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VOL. XX. No. 11. ESTABLISHED 1878. E 4 CLEVELAND---MARCH 18, 1897---CHICAGO.. $2.00 Per Year. toc. Single -Copy LAKE CARRIERS’ ASSOCIATION. - To consider and take action upon all general questions relating to the navigation and carrying business of the Great Lakes, maintain necessary shipping offices and in general ge 5 to protect the common interest of Lake Car- ; riers,and improve the character of the service rendered to the public. PRESIDENT. wag Capt. JaMEs W. MILLEN, Detroit, Mich. VICE PRESIDENTS. J. S. Dunham, Chicago. | Howard L. Shaw, Bay City. C. E. Benham, Cleveland. F. J. Firth, Philadelphia. David Carter, Detroit. L. §. Sullivan, Toledo. S$. D. Caldwell, Buffalo. M. J. Cummings, Oswego. W.H. Wolf, Milwaukee. Geo. Berriman, Erie. W. C. Farrington, Duluth. SECRETARY. CHARLES H. KEzEpP, Buffalo. TREASURER. Grorce P. McKay, Cleveland, COUNSEL. HaRveEyY D. GouLDER, Cleveland. NOTICE TO MARINERS. CHANGE IN ILLUMINATING APPARATUS AT RIVER THAMES LIGHT STATION. From and after the opening of navigation this spring a change will be made in the illuminating apparatus in the back range tower at the mouth of River Thames, Lake St. Clair. This notice affects Canadian List of Lights and Fog Signals No. 977. F. GOURDEAU, Deputy Minister of Marine and Fisheries. Department of Marine and Fisheries, Ottawa, Canada, 27th February, 1897. MAUMEE BAY RANGES SOUTH LIGHT STATION. Treasury Department, Office of the Light-House Board, Washington, D. C., March 13, 1897. Notice is hereby given that, on the opening of naviga- tion, 1897, the fixed white lens-lantern light, about 1,000 feet south of the front light of the Maumee Bay Range lights, Maumee Bay, will be discontinued. By order of the Light-House Board: JOHN G. WALKER, Rear Admiral, U. S. Navy, Chairman. ao oo ee ; MATT. O’BRIEN. - Supervising Inspector of Steam Vessels, toth. District, ; New Orleans, La. ‘The Tenth Inspection district takes in all ports on the Gulf coast from Cape Sable to the Rio Grande River, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and points in Georgia and Florida. Capt. O’Brien was appointed by President Cleveland, May, 1885. His predecessor, Capt. Géo. L. Norton, having resigned. Capt. Norton gawe Mr. O’Brien earnest support for the office that he now holds. Lieut. Sinclair, author of “Two Years on the Alabama” says: “Of the officers of the Confederate Statés Navy serving on cruisers, O’Brien ranks among the most for- tunate in the nature of his service, being attached for the entire period of the war to the three most noted Confed- erate cruisers afloat. Starting upon the lowest rung of the ladder, his abilities and faithfulness raised him in this short period to the very topmost. He was born in County Limerick, Ireland, in 1837. His parents im- migrated to this country, and settled at Tuscaloosa, Ala- bama, when he was six years old. Five years after, they ‘moved to New Orleans. In 1852 O’Brien was entered an apprentice at Leed’s Foundry, serving his time in the machine-shop until the breaking out of hostilities. On May 2oth, 1861, he was commissioned third assis- tant engineer, Confederate States Navy, from the state of Louisiana, and assigned to duty on the Sumpter. When the Sumpter was laid up at Gibraltar, he was ordered to Liverpool, and taking passage on the British steamer Euphrosyne, with other of his brother officers, was wrecked in Vigo Bay, Spain, and narrowly escaped with his life. Eventually arrived at Liverpool, he was assigned to the Alabama, and upon the arrival of Semmes, took passage on the Bahama for Terceira. After the destruction of the Alabama he was placed on waiting orders, and in October, 1864, he was ordered to the Shenandoah, and made the full cruise in this vessel as chief engineer. On the surrender of the Shenandoah, at Liverpool, seven months after the close of hostilities, he returned home, Line, where he remained until he was appointed to his and soon entered the employ of the Morgan Steamship present position. O’Brien is now United States super- vising inspector of steam vessels for the tenth Louisiana district, with headquarters at New Orleans, La. O’Brien’s skill and resource were very unusual, even in the line to OLIMAX-cl Fe SUPERVISING INSPECTOR MATT. O’BRIEN. which officers of his grade are most carefully trained. The Alabama cruised for two years without opportunity to avail herself of machine shops and dock yards, and at the end of that time her machinery was in excellent con- dition and her boilers still available. Candor requires the statement that this circumstance was due principally to O’Brien’s mechanical skill and long training as a ma- chinist. : But O’Brien possessed another trait of almost equal value, when the monotony and hardships of the cruise were considered with reference to their effect upon tem- per and spirits. He was without exception the jolliest fellow ever met, and possessed a wonderful power of im- parting cheerfulness and good nature to every person with whom he came in contact. He had a marvellous faculty of discovering the ludicrous side of misfortune, and could point out the silver lining of hope on the darkest clouds of our discontent. Who shall say whether the mechanical or moral value of such a comrade is to be deemed the greater? STEEL FORGINGS FOR MARINE ENGINES. The records so far as given show that about a dozen large ocean vessels have broken their shafts during the past two months. Lake vessel owners were reminded of the fact that there is a similar mortality of shafts, crank pins, and other forged parts of marine engines on lake vessels by the paper read before the Lake Car- riers’ Association at Detroit in January last, by Mr. H. F. J. Porter, western representative of the Bethlehem Iron Co., who had a long list of accidents of this kind which happened during the past year. In a paper recently read before a scientific body in Chicago Mr. Porter said: “It is the duty of the designing engineer to make the ports of his engines as light and as strong as possible, and it is for these reasons that the weaker and less reliable admix- ture known as wrought iron is gradually being replaced by the stronger metal, steel. In case where economy in space and weight is required, the still stronger alloy, known as nickel steel, is rapidly coming into use. The old idea that wrought iron was more reliable than steel on account of its fibrous nature has given way now that we understand how to properly manufacture steel.. The impression used to prevail among those who had not given the matter careful consideration that the charaster- istic difference between wrought iron and steel was that the former was essentially fibrous, whereas the latter was ‘crystalline in its structure; and that wrought iron, on account of its fibre, was tougher and more tenacious, whereas steel was apt to snap off suddenly. It was also supposed that it was only when wrought iron was sub- jected to sudden shock and vibration its structure would assume a crystalline character, and that it would then break like steel. itive; that all metals are by nature crystalline, wrought iron with the rest. All metals in cooling from a liquid to a solid state solidify by crystallization. This is the only period when crystallization can take place, and vibration and shock have nothing to do with making wrought iron crystalline, for it is already in that condition. As far back as 12 years ago, Prot. Thomas Egleston, of the School of Mines, Columbia College, New York city, in a discussion of this subject at a meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, said: “With regard to fibrous iron, there is no such thing. It is an appearance, not quality. Etching with acid does not prove the fibrous structure, since all iron contains a considerable amount of slag easily soluable in acids. This in a rolled bar will be distributed more or less uniformly in the direction in which the bar has been rolled, and when acted upon by acid will be eaten out in more or less parallel layers from the outside. When the action is continued, this appear- ance of parallelism disappears, as it is only superficial. If the same iron is submitted in a tube to a current of chlorine gas, the whole of the iron will be dissolved out and a mass of exactly the same shape as the iron will be left behind, which is exceedingly light and porous, and which is slag. If this be examined it will be seen to have a sort of pseudo-laminated structure running through its mass, which brings long strings of it to the outside of the iron, giving the pseudo-fibrous appearance to the piece when it is etched. If the end of any fractured bar which has the pseudo-fibrous structure is examined with a glass, each so-called fibre will be seen to be the face of a crystal. It is the drawing out of the ends of these crystals which produces the change of color in the mass which gives the pseudo-fibrous appearance. If the surface were highly magnified there would be no fibrous appearance. Capt. Gus Hinckley, of Cape Vincent, has received from the U. S. Government the contract to_place the buoys in Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence. River east- ward as far as Ogdensburg. The work will be com- menced as soon as navigation opens. We know that these ideas are very prim-~