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ESTABLISHED 1878. ‘ Published Every Thursday by THE MARINE RECORD PUBLISHING CO., Incorporated. C. E. RUSKIN, : : d E Manager. - CAPT. JOHN SWAINSON,-~ - - - Editor, THOS. WILLIAMS, Chicago, - - Associate. CLEVELAND, CHICAGO, Western Reserve Building. Royal Insurance Building. SUBSCRIPTION. One Copy, one year, postage paid. - ~ $2.00 One Copy, one vest, to foreign countries, - - $3.00 Invariab ably in ac in advance. ADVERTISING. Rates given on application. All communications should be addressed to the Cleveland office. THE MARINE RECORD PUBLISHING CO., ; Western Reserve Building, Cleveland, 0. _ Entered at Cleveland Postoffice as second-class mail matter. CLEVELAND, O., JULY 6, 1899. _ sr Light-Honse Board has discontinued the terms of - ‘Dlack’? gas, ‘“‘red’”? gas, etc.; when issuing ‘‘notices to mariners’’ stating the color of paint on gas buoys. In our issue of July 22nd, we were made to say considerable about red i iron, and in the current issue we have to follow copy in printing something about black iron. Iron is king and can stand any old thing being said about it, but paint, and just for the sake of paint, the Light-House Department couldn’t exist without paint—and whitewash, so let’s give the color of paint a name, in the future.., i Oe ' RATHER singular that we didn’t hear anything more about the government discarding fractional parts of a vessel’s tonnage. Wonder if the Treasury Department in- dulges in this elusive way of figuring in any other of its departments outside of the Bureau of Navigation? It would be handy, nay, even generous towards owners, for the de- partment to lop off fractional parts of a dollar on all bills which have to be paid by vessels. Afterall, what is $96-100 of our decimal coinage amount to anyway? Let’s be large about these little things and throw off all fractions so as to make payments on the eyen dollar, even if it does amount to a lot of whole dollars in the month. —_——_—— a Ee Se For the past half century every effort has been made towards reducing the time consumed in crossing the North Atlantic, until there is now talk of having high speed exclu- sively passenger steamers. There is frequently more money - for the shipowner in carrying one passenger than there is in handling and transporting a dozen tons of cargo. It therefore stands to reason that the smartest ship will carry the best class of passengers, ergo—reap the greatest dollar harvest. On the lakes, J. J. Hill, of the Northern Line, was slightly ahead of the times in placing twin-screw minia- ture Atlantic liners in the exclusively passenger service between Buffalo and Duluth, but we will hear a great deal more of expressly built passenger steamers in the near future than we have in the past. oo OuvR cousins across the border are consistent in their observance of the Lord’s day. Until quite recently no street cars were permitted to run in Toronto on Sunday and now the master of a passenger steamer is cited to appear before ‘‘a limb of the law” at Niagara, for seeking patron- age, or rather worse than that, actually ferrying pleasure seekers around on the Sabbath day. A query has often _ presented itself to us something after this style. If itis unlawful, from an ecclesiastical standpoint, for a vessel to leave port on a Sunday, why are so many permitted to make port, or arrive at their destination on Sundays, and this too after a passage of, say several months, during which time there would have been lots of opportunities to gain a few hours or to be retarded for that length of time? THE MARINE RECORD. THE ATLANTIC FERRY. A mean average passage of about forty days was the schedule time of crossing the North Atlantic several de- cades ago, and, when in 1850, the Collins Line of steamers gained the traveling record by spinning (?) across in 9% days, it was no doubt thought to be the eighth wonder of the world. Science, talent, ingenuity, mechanical skill and hard phy- sical labor, with almost all other attributes to assist, has since reduced the time of ferrying across “the pond’ to a little over 514 days, and the world is still trying to dis- count this dizzy gait of making and gaining not daily, not even hourly records, but down to the minutes now, let the weather be what it may, and, the record maker, is the dol- lar getter, hence the millions of money spent in making record passages. With these everyday modern experiences, it is rather singu- lar that any person’s judgment should be so warped as to give circulation to the following nonsensical statement, and it is still more strange that others should repeat it, because, in doing so, retrogression is argued in the face of never ceasing progress. The quotation we allude to runs in this way: “It is said that the tendency in marine architecture at present is toward vessels of greater carrying capacity and less speed than the ocean greyhounds that have in recent years competed with each other for record runs across the Atlantic. Instead of the time of passage beitg reduced, as some people have been expecting, it is likely to be length- ened, if it be true that slow vessels pay better than those _ which make the run across the Atlantic in less than six days. It is said that eight-day vessels pay best, consuming much less coal and requiring so much less space for machinery and coal bunkers that their cargo-carrying capacity is great- ly increased. The new vessels will probably be bigger than the old and more luxuriously furnished, and they will make up for lack of speed in greater comfort for the passengers.” The above non-committal fashion of writing, as, “‘it is said,” “if it be true,’”’ “some people expecting,” etc., has no relation to the trans-Atlantic mail and passenger service whatever. A Western Ocean timber droger, or a cargo steamer, may loll along in crossing “the pond” anywhere from ten to fifty days, and, bound west, may come along in the region of the northeast trade winds so as to secure fine, steady weather, but the Atlantic mail and passenger service is now looking towards a neat five-day passage, and it will probably soon be an accomplished fact. ——___— << Wuat is it that the propounders of the gospel won’t touch upon? What is it that they don’t know all about, except Christianity? This week we have a Cleveland sky pilot denouncing a vessel owner from his pulpit on account of the loss of a vessel. Avarice, parsimony, ingratitude and a love of the filthy lucre, are only a few of the charges which this blatherskite trumps up against a well-known and highly reputable vessel owner. We are impassionately, also logically, informed, that if the vessel had not been on the lake she would not have had a chance tofounder! Further- more, it was through the greed of the owners that the vessel was on the lake last Friday morning. Would this expounder of divine truths have had her wrapped up in cotton batten, chocked off under her bilges with feather pillows and placed under a glass case, or might he agree to let her do what she was built for? We would like to have this biblical student for a few hours in a leaky ship on a lee shore, he would either have to part with his pelf, recant his heresies, or try to imitate the established precedent and walk ashore, but we tather guess that he would be stripped to the buff taking exercise at the “Quebec monkey jacket’ and giving his undivided attention, also, every ounce of his alacrity, to the lively coaxing of ‘‘the one-armed lady,’’ until she sucked, the one-armed wee-gee we mean, and not the lady; that’s all he would be fitted for. Safely ensconced in his luxu- riously furnished study, we would ask this ignoramus to ring up the shades of St. Paul, and, after establishing a composed connection, call him down for being cast away on the Island of Malta. At the same time he might learn some- thing about that squall on the sea of Galilee. Those who live by the sword must perish by the sword. The same rule holds good, we presume, when water is the food-giving element, also, when jaw tackle is the profession, unless and excepted it comes from the mouths of babes and sucklings, —<— $< ee er Tur Bureau of Navigation, Treasury Department, Wash- ington, D. C., gives out the following: ‘‘In certain trades our large sailing vessels endeavor to compete with foreign ‘Siegfried, of Havre, 3,214 tons.” JuLy 6, 1899. cargo steamers, and doubtless will continue todo so. The most notable vessel is the John Smeaton, a steel schooner of — 5,049 gross tons, built at West Superior, Mich., probably — the largest fore and aft steamer ever built. The largest sea- going sailing vessel built in Europe in 1898 was the Ernest Let it be heralded that the John Smeaton is nota sailing vessel, nor is she so re- garded by another branch of the Treasury Department. The Smeaton is a large, steel tow-barge, built as a consort for one of the Bessemer, (Rockefeller) line of steamers, and she is to be always under convoy, if we may so express it. These large, steel tow barges should not be classed in the same category as sailing vessels; they are not intended to sail, have less right to the name of fore and aft schooner than the river barges on the Thames, as they do go it alone sometimes. The immense steel tow-barges put afloat on the lakes during the past few years are more after the style of floating warehouses, used for holding cargoes in transit, than anything else. Nor should they be confounded with sailing vessels depending alone on wind propulsion. There is an eternal fitness in the nomenclature of floating bodies and it- is just as ridiculous to name a canal boat or tow-barge a fore and aft schooner as it would be to call an express wagon an automobile, though both might be right in a degree, or — under certain special and unusual conditions. A wordto — the wise! OO OO THE Chicago grain shippers who caused the re-rating and corrected classification of about forty wooden vessels re- cently, had better do it some more, the owners of the float- ing property will like it all right, or rather the owners of the — vessels that are classed up will, but what about the other fellows? The ‘“‘I will’? of Chicago is capable of bringing anything to a culmination, and this latest phase, or innova- tion, of shippers forcing up the class and rating of vessels” so that they may have an abundance of tonnage to choose from, is a Chicagoan move of the first water. Buffalo, Cleve- land or Detroit couldn’t have encompassed so advantageous a project, but Chicago, with the utmost sang froid imagina-— ble, also with the ‘‘I will’’ of its municipal motto, can beau- tifully play battledore and shuttlecock with any man’s floating property, and rate or disrate, with a charming and successful simplicity, too actually cute for all orthodox ie rules, customs and regulations to bear up against, at least, no attention is paid to precedents or prevailing laws, but in- the language of, and according to the ethics of the Medes © and Persians, ‘‘we become a law unto ourselves’? when it — suits usto beso suited. The query will no doubt occur to many holders of floating property, where does the owner come in? what show does he have for his white ally in this telescoping of rating, insurance and classification of his property? We may whisper to such inquirers, the grand secret, that all they are called upon to do is to just foot bills, mail — checks and everything else will be attended to, for them, | —by the other fellows ! ee ————— é WRECKING companies are still wriggling away at the stranded steamer Paris, although she has been abandon by her late owners as a constructive total loss. Unlike tl recent case of the stranded P. & O. steamer China, wh hull insurance was carried by her owners, the underwriter on the Paris are making a hard and determined struggle to partially recoup themselves for the tremendous monetary loss occasioned by the stranding of the Paris, and now alli fish that may come to their net. As the vessel has bee: abandoned for some time it is somewhat singular that Ca Watkins and his late officers are still kept hovering abou the wreck. The constructive, has now surely become an actual, loss. The foreign wrecking companies are no dou working on Iloyd’s stereotyped old form of contract, cure, no pay,’’ at the same time, there are pickings enough in and about the old tank, to meet all daily expenditures. re oo or Iv appears that private firms are now issuing ‘‘blue books’ and ‘‘red books.’? We had some sort of an indistinct i that ‘‘blue books’’ were a sort of a government monop something after the style of an ancient edition of our o Congressional Record. The British government fairly rey: in and exfoliates, so to speak, in blue book issues, much the same manner as they are strong on ultimatums other dictatorial mannerisms, including a strict adheren to void and defunct ‘‘blue’’ laws, as viewed from the la light of civilization. ‘The “yellow” book is a French, think, but it ought to be a Chinese monopoly, and the ‘‘red well! let’s see, that ought to be Italian, a-la-cardinalat.