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THE MARINE RECORD. just as soon as the ownership controversy between the city and the railroad corporations is settled. Orders were issued this week to start out all of the ves- sels of the Inter-Ocean Transportation fleet except the Maryland and Manchester. The first of the fleet will be the steamers Manhattan, Merrimac, Massachusetts, Min- nesota and barge Metacomet. They are to deliver ore at North Chicago, South Chicago and Milwaukee, but the bulk of it will go to North Chicago. The Nickel Plate R. R. Co., B. F. Horner general pas- senger agent, have just issued a handsome little colored pamphlet entitled “Summer Outings,” and showing a view of the summer resorts which the railroad passes through. The service on the Nickel Plate is beyond criticism and there is a no better track between New York and Chicago by which pleasure seekers or travelers could journey. | wo tugs were destroyed by fire between Saturday night and Sunday morning—the Alfred Mosher at Sturgeon Bay and the Irene at Menominee. The Mosher was built at Chicago for Capt. J. S. Dunham in 1863. Her present owners are Helmholz, Walker & Dumann, of Menominee. She was valued at $3,500 and insured against fire for $2,000. The Irene belonged to the Menominee River Shingle Co. She was built at Marinette in 1893 and valued at $2,000, with no insurance. Part of the dock at which the Irene lay was burned, together with twenty cords of wood piled upon it. ; An item appeared in our issue, April 20, page 5, stating that Major Clinton B. Sears, Corps of Engineers, U. S. Army, in charge of river and harbor improvements on Lake Superior, would have all range lights, stakes, etc., placed in Duluth Superior harbors within a few days. The above item was palpably in error and misleading, as neither Major Sears or the United States Engineer Office has anything to do with the placing of range lights or stakes at that point, nor would that office wish to be held responsible for the work, as it is in the Light-House Board’s bailiwick. O_O TREASURY DECISIONS RELATING TO VESSELS. 17872—Maltreatment of Seamen.—(Circular No. 39. Treasury Department, Bureau of Navigation, Washington, D. C., March 5, 1897. To Collectors of Customs, Shipping Commissioners, and others: Your attention is invited to the provisions, concerning the maltreatment of seamen, of the act approved March 3, 1897, entitled, “An Act to amend the laws relating to navigation.” The act will take effect July 1, 1807. Sec. 18. That section fifty-three hundred and forty- seven of the Revised Statutes be amended to read: “Sec. 5347. Every master or other officer of an Ameri- can vessel on the high seas or any other waters within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States, who, without justifiable cause, beats, wounds, or imprisons any of the crew of such vessel or withholds trom them suitable food and nourishment, or inflicts upon them any cruel and inhuman punishment, shall be puish- ed by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not more than five years, or by obth.” “Nothing herein contained shall be construed to repeal or modify section forty-six hundred and eleven of the Re- vised Statutes.” EUGENE T. CHAMBERLAIN, Approved: J. G. CARLISLE Secy. Commissioner. 17873.—Registry of Vessels.—Circular No. 46. Treasury Department, Bureau of Navigation, Washington, D. C., March 5, 1897. To. Collectors of Customs and Others: Your attention is invited to the following provisions. ‘concerning the registry ad ownership of vessels, of the act approved March 3, 1897, entitled “An Act to amend the laws relating to navigation.” The act will take effect July 1, 1897. Sec. 10. That section forty-one hundred and sixty-five of the Revised Statutes be, and is hereby, amended to read as follows: “Sec. 4165. A vessel registered pursuant to law, which by sale has become the property of a foreigner, shall be entitled to a new register upon afterwards becoming American property, unless it has been enlarged or under- gone change in build outside of the United States.” Section 16 of the act also repeals sections 4133 and 4134 of the Revised Statutes, which read as follows: “Sec. 4133. No vessel shall be entitled to be registered, or, if registered, to the benefits of registry, if owned, in whole or in part by any citizen of the United States who usually resides in a foreign country, during the contin- uance of such residence, unless such citizen be a consul of the United States, or an agent for and a partner in some house of trade or copartnership, consisting of citi- zens of the United States actually carrying on trade with- in the United States. . “Sec. 4134. No vessel shall be entitled to be registered as a vessel of the United States, or, if registered, to the benefits of registry, if owned in whole or in part by any person naturalized in the United States, and residing for more than one year in the country from which he origi- nated, or for more than two years in any foreign country, unless such person be a consul or other public agent of the United States. Nothing contained in this section shall be construed to prevent fhe registering anew of any ves- sel before registered, in case of a sale therof in good faith to any citizen resident in the United States; but sat- isfactory proof of the citizenship of the person on whose account a vessel may be purchased shall be exhibited to the collector, before a new register shall be granted: for such vessel.” EUGENE T.. CHAMBEILAIN, Approved: J. G. CARLISLE, Secy. Commnr. ———@2oe__ A NEW CONTRACT. The Polson Engineering and Ship Building Co., To- ronto, have taken a contract to build a side-wheel steamer about 125 feet long, for the freight and passenger service on Pembroke Lake. Her cost will be about $20,000 and she will be built to the order of a Pembroke syndicate. or oo TUGS FINED AT DULUTH. The Barry tugs, Industry and Prodigy, were fined $1,000 each at Duluth on Tuesday morning for sailing from Bay City withottt proper inspection papers. The firm claims the fine will fall on James Davidson, the shipbuilder, for delivering the boats in that condition. Bonds were given for the payment of the fines. As if this was not enough the collector of customs fined B. B. Inman of Inman’s tug line, $500 for carrying pas- sengers on tugs without license. TN ee DUNKIRK HARBOR IMPROVEMENT. Dredging at Dunkirk is being prosecuted vigorously. The contract calls for the work to be completed by July 1, 1898. A basin, 2400 feet long by 1000 feet wide, is to be dredged and a channel 2000 feet long, 330 feet wide at the outer end narrowed to 200 feet at the piers and ex- panded to 330 feet again at the basis. It is figured that 550,000 cubic yards of earth and 80,000 cubic yards of rock must be removed. f — Se oO Oo A GREEN BAY CHART. The Hydrographic Office, U. S. N., Washington, D. C, has just issued an excellent chart of Green Bay and its approaches. We have never seen a more inclusive and perfect delineation of any section of water and better still it is thoroughly up-to-date. The price of the chart is we learn $1.25. —__—_—_————— Ee DOO A NEW DEVICE. If a new appliance, which was recently fitted to the steamboat Pequot of the Providence & Stonington line, is generally adopted by owners of steam craft, admiralty courts will find their work much simplified when cases of collision between steam vessels come up for adjudication, The question of right of wrong and the matter of dam- ages almost always hinges on what signals were sounded, and theré always is dispute. One party, for instance, will urge that he sounded one blast and the other will assert with equal positiveness that two were given. Both, of course, cannot be right, but it is often very difficult for a judge, who has to listen to the testimony of fallible mortals, to tell whose evidence is bi- ased or incorrect, and whose is not. The device with which the Pequot is fitted is an impar- tial witness. Install it on board a vessel and the silent ma- chine will register every note that is sounded from the whistle and will stamp on a strip of paper the very sec- ond in which the whistle cord was pulled; it will tell too whether one blast was sounded or two. The apparatus is so very simple that one wonders that it was not thought of before. It consists of a vacuum pipe run from the whistle to a diaphragm with clockwork attachment. The whole is inclosed in, and as the whistle is sounded the time is registered, $$$ a A BOTTLE PAPER. According to a special from Bayfield, Wis., five miles south of that harbor, half imbedded in the sand on the beach, James Taggart, a lumberman, on Tuesday dis- covered the first message from the forty pefsons who perished in the wreck of the steamer Manistee, nearly fourteen years ago. It was a note, carefully inclosed in a heavy glass bottle. The writing had faded with the lapse of years and the glass of the bottle was worn thin with its constant beating against the sandy shores of Chequama- gon Bay. The message on the note was as follows: “November, 1883. “Left Bayfield at 1:10 p. m.; just in sight of Michigan lighthouse. We may not survive the storm. Heavily laden and hard to turn in the storm. Captain McKay, steamer Manistee.” The writing had faded so as to be almost illegible. There is a general impression in this town that the mes- sage is genuine. The action of the sand and waves on the bottle shows that it has been tossed around the beach for a long time. The faded writing also proves conclusively that the note was not written a few weeks or months ago for the purpose of a hoax. The Manistee was a wooden steamer, and was owned by the Lake Michigan and Lake Superior line and traded between Chicago and Duluth. On the night she went down she was on the way from Bayfield to Ontonagon, on her trip to Chicago. It was to have been the last trip of the season, and it was late in November. A north gale set in shortly after the steamer left port, and the ther- mometer registered near the zero’ mark. The fate of the Manistee was never known. The steam- er City of Duluth, of the same line, left Bayfield just ahead of the lost ship, and for a long time that night saw her lights. When last seen she was clear of the group of is- lands at the mouth of the bay, known as the Apostles. When the non-appearance of the Manistee made the officials of the line anxious a searching expedition was fitted out, but the only result of this expedition was the. finding of some wreckage from the lost boat. Out of the forty persons on board when she went down no one was. left to tell how the steamer sank, nor were there any bodies washed ashore. With the exception of the float- ing wreckage nothing was ever found from the steamer until Taggart picked up the bottle today. _ A belief has been general that the machinery of the steamer gave out that night in the gale, and the spray had frozen over the falls to the life boats so that it was impossible to lower them to save the crew. This is further strengthened by the fact that the City of Duluth went through the gale all right. The cargo of the Manistee was largely mill stuffs, and therefore she could not have been over-deep in the water. Capt. John McKay, who was in command of the steam- - er Manistee, was a Cleveland man and was a brother of Capt. George P. McKay, manager of the Menomineee and Mutual steamers and treasurer of the Lake Carriers’ as- sociation, who takes but little stock in the story. er RIVER TUG BOATS THIRTY YEARS AGO. How the famous old Detroit river tugs did make money during and for eight years succeeding the close of the war. Figures on the earnings of the Detroit & St. Clair Towing Association for the year 1866, compiled from old ledgers, are proof conclusive of this, says the Detroit Free Press. . This association was really a pool made in the spring of each year, the papers for which were usually drawn up by Henry B. Brown, now United States supreme court jus- tice; William A. Moore and the late John S. Newberry. In that particular year thirty-three tugs were in the agree- ment. Some were big, money makers; others did not amount to a pinch of snuff. The net earnings were di- vided at the end of the season, based entirely on the earn- ing capacity of the respective tugs. It mattered not that some earned little or nothing—their owners were reim- bursed to an extent sufficient to satisfy them. The ob- ject of this pool was the maintenance of towing rates at a figure which in those days was considered fair. Cut- throat competition for towing was thus avoided. As in those times the bulk of the lake commerce was handled in schooners, there was work enough for all in that line alone. These were the tugs and their net profits that year: Satellite, $23,322; Kate Moffat, $23,159; Prin- ” diville, $17,909; Kate Williams, $16,314; I. U. Masters, $15,331; Bob Anderson, $15,662; B. B. Jones, $16,494; Hector, $14,763; McClellan. $13,512; . Winslow, $12.539; Mayflower, $12,393; W. K. Muir, $11,478; W. B. Castle, $10,043; John Martin, $10,818; George H. Parker, $9,910; George N. Brady, $0,959; E. M. Peck, $9,256; Constitu- tion, $8,661; Anna Dobbins, $8,211; Tawas, $0,880; L. L, Lyoti $9,887; Zouave, $7,042; Park, $9,902; Michigan, $6,235: Satiison, $6,358; Red Eric, $4,206; T D. Dole, $3,051; Dispatch, $2,093; Eclipse, $2,519; Stranger, $1,771; S. S. Rummage, $1,481; Dart, $240. The Eagle lost $95 on the season, but was given something out of the associa- tion to keep her quiet. aay Imagine the Satellite and Kate Moffat earning much more than half their value in the single season. This of wooden steamers that were pigmies by the side of the mammoth steel freighters afloat today, yet making money that would catise the owner of one of the modern freight- ers to jump out of his seat if he had before him a pros- pect of clearing as much. The Satellite in those days was commanded -by Capt. Hi Ames, now living in well earned retirement on Harsen’s island. He could get more out of a tug and her crew than anyone around these parts. He was personally popular, and this, perhaps, had some- thing to do with his effectiveness; but he was also willing to work night and day, and had a keen scent for a schoon- er. Besides this, he was a first-class tugman, handled his tug and tows with a minimum of accident, and in every way acquitted himself creditably. Second only to him was Capt. Leon Holt, who came from the Cape Vincent region. He brought out the tug Champion, still in existence, the most powerful tug that ever towed on the Detroit River. Thousands have seen the picture scattered about the city representing the Cham- pion towing a long string of schooners down the river just below Windmill Point light. Long tows were com- mon with her. She once towed twelve schooners up the river, through the Ft. Gratiot rapids and_ out into Lake Huron, where they cast loose and set sail for their destin- ations. For that tow she got about $700. The achieve- ment has never been equaled by another steamer. The panic of 1873 put a stop to the big earnings. For eight years succeeding it the tugs did little or nothing. Business picked up somewhat afterward, but the schoon- ers were being supplanted by steamers, and those remain- ing were cut down into consorts. They are scarce these days, and the tugs that remain have a precarious existence towing rafts and wrecking.