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os of it, 10 THE MARINE RECORD. DECEMBER 21, 1899. ESTABLISHED 1878. Published Every Thursday by THE MARINE RECORD PUBLISHING CO., Incorporated. C. E. RUSKIN, - - - - Manager. CAPT. JOHN SWAINSON, - - - Editor. CLEVELAND, CHICAGO, * Western Reserve Building. Royal Insurance Building. SUBSCRIPTION. One Cay, one year, postage paid, - : $2.00 One Copy, one year, to foreign countries, - = $3.00 Invariably 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, O. Entered at Cleveland Postoffice as second-class mail matter. CLEVELAND, O., DECEMBER 21, 1899. a QuERyY! What connection has the proposed three million dollar dam at Niagara with the thirty-three million dollar drainage canal at Chicago? £ i OO GEORGIAN Bay to Lake Ontario, or Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie, offers the Dominion government an excellent - chance to keep up its canal expenditures now that the St. Lawrence system has been completed to the fourteen feet draft. The Welland canal will always receive a certain amount of traffic, but the route from Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario, if practicable from an engineering standpoint, would soon prove itself to be a more valuable route than the Welland has been for some years past. i oo oxmxmn __—_ WE have received from the Weather Bureau, Department of Agriculture, a copy of the first ice bulletin issued for the season. ‘This chart is issued weekly on Tuesdays during the _ winter season, based upon data from regular Weather Bureau stations, supplemented by reports from selected voluntary observers. At the corresponding date of 1898 there was much ice reported from stations on the Great Lakes now reporting none, and the Missouri and Mississippi rivers were frozen much farther south than at this date, with ice gener- ally varying from 6 to 18 inches. - i oe ote _ Tue recent collision between the North Star and the Sie- mens in the ‘‘Soo’’ river, among other things, points out the necessity for pilots to have a thorough and clear compre- hension of what is permitted by the revised ‘‘steering and ‘sailing rules.’’ It is within the province of the local inspectors of steamboats to see that candidates applying for an original or first license should be perfect in the study of _ the ‘‘rules of the road.’’ It is too early yet to say who was to “blame for the late ‘‘Soo’’ river casualty, but that a fault existed somewhere is beyond argument. er ar en a Tae Deep Waterways Board of Engineers are taking steps to determine the effect of shoal water on the speed of steam craft. This seems a peculiarly foreign subject for _ a committee composed of civil and military engineers to _ take up and ultimately elucidate, it issafeto say though that there will be less, rather than more, of the elucidation part ‘We venture to say, that when the Deep Waterways Commission begin to have even a superficial or hazy notion of the job they have tackled they will drop the inquiry as _ they would a hot brick. The subject does not come within the province of this committee, if it did, they are incapable of deciding it. The rule of thumb regarding the depth of “water required, is, that it should equal the vessels length, ‘then comes in the form of hull and propulsion, nature of the bottom sailed over and the rate of speed maintained, not to peak of the specific gravity of the water and a score of other considerations, TO PREVENT LOWERING OF LAKE LEVELS. There seems to be a misconception regarding the result which is expected to accrue from placing remedial works to limit the outflow of water at Niagara. The general expres- sion, and in fact the phrase used by the Waterways Commis- sion as well as others, is ‘“‘to raise the levels,” when what is really meant is to maintain the levels, or prevent periodical lowering. The method of deeping shoal water is by scouring off the bottom, such as the process used at the South Pass, at the mouth of the Mississippi, or by dredging, after the manner in which Montreal has been made a sea-port, and more mar- kedly soin the transformation of Glasgow on the River Clyde. We have printed the opinions of several authorities and interested parties in this issue of the RECORD, all of whom seem to dread the backing up of the surface levels so as to inundate reclaimed low-lying land, such, however, is not the purpose or intention for the establishment of remedial works at Niagara. The object isto regulate wud maintain the best surface levels so as to permit of no four or six feet ebb, whenever strong westerly weather prevails for any length of time. The only danger, or rather feature, which we can see, in placing this, the first artificial obstruction to the natural flow of water on the lakes, is, in establishing a precedent for future similar obstructions, with the ultimate probability of there being a dozen of them built at different points and from time to time. We may instance the water falling three feet at the Lime Kiln Crossing and towering high at the eastern end of Lake Erie. A sufficient head of water could not be put on so as to back the water, and send it several miles up the Detroit river against strong and continued westerly winds, there- fore, it might be argued, that in the near future remedial works so as to regulate depths from Detroit to Bar Point would be necessary, as once out on the lake an increasing depth would be met with until the superabundance was found at the Eastern ports on Lake Erie. However, lake commerce may not be held back by indulg- ing in views of what may take place in this respect in the future. If the dam at Niagara will assist, as it certainly will, in maintaining an ordinary level under moderate weather conditions, then the project should be put in force and its expermental features be permitted to demonstrate the practical and actual value of such artificial obstruction, at the same time it is somewhat too late in the day toask the enormous vessels now engaged in lake traffic to go over bridges and under arches in their path through the lakes. oe ov THE SHIP CANAL. Engineer George W. Rafter, in charge of the survey for the proposed ship canal.from the Great Lakes to the At- lantic ocean has completed his preliminary work and drawn his report. The project is to cut a canal thirty feet deep and 340 feet wide, which is three and one third times the depth, and five times the width of the Erie canal from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario around Niagara Falls, leaving Lake Ontario at Oswego, through the Oswegoriver to Oneida Lake, thence through the Mohawk Valley to the Hudson river. A single lock will be a thousand feet long, with walls over fifty feet high. The greatest problem has been to find storage for water to feed this great canal on its various levels, and yet not affect the water supply of manufacturing concerns now using various rivers. Mr. Rafter plans a great dam at Carthage, on the Black river, in Jefferson county, making a lake covering eighty square miles of land to feed the canal. From this reservoir Mr. Rafter has located a canal ninety miles long, as wide asthe Erie, to the proposed ship canal just west of Rome, and on the way down has planned a sec- ondary reservoir in the Salmon river. The commission’s work also includes a similiar survey for a canal of the same character leaving the St. Lawrence river at the head of the Coteau Rapids and thence into and through Lake Champ- lain. —[———$— $$ $$ THAT ST. LAWRENCE ROUTE. The Montreal special, dated Wednesday, states that at a meeting of the Harbor Commissioners a settlement was reached between the syndicate headed by W. J. Conners and the commissioners for the erection of grain elevators at Montreal. Mr. Conners accepted the original agreement with a few minor changes. The syndicate has already given out the contracts in connection with the work, and the con- struction will be commenced at an early date, AN ARMOR PLATE PLANT. It will be recalled that last winter Congress refused to contract for armor plate for the new war vessels at a figure the mills would accept. Prices have risen since then, and at the rates prevailing to-day it would cost a million dollars more to obtain the required quantity than at that time. This has led to a renewal of the proposition that the gov- ernment shaill erect a great armor-plate mill of its own and abandon the contract system. The argument is a strong one, that the United States should put itself in a position independent of individuals in the manufacture of all mater- ials for the national defense, whether armor, ammunition or guns. The government has turned the old navy yard at Wash- ington into a manufactory of large naval guns, and the work done at Manila and Santiago shows the superb quali- ties of these arms. Rapid-fire guns for secondary batteries are still, however, purchased from manufacturers. The success of the government gun plant is a powerful argument for the extension of the practice to armor—more especially as all work on armored vessels is at a standstill, because of the disagreement as to price last winter. It is stated that an effort will be made in Congress to put the project through. It will, however, require about two years for the erection of such a plant, so that, even were the idea adopted, our new navy would have to wait, or enough armor be contracted for to supply the needs of the next twenty-four months. i OO A DECISION ON PILOTAGE. The Commissioner of Navigation recently decided that ~ the statutes of the United States do not require fines to be levied upon owners or masters of vessels because of the fact that Canadian, rather than American pilots have been em- ployed as steersmen. Section 4438 provides that American pi- lots shall be on board, and recently the owners of the steamer C. A. Street, of Port Huron, were find $100 for permitting that vessel to be steered by a Canadian pilot. Subsequently Commissioner Chamberlain and Assistant Secretary Spauld- ing took the matter up, and, after a careful examination of the law, it was decided that where an American pilot was on board there was no improrpiety in turning the wheel over to a Canadian pilot, who, presumably, was better acquainted with the channel than his fellow-steersman. Gen. Spauld- ing, therefore, addressed the following letter to Collector of Customs Avery at Port Huron: ‘“‘This department is in receipt of your letter transmitting an application by Capt. A P. Tallino for relief in the matter of a penalty of $100 reported to have been incurred through a violation of section 4438, R. S., in the case of the steamer @.:A. Street. ‘The department understands that the taking on board of a Canadian pilot in addition to its full complement of officers required by law, did not constitute an offense under the section cited. “Instructions with a view to the repayment of the money exacted in the case by the Collector of Customs at Ogdens- burg, have been given to that officer. It is suggested that the applicant communicate with him for further informa- tion regarding the matter.” Or or RIPARIAN RIGHTS. A marine man who has kept pretty close watch on the matter of riparian rights for the past 35 years, has arrived at the pertinent conclusion that a deed conveying land border- ing onastream gavea riparian rightto the center of the stream, as was shown some years ago when certain Toledo men dredged sand in the middle of thestream near Marengo Island. ‘They were called on by the owner of the abutting property, and the sand men refused to pay. The matter was taken into court, and the men who were taking the sand were compelled to pay. The opinion was expressed that a deed conveyed with it, whether mentioned in the conveyance, all riparianright. If it does not, the man who sold the property had no claim on riparian rights, and therefore the land was the property of the United States government and subject to pre-emption. <P a The Union Boiler Tube Cleaner Co., 255 Penn avenue, Pittsburg, Pa., has just completed a contract for cleaning two Hazelton or Porcupine boilers having over two thousand tubes, one end of which is welded tight. These tubes were badly scaled, and the closed end required a special tool of unique design as well as the use of theiro n design of flex- : - ible shaft. : 4 sy