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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. Entered 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., JUNE 13, 1901. THERE is a general complaint of shoal water at Lake Erie ports, and the blame is chiefly to be laid at the doors of the municipal government, and more markedly so at Buffalo than elsewhere, although Cleveland is also to be mentioned as well as other Ohio ports. The protest is a standing one and the complaint is chronic at Chicago. ——— oO 2 oe Tat Port Huron sanitary canalis not yet in an advanced stage of construction. It now appears that the contractors are experiencing some delay in obtaining the property required. and through which the trench will have to pass. On the completion of this open sewer. from Lake Huron to St. Clair river, it will simply mean that the people down stream will take a modicum at least, of Port Huron sewerage. ; OOO Ol OS By.some manner of means it is taken as an accepted fact that shipbuilders would receive the bulk of the benefits and profit from the new shipping act. Nothing can be farther from the truth. In the first place it may be said that no subsidy of any kind, direct or indirect, is given to the ship- builder by the proposed shipping act, and second it may be pointed out that no American shipyard at present is making such profits as those which are being divided by the owners of foreign shipbuilding plants. LT LI To. ASSIST the average layman in correcting his compass courses we would suggest that the Superintendent of Com- passes, Bureau of Equipment, Hydrographic Office, U. S. N., have printed around the white edges orin the center of steering,,as well as all other compass cards, a deviation dia- gram, made: interchangeable for the various parallels of latitude, as without this knowledge the helmsman would never know how the ship was heading geographically. Memo- randum dots showing the readings of the clinometer, the heeling error, variation, etc., would help to garnish up the mechanical circle. oe Every city along the chain of lakes desires and requires the clearest and purest of water for drinking and domestic purposes. Every city, town, village or hamlet also drain their sewerage toward the lake front. The larger cities keep builditig cribs, forming permanent obstructions like small unlighted and frequently uncharted islands miles out from the approach ‘to the ports, s> as to insure the intake being in: clear water and outside the drift of purely local, sewerage. These distant cribs are already beginning to en- croach on the general navigable waterway, outside of the State jurisdiction and the outer harbor limits in charge of the Federal government, and enclosing the piers, break- waters and all else. There is no present or immediate danger of cribs from either side overlapping each other in midlake, but the subject in general would stand the direct attention of the Secretary of War, under whose charge is placed the improvement and conservancy of navigable waterways. THE MARINE RECORD. LOAD LINE AND MANNING SCALE. It passeth comprehension why the officers of the Steam- boat Inspection Service should consider it their duty to hamper, harass and annoy lake tonnage by blundering over the intent of the laws enacted each year by their board of supervising inspectors. _ There are mistakes enough made by the board under the sanction of the cover of the apparent acquiesence of Secre- tary of the Treasury Gage, but when it comes to the local inspectors taking the reins in their own hands, without con- sulting their district officer, or the head of the department, it is simply holding this branch of the service up to the ever present and increasing ridicule which it is continually bring- ing upon itself. The latest freak action is that of the U. S. local inspectors of steamboats at Buffalo, in insisting upon a load line and manning scale being specified for an Az wooden steamer built in 1888, owned and well kept up by one of the most progressive firms engaged in lake shipowning, and never loaded, it is safe to say, within several feet of her ability. This peculiarly aggressive and nonsensical ruling of the local inspectors, entered upon without a previous under- standing being had with their supervising inspector at Cleveland, brought about correspondence with Washington, and it is now given out that the lake locals will be circulari- zed to the effect that load line and manning scale enact- ments apply solely to tonnage with which they have no con- cern in any way, viz ocean or coastal. In this connection it is but justice to observe that Super- vising-Inspector Stone, stationed at Cleveland, repudiated the action of his Buffalo locals on the matter being brought to his attention through the medium of the steamer’s owners, furthermore, Capt. Stone, no doubt, fully realized the asinin_ ity of placing a Plimsoll mark on the sides of the large steel carriers, ten feet or so above the draft that they are compell- ed to load to on account of the shoal links connecting the lake waterways and the draft of water at all prominent lake ports. It is a pity that the gentle waye of somnolency enwrapped around the steamboat inspector’s office at Buffalo since the days of the canal schooner, should have been disturbed, however, having enjoyed their yawn, it will be a measure of relief to themselves and all concerned when they resume the ordinary tranquility of their clerkly duties, otherwise it will no doubt be in order to send a ripple over their sinecure security, by exacting actual instead of a passive round of pleasures. —$—$—$—$ $e STEEL SPARS FOR YACHTS. The disaster to Shamrock II in bringing all her top ham- per about the ears of royalty has, or no doubt will arouse considerable discussion regarding the question of properly sparring racing yachts. The similar experience indulged in by the Constitution brings the subject still more promi- nently in the foreground, and on this side of the Atlantic. The loss of a vessel’s sticks is usually attributable to her being over-sparred and this, in large mercantile as well as the more moderate sized fancy tonnage, that is to say, when a vessel throws the spars out of herself, it is much like the hull protesting against being given too much to do, or, a bronco unhorsing its rider, only that the latter does it out of pure cussedness, while in the case of a yacht it is a fair, above board, honest and shipshape objection to ill treatment. There can be no two opinions regarding the advantages of steel over wood for lower masts, at the same time, it is no digression to state that neither will stand without being ad- equately supported. It does not follow that because of the loss of the hollow steel spars that, the best forest product excels that of the furnace manufacture in any one particular, and chiefly so as_ regards their strength, weight and durability or life. The question, therefore, appears to center in the quality and thickness of the metal, as regards the former, the usual tests made pre- viously to rolling the plates into semi-circular form, pre- cludes the possibility of inferior steel being used. So atten- tion can be directed to the factor of safety allowed in skin- ning down to the lowest possible fraction in the weight of steel and the strains and stresses which are liable to set in when the metal is rounded and formed into spars. This too, outside of the question of over sparring, and the proper spread of rigging for supporting the masts on end. It is, therefore, safe to say that by the use of a liberal factor of safety a steel spar can be put together to stand any strain that can or should be put uponit, and so that if the bolt grown JUNE 13, Ig0I. ropes hold out they will exercise sufficient leverage to make the hull Jay on its beam ends, irrespective of good or bad seamanship. The kings of the forest, with their butts resting on a ves- sel’s keelson, high quality timber built solidly in slabs and hooped at frequent intervals or even the outside flitches of the best quality of trees grown and hooped together in a barrel-like form with a hollow center, can not withstand the e treatment that can be given steel spars and taken withim- punity under all conditions, therefore, we argue that the loss of the Constitution’s and Shamrock’s lower masts by no means favors the substitution of. wood for steel nor in any way detracts from the superiority of steel over wood. a oe oo CHICAGO AS A SEAPORT. With the clearance this season of four steamers for British and European ports from Chicago, it has become ‘‘quite the thing’? to laud the ‘‘Windy City’’ as the most westein _ seaport on our eastern coast line, notwithstanding the fact. that the vessels could have sailed with equal safety from a point afew hundred miles farther west and north if their cargoes had been taken on at Duluth, Minn., or Superior. Wis. There is also an imparted prestige and glory evinced at other lake ports on account of this experimental mode of traffic, and we have been told that even Cleveland is now potentially an ocean port, and this, too, while the Canadian government, as well as mercantile and commercial interests, - . are in a quandary to determine whether the gulf port of . Quebec, in the province of that name, isin all respects a fair, safe and open port to center upon for their Atlantic and coastwise traffic to terminate during the summer season. It is said that the river Vang-tse-Kiang is navigable and regularly traversed for more than 600 miles by the tea ships _ bound for Hankow, but in actual practice, it is fast become ing a question for modern tonnage to even enter that river at Woosung on their way to Shanghai, and any vessel in- tending to load at Hankow, could tell no one so, because it is not listed in the world’s seapor:s, where, however, we find Chicago, the only Chicago, presumably Chicago, Ills. Just so are we told about Rosario, the second city of the Argentine Republic, but no ocean tonnage worthy of the name in its modern acceptation ever traversed the rivet high enough to even sight Rosario, much less load there, any more than a profitable oversea trade could be carried on - between St. Louis and old world ports. It is with much pleasure we note the expressions of satis- faction given forth by the manager of the Northwestern Steamship Co. He is not daunted in the least by the fact «> that only one of his boats managed to reach the Gulf of St. Lawrence without great delay and structural damage, with the consequent detention and expense account to be saddled on to the freight earned by the carriage of a few hundred tons of cargo. The Northwestern, the first boat launched, was delayed 16 days, andthe Northman was delayed 11 days, after starting from Chicago, byjan ice jam inthe St. - Clair river. The first boat was also several days in dock at Detroit receiving blades to her propeller, etc., broken in the ice. In extenuation of this experience it may be said that this was the first ice jam which has occurred there for 24 years. Then the Northwestern collided with a-dredge and went aground at Sparrow Hawk for five days and six more were consumed in Montreal repairing the damage done. The Northeastern stranded on Ballard: Reef at the mouth of Detroit river, and only reached Buffalo: for repairs with the assistance of steam pumps, etc. However, she started away again late last week, and it is to be hoped that her initial troubles areat anend. The Northman had better luck, reach- ing Antwerp without accident or unusual delay, all of which \- goes to show that the bare fact that a passage can be madefrom one point to another by no means establishes the route as a successful one for waterborne traffic, any more than the dis- . covery of the North Pole will open up maritime and com- mercial relations with the blue-nosed denizens of that section of the.country, which some authorities are prone to clothe with May pole characteristics. i OO AN automatic system of signals for the purpose of warning vessels in stormy weather against the proximity of reefs and rocks has been exhibited to German marine experts. The automatic part of the apparatus is said to consist of a wheel with a number of cogs arranged at suitable intervals, which slide over a Morse apparatus. The latter is connected with a ladder placed vertically on rising ground on shore or on a light-house, The electric waves emanating are taken up by receiving apparatus on vessels having such within a radius: of 7 miles. A bell sounds and the receiver notes the spot against which vessels should be warned. _ . |