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steam -towing machines in use, all manufactured by the American Ship Windlass Co., Providence, R. I. Mr. ank Manton, agent for the company, has just com- leted a we-tern trip and says that business is fairly ood at present, with a most favorable outlook. » A prospectus of the ‘‘Illustrated history of the Great Lakes” to be published by J. H Beers & Co., Chicago, is ow out and judging from the features which are to be ated upon, it will form the most valuable compendium oflake history that hasever been published. The branch office in charge of Captain Andreas, with an efficient Staff, has been located in the Society for Savings build- ing, No. 233. _ The many friends of Capt. W. W. Brown, secretary of the Cleveland Dry Dock Co., will be sorry to learn that he met with a severe accident this week. While driving from his home to the dock, a runaway team col- lided with the captain’s buggy and he was thrown out, receiving more or le:s injury. He is not seriously hurt, however, though one cau never tell how these nasty falls turn out in the future. _Arepair jobthat reminds me a good deal of the late John Smith’s time is recorded as being done at the Globe works on the steamer Roman; in five and one half days, 42 bottom plates were taken off and put back, 87 frames were removed and put back, 45 floor frames were straightened up and 18 new floor frames were put in. Part ofthe keel plate was straightened and 10 feet of new keel put in. William Sutton superintended the work at the Cleveland Drydock and he is to be congrat- ulated on the speedy and successful result of the job. The local shipyards are more than dull just at the present and although some figuring is being done for special tonnage I have not yet heard of a contract being placed since the Globe received the orders to build a steel barge. The Cleveland Shipbuilding Co. are busy on repair work and they certainly get their full share of it as it suffices to keep that extensive plant in full run- ning: order. There is not another shipmaster on the lakes who at the age of Capt. George Mallory, now acting as ships- husband for the Minnesota Steamship Co. (Pickands, Mather) also the entire whaleback fleet handled at this end of the lakes by that company who has had so success- ful and continuous a career as he has had. When but a _ youngster his brother and he built a scow which George __ Sailed, and successfully tco. From his scow days, and he was in several of them, he kept moving onward and- upward a'ways seeming to get hold ofabout the biggest tonnage going, and bringing out, after superintending their construction, the large s'eel steamers of the Min- nesota fleet. I suppose he never thought when he was driving fastening into his scow ‘‘Mona,’’ and calking the seams before paying them, that in a few years later he would be waltzing over the ground ona 400 footer at a railway gait, with nary a thread of oakum in her, nor even such a thing as a marlinspike aboard to strop a cat-block if he wanted to. Capt. George is a very modest mao, too; a luff upon luff couldn’t budge him to tell even as much as I have scribbled here, but there are others who have been keeping tab on his movements and can vouch for the foregoing whether he likes it or not. -_ Do ee WATER BALLAST. In these days when every possible convenience and appliance isused for carrying and discharging water ballast, it is somewhat of a novelty to note the salient points of a paper by Mr. M. W. Aisbitt, a member of the British Institute of Marine Engineers, on ‘‘Water Bal- last for Steamers and Sailing Vessels.’’ The author de- voted the first part of his address to a review of the his- e tory of ballasting in relation to the ships of the mer- cantile marine, and described some curious effects of old methods of shipping sandand stones. He pointed out that on the introduction of iron for the construction of steamers and sailing vesssls, this ballasting was tound to cause considerable delay and expense, and said that various means were taken to obviate these objections. The paper then proceeded as follows: Perhaps one of the first methods adopted was an idea of carrying water ballast in large canvas bags containing, say, one ortwo tons of water each, whick when the vessel was discharg- ing, were filled, and on being loaded were emptied and laid aside. This, however, was not found to succeed, and was soon, I think, discarded. One of the first sail- ing vessels of which I have record that was fitted with water ballast was the iron schooner T. W. S., built, I think, at Llanelly, Wales, about the year 1856, which was fitted with a double-bottom very similar to those of our present day steamers, the filling and discharging of which was very simply and ingeniously effected. When the vessel arrived at her destination, and before dis- charging, an inlet valve was opened and the tanks run up, the pressure of the vessel’s loaded displacement of - course filling them completely. The valve was then closed, the vessel discharged, and on her arrival at her loading port, where she generally loaded on the ground, the discharge valves were opened and the water ballast run ont. About the year 1860, the steamship John ‘ z 3 a THE MARINE RECORD. Bowes, a screw steam collier, built by Messrs. Palmers, of Jarrow, for the purpose of carrying -coals from New- castle to London, was, I think, one of the first steamers fitted with a double-bottom for water ballast purposes. From that date up to 1865 it became customary for the ordinary cargo steamers constructed on the Tyne and in Sunderland to be fitted in. a similar manner with dif- ferent type of tanks. Deep ballast tanks, i.-e., those in which cargo or ballast could be carried as desired. —_—_—e— 0 — THORNYCROFT “‘LAUNCH”’ TYPE BOILER. (ILLUSTRATED. ) We illustrated in our issue of the 22nd two types of the celebrated Thornycroft boiler, viz. the “Speedy” and “Daring”? form, we now showing two cuts of the “launch’’ type, the first being an exterior view, and the second showing the steam generating part with the casing removed: It may-be seen that the boiler is of the water-tube type, being, in tact, half a Daring boiler, with the outer wall.of tubes brought round to the center barrel, in place of terminating in the usual:wing tubes; the hori- zontal part of the wall tubes being used as fire-bars. It should be explained that the wall tubes, which start from the upper chamber, are continuous to the lower barrel. In the cut this is not very clearly shown, as the baseplate of the boiler obscures the view where they are bent round. Of course water firebars have been sug- gested from time immemorial, and frequently tried, but have failed sooner or later from two causes, one being that when fixed rigidly in position, the expansion and ee OF FLOTSAM, JETSAM AND LAGAN. On 2,000,000 feet of lumber from West Superior to Michigan City $2.25 is being paid. The owner of the scow Aunt Ruth claims that he would have saved $200 if he had tied up his schooner two months ago. Capt.. Stewart, of the Samoa, is ill and Capt. Furry of the Shenandoah will sail her the remainder of the sea- son. The Shenandoah will lay up when she reaches Buffalo. sae 8 et ! The Bessemer “Steamship Co’s. steamer Siemens, from Duluth with her first grain cargo, broke the Lake Superior record last week. She loaded 174,500 bushels of wheat for Buffalo, a cargo equal to 5,235 net tons. : The Ludington Mail states that in addition to the big car ferry steamer and the Nos. 2, 3, 4 aud 5, two outside steamers will find employment between Ludington and Milwaukee the coming winter. j Last week eighty steamers and six schooners arrived in Milwatkee with the following cargoes: Coal, 16; mer- chandise, 57; lumber, 8; wood, 3; posts, 1. The season has been a very poor one for the owners of the schooners: The new twin-screw steamer Queen Louise, 20,000 tons displacement, 550 feet long, 60 feet beam, of the North German Lloyd Steamship Co., was successfully launched at Stettin on Saturday last fromthe yards of the Vulcan Shipbuilding Co. The steel steamer Zenith City, has broken the record on large cargoes of oats. She loaded 289,000 bushels at the Bartlett-Frazier Elevator A, South Chicago. last THORNYCROFT “‘LAUNCH’’ TYPE WATER-TUBE BOILER. contraction has caused their destruction, while owing to the want of circulation, they have scaled up rapidly. In the present case, the firebars forming part of a large loop of tube, the former defect is removed, whilst the rapid circulation, which is common to all types of the Thornycroft boiler, prevents any trouble from scale. Thornycroft & Co. are represented in the United States by Messrs. Thorpe, Platt & Co.,97 Cedar St., New York. > oe ar AN ATLANTIC LINER’S SOILED LINEN. Some curious individual who can’t let anything go by without inquiring into the why aud the wherefore, has found out that as there are no laundries aboard of the largest transatlantic liners, the chief steward has to ship thousands of pillow-slips, sheets and towels. These, it appears, are brought on board tied up in bales and are stored in the linen locker, the ventilator pipes from the engine room running through it and keeping the linen room always hot. ' The linen that has been used is thrown into another room provided with the same atmosphere, and is kept thoroughly dry. Where there are clean napkins every day, frequent changes of stateroom linen, and an ever- lasting replenishing of towel racks, the demands upon the linen lockers are very extensive. A liner like the New York puts to sea with about 9,000 serviettes, 10,000 towels, 6,000 or 7,000 sheets, 8,000 pil- low-slips, and about 1,000 table-cloths. Most of these: find their way to the soiled limenfocker in the course of the voyage. When the vessel arrives they are carried off toa laundry. * back * ‘*Kat them.’’ week. The largest previous record was held by the steamer S. S. Curry—247,000 bushels. A difficult feat for a schooner has just been per- formed at sea by the B. I. Hazard, a three-master. She picked up the water-logged three-masted schoorier*Lelia Smith, off the North Carolina coast, and towed her to a safe anchorage, four miles southeast from North Beach life-saving station, after which she was towed to this city. ea The United States tug Williams, while attempting to — enter the port of South Haven to inspect the harbor im- provements in progress there. stuck in a sand-bar at the mouth of the harbor. She was released and immediately — steamed away. Vessel men hope the grounding may tend to hasten improvements to the harbor. , B Chicago underwriters received a dispatch this week from Colchester, Ont., which stated that 580 barrels of apples, constituting a portion of thecargo of the sunken steamer Grand Traverse, had washed ashore there, and asked what should be done with them. As apples are worth only 80 cents per barrel the underwriters wired The hull and cargo of the steamer have been abandoned by her late owners as a total loss. The Gilchrist & Fletcher Wrecking’'Co., of Alpena, Mich., recently purchased from the Grummond Line, of Detroit, a complete set of steam pumps and boilers. This makes three complete sets of pumps owned by the aAlpena company. ‘They ‘have also two powerful wreck- ing tugs, two smaller tugs, diving apparatus, etc., mak- ing the most complete wrecking outfit on -Lake Huron, whether for surface or submarine work.