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oe aa Britain, for it touches her very existence. Y = = a = Zs = = =— ————$ = ESTABLISHED 1878. VOL. XXII, No. 7. CLEVELAND---FEBRUARY 16, 1899---CHICAGO. $2.00 Per Year. 5c. Single Copy. FUEL FOR STEAMERS. Four thousand men are now engaged in making Gibraltar one of the greatest coaling stations and depots for the refit- ting of warships in the world. It will take two or three years yet to carry out the plans for extending the docks and other accommodations required for the repairing of naval vessels and to secure perfect protection from outward attack for the vast quantity of coal that is always kept in stock at that great station. All the improyements are to cost about $15,000,000, We hear most of all nowadays about the coaling stations that are needed for navies. They are, of course, equally essential for the merchant marine. Three-fourths of the world’s commerce is carried on steamships, and the whole ‘of the power used by all nations for the defense of com- merce depends upon the use of coal. Without security on the seas there can be no security of commerce, and so there must be geographical continuity of coaling stations all around the world. This fact greatly impressed Great Look at her line of governmemt coaling stations all along the great trade routes, Along the route to the Orient: Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, Bombay, Trincomalee, Singapore, Hong Kong. Along the East Atlantic route: Sierra Leone, Asceiision, St. Helena, Cape Town, Mauritius. In Australia waters; Australian and New Zealand ports. Along the West Atlantic route: Hali- fax, Quebec, Bermuda, St. Lucia, Kingston and Faulkland Islands; and in the Northeast Pacific, Esquimalt. After that, deposits of coal on the east and west coasts of Canada, South Africa, India and Australasia. For a nation whose commerce is.all around the world, little more could be done to make geographical unity coniplete. In time of peace coal can be bought by any naval vessel and the merchant marine in most of the ports of the world, but notin all of them. Coal is kept asa commodity at 231 ports of the world outside of Europe, where every port is a coal depot, and dealers, of course, are glad to have buyers of considerable quantities like the captains of steamships, come along. At little islands like Nossi Be and Comoro, in the Indian ocean, and Samoa and the Fiji islands, in the Pacific, merchants keep a good supply of coal on hand, and practi- cally their only customers in these tropical regions are pass- ing vessels. At these out-of-the-way places ship captains buy only a sufficient quantity to carry them to a port where coal is a more generally used commodity, for dealers, where there is little or no competition in the article, often charge an exorbitant price for it. Coal is now sold at such low figures in our own ports that most steamers in the trans-Atlantic trade usually coal on this side of the ocean for the round trip. It happens, therefore, sometimes when they are coming back to America and are greatly delayed on the way their supply runs short, and we hear now and then that they have been compelled to put into Halifax for coal. Except in the Pacific supplies of coal are now scattered so widely over the world that usually a vessel requires only a few days’ slow sailing or steaming to reach some port where it may replenish its bunkers. Sup- pose, for instance, that one of our steam whalers in the Arctic, after a season north of Behring Straits, should run short of coal, it has only to go south as far as Unalaska, in the Aleutian archipelago, to buy all it needs. Outside of Europe coal is specially kept for sale to steamers at eight ports on the north coast of Africa; at thirteen ports of West Africa, including the Cape Verde Islands and the Canaries; at fourteen ports along the gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean sea; at twenty-four ports of the West Indies; at twenty-two Atlantic ports of North America as far south as the gulf of Mexico; at five islands of the Atlantic; at nine ports of East Africa; at eighteen ports of South Asia; at six islands of the Indian ocean; at twenty-six ports of the East Indies and Philippines; at fourteen ports of the East Asia coast; at five ports of Japan, Sachalin and Kamptchatka; at ten ports of Australia; at seven ports of New Zealand; at nineteen ports on the west of North America; at ten ports on the west of South America: at Honolulu and Hilo in the North Pacific, and at four islands in the South Pacific. oro TREASURY DECISIONS. DOCUMENTING OF VESSELS. Vessels can not be documented in the Uniied States unless owned by citizens of the United States. TREASURY DEPARTMENT, BUREAU OF NAVIGATION, WASHINGTON, D. C., Feb. 2, 1899. Sir: Referring to your letter dated the 31st ultimo, this office has to state that in order to the documenting of a vessel of the United States her purchaser must be a citizen, either by birth or completed naturalization. Respectfully yours, EUGENE T. CHAMBERLAIN, Commissioner. Collector of Customs, Newport, R. 1. REGISTRY OF VESSELS. Foreign vessels cannot be registered in the United States. TREASURY DRPARMENT, BUREAU OF NAVIGATION, WASHINGTON, D. C., Feb. 3, 1899. Srr: Referring to your letter dated the 2nd instant, this office has to state that a United States register can not be obtained for the Canadian steamer you mention except under special legislation by Congress. As regards your statement that you understand that for- eign registered vessels, when owned by American citizens, have all rights except that of the coasting trade, you are in- formed that your understanding is erroneous, there being no provision of law to such effect. Respectfully yours, EUGENE T. CHAMBERLAIN, Commissioner. Mr. J. G. SCHWENDLER, Rochester, N. Y. FEES FOR ADMEASUREMENT OF YACHTS. Fees for admeasurement of yachts are limited by act of March 3, 1883. TREASURY DEPARTMENT, Feb. 5, 1899. Sir: This department is in receipt of your letter, dated the 1st instant, inquiring what fees are allowed for admeas- uring spaces to be deducted from gross tonnage in order that the net tonnage of yachts may be ascertained. The act of August 5, 1882, authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to establish and promulgate the proper scale of fees to be paid for the readmeasurement of the spaces to be deducted from the gross tonnage of a vessel, ‘‘on the basis of the last sentence of section 4186 of the Revised Statutes, beginning with the words, “But the charge of the measure- ment.’”’ Certain fees were so established and promulgated by the department’s circular of April 5, 1895, but it is held by the department that they do not apply to the readmeasurement of deducted spaces in the case of vessels documerted as yachts of the United States, for the reason that an act ap- proved March 3, 1883, provided that ‘‘all charges for license and inspection fees for any pleasure vessel or yacht shall not exceed five dollars, os for admeasurement shall not ex- ceed ten cents per ton.’ As bearing upon the matter, your attention is invited to the first section of the act of June 19, 1886, and to the regu- lations of 1892, relating to fees. Respectfully yours, O. L.. SPAULDING, Assist. Sec’y. Collector of Customs, New Haven, Conn. THE OCEANIC AND THE GREAT EASTERN. Mr. N. Scott Russell writes as follows on the relative merits of the two great steamers: ‘‘Now that after forty years the Great Eastern has been surpassed in size, or, to speak more accurately, in displacement, by 1,000 tons, it may be interesting to draw attention to some points in the progress of engineering and shipbuilding that have been made in that period. At the time the Great Eastern was built steel only existed in the form of tools and other small pieces. Ships were built of iron plates with a tensile strength of 20 tons to the square inch, while now by the Bessemer and Siemens processes they can be built of steel plates having a tensile strength 50 per cent. greater, and can be bought at the same price as the iron plates of forty years ago. Theoretically, then, a ship should be built with two-thirds of the material used formerly. This, however, is only partially true, as the difference in resistance to com- pression of iron and steel is not so great as it is in tension, and an allowance has to be made for corrosion. Asa mat- ter of fact, I believe there is as much material in the Oceanic as in the Great Eastern, and the former should, therefore, be enormously strong. It is in engines, however, that the most remarkable progress has been made. Forty years ago marine engines weighed 5 cwt. per actual horse-power, and now the same power is obtained from 2 cwt. With high- pressure (it was formerly 25 lbs., and is now nearly 200 lbs. ) and triple-expansion engines the coal consumption is only one-third what it was, so that for the same weight an engine yields 2% times the power for less fuel. With modern en- gines of nearly the same weight the Great Eastern could have been driven 20 knots an hour with the same consump- tion of fuel. Considering the mechanical difficulties to be contended against, it is marvelous to think that a vessel four or five times as big as any then built, combining a num- ber of new principles of construction, since generally adopted, was constructed nearly half a century ago, and that she never showed the least sign of weakness, and was so beautifully modeled that she opposed as little resistance as any ship ever built. The Great Eastern made progress in the size of ships an easy matter, and will always reflect the highest credit on her designers, T. K. Bruneland J. Scott- Russell, as pioneers in naval architecture.’’ x ——— SO THE AMERICAN BUREAU OF SHIPPING. At a recent meeting of the American Bureau of Shipping (the Record of American and Foreign Shipping) Mr. A. A. Raven was elected president to fill the vacancy made by the resignation of Mr. T. B. Bleecker. Mr W. Irving Comes was elected secretary, vice Walter R. T. Jones, who takes Mr. Comes’ place as vice president. The American Bureau of Shipping was organized in 1867 under the title of the American Shipmasters’ Association. Mr. Raven isits third president, the late John D. Jones having succeeded Mr. Bleecker for a time. The Record was first issued in 1869, and since that time a more reliable record of classification of American and Foreign vessels has not been issued in any country. Mr. E. Platt Stratton, is the consulting engineer for this the only classification society of shipping under our flag. The officers are at 37 William street, New York. —_$_$—$S—<$— a or THE Trans-Siberian Railway Co. has made a contract with Japanese lumber dealers to supply 800,000 ties yearly for the — next 5 years, or 4,000,000 in all. The ties are to be deliver- ed at one yen (50 cents) each and will be shipped from Hok- kaido. ‘‘Wood and Iron’’ of San Francisco, expresses a belief that a considerable portion of the ties which will be utilizei in railway construction in China during the next few years will be purchased in Japan.