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fe THE MARINE RECORD. AUGUST 29, I9OI. CHICAGO. Special Corresponaence to The Marine Record. It would now appear as if the North West would never catch up to her scheduled time of sailings, owing to trouble with the Belleville boilers. The Sanitary District of Chicago will shortly begin the construction of a modern type bascule bridge at Randolph street, Chicago, at a cost of $175,000. The Scotch built, Canadian owned steamer, Midland Queen, is due here cn Wednesday with a small portion of her Manchester cargo. She will at once enter, the lake trade. nae The best parcel of dock property in Kenosha has changed hands within the past few daysand a large coal dock will be operated there by Messrs, Gorman &-Kotz.. Mr. James Gorman is mayor of the town. The body of Capt. Edward Commerford, who had been missing two days, was recovered from the river at Chicago on Saturday. Commerford was sixty-eight years old and widely known on the river front. The report that a Chicora spar was sighted on the lake near St, Joseph turns out to have been a fisherman’s stake. The Chicora seems to have been effectually lost in a secret place and with a degree of totality seldom evidenced in Lake Michigan history. : The agents of the Western Transportation Co. and of. the steamer Northwestern were fined $25 and costs last week for throwing steamer sweepings and garbage into the river. Up to the present time there have been fifteen firms sum- moned for violations of this character. Most of the cases are still pending. The barge R. lL. Fryer, 527 tons, built at Detroit in 1880, owned by C. A. Calbick & Co., is in the hands of the Ship Owners’ Dry Dock Co. for a rebuild on account. of her collision with the Falcon in the ‘‘Soo’’ river. If Mr. Wat- terson, superintendent of the yard, is given carte blanche he’ll turn out a new Fryer and better than ever she has been, but it will be a big job on a little craft. The steamer Falcon was libeled by the United States mar- shal at Milwaukee last week on a claim preferred by Capt. James Calbick, W. H. Wood and the Pilson Lumber. Co., of Chicago, owners of the barge Robert L. Fryer, for damage sustained by the barge in a collision with the Falcon in St. Mary’s river recently. After the steamer had been in cus- ' tody a few hours she was released, as a bond had _ been pre- pared for her, The lunatic notion of the Northwestern Steamship Co., has exploded and the fleet condemned. for Atlantic service. The Northtown reached here this week after a voyage of 87 days and when overhauled she will be put in the lake trade. It is the published intention of the manager of the line to send the boats to the coast before navigation closes on. the St, Lawrence, so that they have about 60 days lake work ahead of them. RATES Caer Ore Lieut. W. J. Wilson, U. S. N. of the brauch Hydrographic _ Office has received a letter from Capt..K.'A. Jensen, master of the Tampico, hence, all well at San Francisco after a-pas- sage, via the Straits of Magellen of 98 days... The Tampico was built at the yards of the Craig Ship Building Co., Toledo, | and Capt. Jensen is the first lake seaman to take a craft : ‘around to the California coast. He had probably been there before though, and had ocean experience. . The steamer. F. T. Heffelfinger, third of the fleet of ‘four building tothe order of the Peavey Grain Co.,,of Duluth, : was launched at South Chicago on Saturday... The Wells, fourth and last of the fleet, will be ready for the water in -abouta month. The new boat is 450 feet long, 50 feet beam and 28% feet deep and will belong to the 7,000-ton class. A. B. Wolvin, general manager of the steel trust fleet and James Wallace, general manager of the American Ship Building Co., were present. — -. Capt. Calvin Carr, manager of the Elphicke fleet and agent fora number of others, well known in marine citcles here and a member of the Chicago Board of Trade for more For the gas company the rate’ was ‘made 15 cents. than twenty-five years, has posted his membership of that institution for sale and will retire, from active business life. Capt. Carr, with his wife, will take up residence on a farm which he recently purchased near Oswego, N. Y., where he was born. ‘The captain is sixty-six years of age and his early days were spent sailing vessels on the lakes. ee General Passenger Agent W. K. Greenebaum, of the Williams line, announces that the contract for the new steamer which the company intends to build will be placed just as soon as the steel strike is brought to a close. Greene- baum says his line has an option ona berth in one of the large shipyards, and that the boat will be completed early in July, 1902. Of course, passenger agents like to laud their own lines, and keel lengths are good things to stretch in shipyards, but there is a limit even to lake shipbuilding and passenger boat equipment. : Another advance in sailors’ wages is talked of, to take ef- fect next week. The last raise was from $1.75 to $2, chiefly affecting lumber carriers. The union bases the raise on the intended 50 cent per M feet increase in freight rates. The sum of 25 cents per day for each man of a small crew doesn’t seem much, but the owners of the small class of craft in the lumber trade say it cuts quite a figure in a property that is barely paying expenses now and is a losing investment in slack times, when they alone have to stand the outlay. Lumber dealers are reaching out West and South so as to be well ahead of the trade inits briskest demand. From Lake Michigan prospectors are still traveling to the Pacific Coast, and it is learned that Jacob Mortenson, president of the Garth Lumber Co., of Garth, Mich., is now out there look- ing over timber lands. Walter Prickett, a lumber man of Sidnaw, formerly of Marinette, is looking over timber lands in Oregon. W. H. Hill, of Menominee, left recently on a second trip to the coast and A. B. Freeman, formerly manager for Raber & Watson, is uow out there looking for a location. H. Scott, a cruiser for the Bay Shore Lumber -Co., of Menominee, left last week for California to look over timber, which the company contemplates purchasing. The report is sent out from here that ‘“‘the Midland Queen is the ordinary type of coasting vessel and hails from ‘Canada. She has beenin the English coasting trade for the last year and her owners have decided to bring her back to the lakes again, the trade over on the other side having proved unprofitable. It was at first reported that the Queen would engage in the same trade as the Northwestern Steam- ship Co. between Chicago and European ports, but since the latter company was compelled to abandon the scheme because of the high rates of insurance, her owners have given up the idea.” The foregoing is altogether in error. The Midland Queen was built for the lake trade to the order of Canadian owners, and this is her maiden trip, also her first cargo. An electric log, the invention of Capt. A. N. McGray, is being tried on the steamer North Land. The new log oper- ‘ates a register on the bridge or in the pilot house, and its principal advantage over the latest inventions is already ap- parent. Capt. Brown of the North Land, in speaking of the “new invention, said that in a run of 250 miles the new log had not varied one-tenth of a mile, and says it will bethe coming thing, being, he says, absolutely accurate and en- abling a master in thick weather to tell exactly where he is at without leaving the pilot house or bridge. It is indeed a save-all if it does all that Brown says it will. On theother hand, patent logs are a drug on the market and this one is perhaps about as good asthe average latest idea, in any ‘case, it can b2 only one L,, out of four, necessary to push a vessel safely over the ground. When the steamer Madagascar reached Racine on Monday with a cargo of soft coal for the Racine’ Gas’ Company her captain ‘was confronted with a demand on the part of the longshoremen for an additional 3 cents a'ton for handling ler cargo. ‘The gas company refused to pay the extra amount and the men struck on the boat. The gas company must now take men from its trenches to handle the cargo, and it is likely that the steamer will be hung up for a week ‘or more.’ Last spring the longshoremen madé a rate of 12 cents a ton for handling coal for the regular coal companies, i, It was held by the men'that the gas company received only soft coal of a kind hard to handle, and the other companies took both hard and soft, and therefore were entitled to a lower rate. The gas company gets about a half dozen cargoes a year, and the men say they could not make as good rates for the work.’ Vessel owners would need to look after a demurrage clause when chartering for Racine. DETROIT. Special Correspondence to the Marine Record. The Straits of Mackinac car ferry Ste. Marie is in drydock for repairs after stranding during a fog on Graham shoal. The late census places the population of Canada at 5%4 millions in round figures; years ago the.sister territory.was credited with 6 to 7 millions; =. . Hexic yen hed aed Capt. Reid, the well known wrecker, is cleaning out the old hulls lying in the bay at Sarnia, they will be moved and beached somewhere where they can do no harm. | s The Arnold Line has added the Chippewa and Iroquois to their fleet; and now talk of another new passenger. boat. The line controls the passenger trade in and adjacent to the Straits of Mackinac. Capt. John Quinn, the submarine diver, will remove the wreck of the Smith & Post at Southeast shoal, under con- tract with the Lake Carriers’ Association. Dynamite will be used and the spot cleared to four fathoms depth. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Spaulding, has remitted a $200 fine imposed by the collector at Port Huron against Charles A. Eddy, owner of the steamship Penobscot, for a technical violation of the navigation laws in force in the St. Mary’s river. The steel cargo steamer Yosemite will be launched from the Wyandotte yards of the Detroit Ship Building Co. in about a week. The keel for the second of the new D. & B. line boats, the Eastern States, will be laid on the ways vacated by the Yosemite. The steamboat excursion season will end about Sept. 15. The firm of Ashley & Dustin enjoyed an excellent season with their steamers Frank EK. Kirby and Wyandotte, while the Tashmoo of the White Star Line has had phenomenal success and is still booked ahead up to Sept. 8. Next season the firm will have another speedy passenger steamer, and from all indications she will also have all the work she wants. : The local steamboat inspectors, or whoever keeps count of the number of passengers boarding steamers at Toledo euchred the White Star Line out of 79 fares last Sunday by their wrong count. Manager Bielman is a genial, whole minded sort of a man, at the same time, the Treasury De- partment might be requested to recoup the owners of the City of Toledo to the amount of her loss on the passenger list through their not permitting the carriage of her full complement. : Orders were received here on Wednesday, tosecurea score of firemen for the North Land, detained several hours at Cleveland, with a large list of passengers and coming up © with a temporary crew in the fire-hold. The Duluth route was. made in fairly regular time, but the Chicago- Buffalo trips have been irregular all through. This is a great set back for the new route, as passenger boats are expected to make fairly regular time or there is no use counting on them for any purpose. The steel steamer O. M. Poe, Capt. John Lowe, owned by the Pittsburg Steamship Co., collided with the steamer Mary C. Elphicke, when abreast of Sarnia on Monday, and both the large craft are badly damaged. The collision occurred near the spot where the Fontana and Martha came together a couple of seasons ago, and as the current is strong there it is supposed that the vessels sheered against their helms. Capt. John Lowe, is one of the most careful, skillful and experienced masters on fresh water, and a host of people will be sorry that the casualty took place. One of the Belleville boilers was removed from the steamer North Land hereon Monday night and it will be placed in the sister ship North West when she arrives. For some time the North West has had trouble with her tubular boilers leaking and has been running whole days behind her schedule. This type of boiler appears to bea complete failure in lake service, as they have been a continual source of annoyance, danger, trouble and expense during the past few seasons, They can burn out firemen quicker than any- thing that was ever put ina stoke hold and they have an awful list of minor casualties to answer for. The engineer corps at the present time is at work getting out new charts, which will be printed in colors, and they will replace the old charts that are now in use. In speaking of the work, Major Fisk, Corps of Engineers U.S. A., said that, the general plan is to re-survey all the lakes to meet present and future conditions for the guidance of deep draft boats. The difficulty with existing charts, he says, is that most of them were got up when the boats of 12 and 14 feet draft were considered big ones, but now that the 500 footers, drawing 18 feet and over, are the rule rather than the exception, it has become imperative that the charts be brought up to date.