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10 THE MARINE RECORD. OCTOBER 18, Ig00, ESTABLISHED 1878. Published Every Thursday by THE MARINE RECORD PUBLISHING CO., Incorporated. Cc. E. RUSKIN, - - - - + Manager. CAPT. JOHN SWAINSON, - - - Editor. CLEVELAND, CHICAGO, Western Reserve Building. Royal Insurance Building. SUBSCRIPTION. One Copy, 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. Entéred at Cleveland Postoffice as second-class mail matter. No attention is paid to anonymous communications, but the wishes of contributors as to the use of their names will be scrupulously regarded. CLEVELAND, O., OCTOBER 18, 1900. ee A WELL CONTESTED COLLISION CASE. The steamers Livingstone and Grand Traverse came into collision in Lake Erie in October, 1896, and the Grand Tra- verse with her cargo, was totally lost, while, the former ship sustained upwards of $7,000 damage. The Lackawanna Transportation Co., as owner, and the Delaware, Lackawan- na & Western Railroad Co., as charterer of the Grand Tra- verse, at once libeled the Livingstone in Buffalo for $65,000 damages. ‘Then the cargo insurers joined in the suit, claim- ing $5,000 or $6,000 more. The Livingstone was promptly bonded andthe suit finally tried in Ithaca, N. Y., before United States Judge Coxe, of the northern district of New York. It is somewhat unusual to hear admiralty cases in Itha- ca, but Judge Coxe is a lecturer in Cornell University and wishes to give his students the benefit of attending the actual trial of such a suit. He found both steamers to have been in fault, much to the dissatisfaction of the owners of the Grand Traverse. The case was then referred toa United States commissioner in Buffalo to ascertain the damages. He filed his report in January, 1900, and as it charged the Livingstone with the whole of the cargo damage, her owners took an appeal. This was recently argued in the new admiralty court for the western district of New York before Judge Hazel. He has just filed a careful opinion which fully sustains the Living- stone’s position, holding that in cases of collision due to mutual fault the cargo if owned by those operating the sun- ken ship, can only recover half its loss from the other boat; if owned by innocent strangers it may collect its entire value from the surviving ship, but this, in turn, is entitled to charge back one-half of such amount against whatever balance may be charged against it on account of the loss of the sun- ken ship. The loss of the Grand Traverseis fixed at $37,500 and her cargo at about $5,v00, or $42,500 in all. The Ljiv- - ingstone’s damage is found to have been about $7,500, According to the admiralty rule of division of loss one half of the difference between these two amounts, or with inter- est about $20,000, will be in round numbers the amount of the decree against the Livingstone, and against which, with: the expenses of the litigation, her underwriters protect her. The owners of the Grand Traverse propose to appeal the case to the court of appeals, sitting in New York city. H.D. Goulder, Esq., was counsel for the Grand Traverse; F. H. Canfield, Esq., for the Livingstone; C. E. Kremer, Esq., for the underwriters, and W. B. Cady, Esq., for the cargo of the Grand Traverse. : eye A NEW ERA IN AMERICAN SHIPS. American shipbuilding has passed through many discour- aging periods of evolution, and the height of its remarkable development in the middle half of the present century can hardly be measured by the period of stagnation that has fallen upon it for the past two decades. Of this latter we have had enough, and no fruits of our war in Cuba and the Orient are better appreciated as a whole than the new inter- ests that have been stimulated in shipbuilding circles. A part of the present activity in the shipping interest is due to the general prosperity of the country and the withdrawal of some ships from the paths of commerce for war purposes; but, after due allowances are made for these, the fact re- mains that the American shipbuilding industry is entering upon a new era that may carry it to the high water mark of half a century ago. Abundant and indubitable facts point toward the promising future of American shipbuilding of war vessels, ocean steamers, yachts and coasting vessels. There are certain tendencies in this new movement that show the changes in the commercial needs of the country. The day of the small vessel has nearly passed, and those from 4,000 tons up are the universal favorites. A vessel of this size can be handled with the same number of men as required for one of half the tonnage, and its earning capac- ity is thereby materially increased. Hand in hand with the growth of larger vessels of enormous carrying capacity, will go the reduction in speed. The fast vessels, which are built primarily to carry passengers and the mails, and incidentally to break records, are not profitable investments. They do not pay whether flying under the American or British flag, unless heavily subsidized. There is sentiment in the thought of owning these handsome greyhounds of the ocean, but they are costly luxuries and their number will be limited. On the Pacific, where trade with the Orient is to develop, the new vessels will all be of large size and immense carry- ing capacity, and of comparatively slow speed. It is prom- ised that over twenty-five of these large steamers will be en- gaged in the Oriental trade with our Pacific coast within the next five years. Every shipyard on the Atlantic and Pacific to-day is busy, and it is impossible to place new contracts for a vessel anywhere in this country. Within the next six months a large fleet of ocean steamers, coasters, wooden ships and warships will be launched. This is not a matter of guesswork or of prophecy, but is an actual fact, based on the returns of the different ship- building plants and the investigations of the Commissioner of Navigation. Our own new navy furnishes considerable work for the plants, and the agitation for keeping one ship in the process of construction, in each of the important navy yards all the time, is likely to meet with a favorable out- come. There are fifty war vessels, of an aggregate displace- ment of 140,813 tons, in the course of construction or under contract in the various seacoast shipyards, and, besides these, Congress has authorized six other warships, of 76,500 tons displacement, the contracts for which have not yet been let. These warships run all the way from the small torpedo boats up to the magnificent battle ships of the Kentucky and Kearsarge type. The growing needs of our navy tend to stimulate competition in the construction of vessels of every type, for, after the ship-building plant is once thoroughly equipped, it can accept orders for widely different types of vessels. It may be said that our new navy consequently gave the first incentive to the present movement in American ship building and induced builders to equip large and expensive plants at favorable points along the two coasts. Otherwise the present demand for Ameri- can ships could not have been met in even a partially successful way. On the Pacific coast, the large steamers in the course of construction represent an immense tonnage in the aggregate. For the Hawaiian trade alone there are four steamers on the stocks with an aggregate gross tonnage of 26,500. ° The Pacific Mail Steamship Co. has two large steamers partly finished, and The International Navigation Co. has two more, while the Oceanic Steamship Co. (Spreckles), have three building. On the Atlantic coast there are three large steamers in the yards for the Cuban trade. These ten steamers represent over 81,000 gross tons, and they do not include the new coasting traders. There are over forty-five vessels of the latter class in course of construction or under contract in this country, and as their gross total tonnage is over 73,000, their average size must be decidedly larger than the average coaster built in former days. In this list are included some small vessels of not much more than local importance, and their small size increases the average capacity for the larger number of big ships. The large four and five-masted sailing vess are in great demand, and one at least is being built of 5,500 tons and with six masts. The rates for ocean freight are higher by 25 per cent, to-day than they, were a year ago, and the cost of construc. tion has adyanced proprotionately because of the higher cost of lumber and structural iron and steel. These two offsetting factors do not seem to influence the course of the trade to any appreciable extent, and, from present indica tions, we may look for, new fleets of American ships on the © water, by next summer, while others will take their places on the stocks of a score of different Atlantic and Pacific shipyards. Those who have the interest and glory of the - American flag on the high seas at heart will find these har bingers for a new era of American ship building good rea sons for. being satisfied. at the course of history in the past two years.—George E. Walsh, in Science and Industry. ———— oor _ SOCIETY OF NAVAL ARCHITECTS. List of papers to be read before the Society of Naval Archi- tects and Marine Engineers, at its eighth annual meeting, Thursday, November 15, 1900: ee Capacity Test of a Unique Form of Air Pump, by F. Meriam Wheeler, Esq., member. Interchangeability of Units for Marine Work, by W. D- Forbes, Esq., member. The United States Experimental Model Basin, by Naval Constructor D. W. Taylor, U. S. N., member. The Composition and Classification of Paints and Var- nishes, by Prof, A. H. Sabin. Ce Tests of the Electric Plants of the Battleships Kearsarge — and Kentucky, by Naval Constructor J. J. Woodward, U.S. N., member. j Coaling of the U. S. S. Massachusetts at Sea, by Spencer. Miller, Esq., associate. Notes on Recent Improvements in Foreign Shipbuilding Plants, by Assistant Naval Construetor H. G. Gillmor, U.. S. N., member. ; Can the American Shipbuilder under Present Conditions Compete with the British and German Shipbuilders in the Production of the Largest Class of Ocean Passenger and Freight Steamships? By Geo. W. Dickie, Esq., member of council. Classification. Rules, by Theodore Lucas, Esq., member. Recent Designs of Battleships and Cruisers for the U.S: . Navy, by Chief Constructor Philip Hichborn, U, S. N., vice- _ president. . : A Comparison of the Contract Prices of our Naval Vessels». by. Harrison S. Taft, Esq., associate. ; Launch of a Cruiser and a Battleship, by James Dickie» Esq., member. oti The, Safety of Torpedo Boats at Sea and in Action under Various Conditions, by Naval Constructor Lloyd Bankson» U. S. N., member. oo oe HARNESSING THE SEA. Many persons assume lightly that the force of the tides and ocean waves will be utilized some day so as to enable us to dispense with coal. But the outlook for this is not very promising. Numerous wave motors and tide-power schemes have been invented, but none have produced good practical results, Wave motors have, it is true, been used for light pumping, but they are still to beclassed astoys. Tide- power is much overestimated. The disappointment of those who have experimented with it has come of their neglect to- figure out how much water and how much fall are required to produce a horse-power. A horse-power fora day of ten hours, for example, would require something like 120 tons of water falling from a height of 100 feet, so thata 500 horse power factory, say, would need 60,c00 ton of water at a I00- foot head. On the basis of 36-cubic feet of water to the ton, there would thus be over 2,000,000 cubic feet of water and this would make a fair-sized pond, say, about 1,000 feet long, 200 feet wide and 10 feet deep. There is in these few figures something that may help to open the eyes of the tide-. power plan inventor and of those who arein the habit of putting money into such things.—Ex. or oO eS VESSELS CLASSED. 4 Vessels classed and rated this week by the American Bu- reau of Shipping in the Record of American and Foreign Shipping: American screw Sierra, owned by the Oceanic Steamship Co,; schooner Edward T. Stolesbury; three-mast- ed schooner W. R. Perkins; British schooner G. S. Tropp; and British half-brig J. S. Bennett.