. On account of the ice in lake Erie, Ashtabula fish tugs have been unable to reach many of their nets, and the few that have been recovered are in a worthless condi- tion. sage of the Straits on record, having passed up, on December 31, on her way to do wrecking work on the More libels have been filed at Toledo against the steamer City of Toledo, tug Butler and the schooner M. T. Downing, in damage suits for personal injuries growing out of collision. Fred Kindt, of Saratoga, N. Y., ‘whose electric wreck- ing apparatus was described in ie RECORD some time ago, has refused $10,000 for his patent, and is in New York arranging to go to the Elbe. The list of total losses for 1895 the Record inadver- tently omitted to name the little schooner Julia Willard, which was abandoned and foundered near Point au Pelee after the séason had practically closed. The new double furnace of the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co., at Gladstone will go into blast about Marchl. The stoves are being built to use charcoal, coke, or anthra- cite coalas fuel, and the experiment of making coke and anthracite pig willbetried. ‘The outcome, if successful, may result in the location of a steel plant in that district. During the season of ’94 a total of 2,247 craft passed through Sturgeon Bay canal going down and 1,955, going up orsouth. Theaggregate tonnage of these vcssels was 1,239,580. Of the above there were 2,166 steamers, 2,026 sail and 140 unrigged. This does not include the tugs engaged in harbor towing, which pass through the canal dozens of times a day when business is at all brisk. The War Depeetica: has ordered Maj. Sears, United States engineer, to establish a harbor in Chequamegon bay. This move is considered important, as an indica- tion of. appropriations to be recommended. A large number of new grain elevators are to be built at. the head of the bay in the spring, which necessitates estab- lishing a permanent harbor line, as a large amount of government dredging is necessary to get at the Fish Creek harbor. : S22 Tu MARINE RECOBD is the repository for all en- gineering and nautical publications. Hydrographi charts always on hand. eee oe Capt. James Reid’s tug Protector made the latest pas-