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‘MARITIME LAW. PERSONAL INJURY.—OPEN HATCH,—PASSEN: GER STEAMER.—DAMAGES, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. Libellant, a passenger on the steamship Fur- nessia, 10 pass'ng along the between decks to his quarters, fell through a hatchway, and sus- tained injuries for which this suit was brought. The hatch was usually kept covered, but on this occasion was left open for provisions, The pas- sage-way ws dark, and no guard rails were around the hatch, though the habit of the pas- sengers to cross the hatch was known to the offi- cers of the ship, Libellant did not know that the hatch was liable to be open and had never been cautioned in regard to it. Held. that tyy ship was responsible tor the libellant’s injura his damages being assessed at $1,600. Brown, J. The libellant, a young man of 24 years »f age, in September, 1885, took passage on the steam- ship Furnessia from Glasgow to New York. He was a member of his father’s family, for whom through tickets were purchased from Hamburg to Nicollet, Minnesota, via Glasgow and New York, On the second day out he and his younger brother were separated from the rest of the fam- ily and assigned to the quarter of the unmarried men in the lower between decks, His berth was a litile forward of the fore hatch on the starpoard side. The hatch was about 15 feet opg by 12 wide, and was usually covered with a box cover. The lower flight of the stairway opened towards the stern of the ship; and was about 12 or 15 feet forward ofthe hatch. The hatch was usually kept covered, and the passen gersin goin § ware in‘the habit of walking over it. When four o* five days out, the libellant on coming down from the upper deck to go to his quarters for supper between 5 and 6 p. m., feil down the hatchway, which was at that time open, and fractured his leg a little above the ankle, He was treated on the ship, and after arrival for 77 days in th Long Island hi spital. Sixteen montns later he filed this libel to recover his damages. “The weight of evidence is that there was not sufficient light to apprise the libel ant as he went down to go to bis quarters tha: the hatch was open. Had the proof been clear that the hatches above were open, I should have had no doubt that there was sufficient ligbt to enable a person using ordivary care to see that the hatch was open. But the preponderance of proof is to the contrary, The lamps were not lighted and there was no guard or protection erou.d the opening, save ami§ \oywogs ut about 8 inches high over which when the hatch was covered the passengers were accustomed to pass. There was a passage way of about four feetsin width on either side.of the hatch. The hatch had probably been opened for the purpose 9 up provisions; but during the consid- interval that po; le al danger tobe perceived. The ship is therefore legally answerable for not hay: | ingdoneso, = : i ; The question of concurrent negligence on the part of the libellant is one of some nicety. Had the proof shown that hbellant knew that the hatch was liable to be open during the dog: watch in the afternoon when provisions were procured from the hold if wanted, it wouldjbe difficult to aquit him of negligence in attempt- ing to cross'the hatch in these hours, when it was so dark that he could not see whether the cover was on or off. It isnot common prudence for a person to step upon a hatehway in the dark, when he knows the cover is liable to be off. The brother of the libellant had seen this cover off a day or two before. The libellant testifies that he had never seen it off, and did not know that the hatch was liable to be open; and that te, and the various other passengers in that part of the ship were accustomed to cross it frequent- ly. No caution had ever been given to passen- gers in that respect, nor any prohibition against passing over the hatch; or, if given, there wa nh» proof of it, As affecting the amount of damages recovera- ble there is much diversity of view in the judg- mnt of the medicale*yerts who examinehed' st libellant as to the permanent effect of his inju- ries and the extent of hiy disability. The libellant was brought up asa farmer, Upon his discharge from the hospital he went to Nicollet upon a farm purchased there by his father and has worked upon itever since, He testified that he continued to suffer considerable pain, and though able to do all kinds of ordi- nary farm work,he cannot do as much as before the injury, being obliged to rest oftener through weakness and pain occasioned by the fracture. He estimates bis loss of working power and value at about one half. The respondent’s ex- pertestimated it at from one seyeuth to one tenth, The libellant testified that with such land as he would be able to cultivate he could make at farming from $800 to $1.000 a year, if perfectly able-bodied. He has, howeyer no property of his own and works only for his father as.a farm hand, The wages of an able hand at N icollet, he testified, are about $208 a year, besides board. In the case of Purseglove, The Juanita, 93 U. 8. 337, City of Panama, y. Phelps, 101 U, 8 453, ahd of the Washington, 2 Ben. 2279 Wall 513, the injuries, the pain and the final disa- bility were much more severe. In this case, the disability is but partial, and its actual degree not very satisfaciorily established, The limb is a little shorter, but that alone would not affect | prices are cheaper in England, but if we Ghe Marine Record. its use, The curvature below the knee is a Jit-| built as raany ships as she does, they would tle increased and the foot isa little uncurved. The libellant’s general health is good. His ex- pert, judging from the general pain in the kvee, ; imported one fcr the past fifty years. We and a little irregularity im the joining of the fracture which formed aslight displacement in the axis of support, regarded the painin the knee as likely toincrease, rather than diminish, There is no evidence, however, to show any in- crease of pain during the past year; nor is there any circumstantial evidence to corroborate the libellant’s testimony as to any considerable pain still suffered from the injury, On the whole, the case more nearly approaches that ot the Grecian Monarch, 32 Fed. Rep. 636, though at- tended by some circumstances which would en- title the libellant here to a Jarger award. On the other hand, the libellant’s delay in prosecu- ting his suit for sixteen months after his sub- stantial rec. very; the ship’s loss of testimony in the meantime; the somewhat speculative charac- er of the suit, to be inferred from the libel’s be- ing prosecuted in forma pauperis, notwithstand- jng the comfortable circumstances of the libel- lant’s father cannot be wholly ignored, On the whole, I allow him $1,600 and costs. cae STEEL SHIIl-BUILDING ON 'THE LAKES. "Mr. F. B, Norton, of Burlington, Wis., whose name recently appeared in these col- umns in connection with a communication on the above subject, has written a very able and comprehensive letter in defense of Awerican ships to the Milwaukee Sentinal, trom which we make the following ex- tracts: The free-trade party is now surrendering the control of our trade on the Pacific ocean to the British flag just as the same party surrendered the control of our trade on the Atlantic ocean in 1858. It was then tliat the iron ship asserted its supremacy on the sea, but the building and running of iron ships on the ocean wag not in our line just then. The ad valorem tariff of 1846 had been exacted for the express purpose of crippling the iron and other manufacturing industries of the north. The British gov- ernment, always ready to seize an opportu- nity, gave Cunard the niéans to add to his fleet the Persia, his first iron steamship, and to drive the last American steamship from her ports. All was done then, as now, in the name of economy. At the close of that free-trade period we had not a single iron ship in our navy and none of any size in our merchant marine, and for lack of them we lost enough the first year of the war to , | baye secured us the control of the best trade rge steamships running between | es and Sydney, with an annual sub- $638,511 for the period of fifteen Germany, though selling Australia $2,000,000:per year, is giving two teamship lines, one to Australia and one to China, $952,000 per year for fifteen years. This is money enough to build in our American yards ten of the best 3,000 ton stee] steamships in the world and to pay all the expenses of running ‘them between San Francisco and Australia for eight years. The ery for foreign ships is ostensibly to help our foreign commerce, but practically has a very different object. 1n 1870 a poweful lobby besieged our cone gress, in the interest of Great Britain, to permit foreign ships to engage in our for- eign trade under our flag. For this they had two hidden reasons: First, England expected to be engaged in the Franco-Prus- sian war and wanted tohide her merchant ships under our flag, not caring to have them swept from the ocean by Privateers as. sbe had destroyed our ships during the war of the rebellion. Then the fact that they were unwilling to give bonds that these free foreign ships should pay regular Guties in case they engaged in our coasting trade proved, as every business man knew, that their ulterior purpose was to gain posses- sion of our coasting trade, Our navigation laws have twice saved the nation in war and have kept alive the shipyards, both on the sea-board and our great lakes, which, for the past twenty-five years, have given us the strongest, best modeled, and al! things considered, the cheapest iron and steel ships inthe world. The revolution by which steel has superseded iron has given to steel making ores a higher and contro)l- ing value and hence it has come to pass that our fabulous deposits of steel ores on Lake Snperior now control the steel industry of the world, Chicago has the honor of lead- ing the world in the manufacture of Besse- mer rails, and the United States makes 50 per cent. more Bessemer steel than Great Britain, Steel is king and the seat of his empire is on our great lakes, The best steel ship plate in the world is now made at the city of Cleveland, and the place to look for the strongest and best steel ships, is not .|the Clyde in Scotland, but the yards of Buffalo, Wyandotte and Cleveland, They are building the best steel steamships at $75 to $100 per ton, which is legs than England charged a few years since for steamships of only one-third the strength. Nominally, |them. The Argentine Re long. | be cheaper here. |aectly as with locomotives. We have not build them of higher priced materials and pay twice as much for labor, end yet we j have undersold the English in every market in the world for the past twenty years, be- sides making far more ¢ flicient engines. We hear the most said about the first cost of ships, when in fact it is scarcely worthy of mention in comparison with the more important items of meeting overwheluing competition, of securing freight both ways and of sexmen’s wages. Even if he had the gift of a fl.et of the best ships, no one man is rich enough to run them in compe- tition with lines having the strongest na- tions of Europe ax active partners. It is a question of running ships, not building them, The Pen.sylvania Railroad com- pany, a Company that has kept its s'ocks out of Wall street and devoted itself to de- veloping the interests of the great manu- facturing state whose name it bears, is the only power that has yet dared to replace the American flog in the Liverpool trade. They started the American line, with four first- class iron steamships in 1873, and have been able to maintain them, although with little profit. In the one item of wages they have paid $50,000 per year more than corres- ponding British wages. They have main- tained the honor of our flag with far more credit to themselves than to the govern- ment that has left them to fight this unequal battle alone. We lack neither the best ships nor the best goods to fill them; all we tack is the sand and the sense t»1un them. We have no need to wait for ‘free raw mate- rials.”” We have at home, in unlimited supply, the best steel ores, the best coal, the best forests, the best farnis, the best cloth- ing wcol and the best cotton in the world, along with a thousand other materials, which have enabled or manufacturers to lead the wo-ld in the moet useful industries. The non-manufacturing nations, whose trade is most desirable for us, give our goods the preference. We sell to China 80,000,000 yards of cotton cloth every year, simply because it is better than English cloth. Even ‘the heathen in his blindness’’ can see that cloth made of long:and sound American staple is better than Engiish cloth mixed with inferior cotton from India and loaded with starch and clay. The same is true of all the South Ameri- can states. They want. our goods and a standing offer of $100,000 per year to aid _from the United States, and en weary of waiting upon us, has. given the subsidy to a party in England. South America now buys $50,000,000 of. American products, even though che has to get many of them by way of England, an we might easily have made our sales fi times as great. If the men who represen the sew south, who want to open min al build factories and Gevelop her fabulous latent wealth, had controlled her policy since the war, the south alone would now | “ Ries ; to bear on his task f : was for some years second engineer of the ‘great paddle steamer Persia, with side-lever | engines. Mr. Parker's familiarity with all | the difficulties and trials which beset the sea going engineer, has stood him in good stead; be selling to South America goods to fully this amount, and they would be shipped in Americin instead of British ships, To place our ebips upon the high seas on an equality with those of other nations, is simply a matter of national economy and self-preservation. A merchant marine is simply the militia of the seas. Protection, by developing our industries on the land, has made us the richest of the nations, and it is now time that we followed the example of Enyland and protect our interests on he se .—Iron Trade Review. ea THE DARK SECRET. Captain William A. Andrews and bis lit- tle vessel, the Dark Secret, arrived in New York harbor last week. The Dark Secret is in comparatively good condition, al- though its bottom has not seen water for many aday. Captain Andrews, it will be remembered, is one of those foolhardy mari- ners whose sole ambition seems to be to cross the Atlantic in as frail a craft as can be turned out by a boat buiider. After much preparation and considerable adver- tising, he sailed from Point of Pines, near Boston, Monday, June 18th, 1888, for Eu- rope, in the Dark Secret, as he christened his little boat. It is only 14 feet 9 inches He wert alone, and did not have on board even a stray cat or a yellow dog for companionship. His larder was well stocked with jerked beef, salt pork, canned goods and hard tack, He also carries as much fresh water as his limited epace would allow. Since his departure he has been bailed by several passing vessels, to whom he re- ported he was all right and sanguine of completing his voyage. Of late nothing had been heard of him, and by many it was thought the foolhardy mariner had found a watery grave. Such would in all proba- bility had been his fate had it not been for Captain Bjonedss, of the Norwegian bark Nor. On August 19th Captain Bjonedss sighted something to windward during the forenoon, which, through his glass he sup- It will be with ships ex- | pumping jobs want posed to be a portion of 4 shipwreck. On getting closer it was discovered that the ob- ject was the frail cr: tt above mentioned. Captain Andrews bad been sixty days on the water in it without tasting a warm meal, and was so weuk at.d emaciated that be had to be assisted on beard the Nor. Captain Andrews and his brother eres-ed the At- lantic in a little vessel called the Nautilus, in 1878. The voyage occupied forty-five days. The Captain eays he will again make the eflort to crcss the oceanin the Dark Secret, and will start next spring, ENGINES OF THE 88. CITY OF NEW YORK. These engines consist of the two largest set of triple expansion engines afloat. They are of the usual inverted vertical type. The cylinders are 45in. and 47in. and 118in. and 5 feet stroke. The boiler pressure is 150 Ibs. The screws are 22 feet in diameter, and 28 feet pitch. They revolve outboard, and there is no opening in the dead wood between them. If they work without slip they would make 218 revolutions to the mile, and at 80 revolu- tions. which may be taken as the standard speed, the ship would steam at 22 knots. The engines stand side by side with a longti- tudinal bulkhead between them. They are in every respect duplicates. A door is pro- vided in the bulkhead opposite the intermedi ete cranks, and the starting platforms are op- posite the doorway. The reversing gear is Brown's patent hydraulic. The engines are quite easily started. stopped, or reversed, by one engineer on each platform. The engines are wholly of steel and gunmetal, save the cylinders. The great A frames are splendid castings, each weighing 6 tons, that is, 12 tons for each cylinder, The valves are all pistons four being fitted to the low-pressure cylinder. ‘The eccentric hoops are cast-steel, lined with white metal, as are allthe bearings through- out. The valves are disposed in the “corners” so to speak, and the valve stems are united in pairs by crossheads. ‘Ihey ‘work so smoothly and are so perfectly balanced that the valve gear, which is of the ordinary Stey- enson link type, has really little todo. The surface condensers are horizontal cylinders ly- ing rather high upin the wings. The air pumps are worked by levers in the usual way. There are no feed pumps on the main engine, the boilers being supplied by five vertical Worthington donkey pumps in each engine- room standing against the forward bulkhead. Two of these pumps will feed the boilers, but the others are for reserve, or for the countless i amples rom the desig: Parker has brough e-long experience. He and the engines ef the City of New York will main'ain the fame of Scotch engineers in the old and new world. Nothing finer can be imagined than the working of these gigantic engines, with a piston speed of 800 feet per minute, certainly the greatest velocity ever attained by pistons 3 feet 5 inches in diameter: During the whole run round Ireland, lasting nearly 46 hours, not a drop of water was needed on a bearing, nor was there the least symptom of heating. An experiment is being carried out in the City of New York. Although she is much larger than the Umbria and Etruria, and is in- tended to be faster than either, she has less boiler power. The Etruria has 72 furnaces, The City of New York has only 54 disposed in nine double-ended boilers, and containing 1250 square feet of grate surface. parent deficiency is met first by the use of the triple-expansion engines, which should be 20 per cent more economical than the three-cy)- inder compound engines of the Etruria, and secondly by the use of forced draught. The nine boilers are placed in three stoke-holes, The boilers are fired fore and aft, and no di- | Instead of the usual forest of cowl ventilators, /there are erected at each side of the up | dhe at each side of the ship into the sixstoke © holes, in which they can maintain a plenum — of about }inch water pressure. So farthe ~ result of the experiment is all that can bede- sired. During her trial trip the pressure of © 150 pounds was maintained in the boilers, The engines made one8?2 and the other 83 reyo- lutions per minute, and a speed of over 20 knots was attained with about 18 500 horse-power. No precise datas to poweror speed has, how- ever, been officially given. There is every reason to believe that when the engine and i fire-room hands have thoroughly settled down to their-work, 20000 horse power ora litt more will be attained. —/.ondon Engineer. A dispatch from Boston says: Yacht De- signer Edward Burgess and his erack fish. — ing vessel, the Carrie E. Puillips, must look to their laurels or they wil: lose their supremacy on the bigh seas, Naval Archi- tect D. J. Lawler bas designed a pew fish- ing vessel which he says will walk away from the Phillips even in a drifting race. This boat hig exsy lines and a powerful form, govd ends and an excellent middle body. She has nearly a plumb = stem, though it bas a little curve toit. Lhe keel has also a little rocker and there is consid- erable drag to it, ‘The sternpost has a little rake, and Lawler has made a departure from the heavy in-quarters aud sh-rt stern usually seen in fishing vessels and has given the new boat a nice overhanging stern, She is sharp at the bow, but none too much so, and her run is very easy. She has good section lines and her after lines are good with easy backs to the curves, She was de- signed to beat the Phillips and, judged by her form, she ought to doit, In comparing her with the Phillips it can be seen that she is finer forward, is about as high headed, but except for the shght curve in the sterm there is no other very great difference be. tween them. ‘The vessel will be Inchaued next week and it is expected that she will be ready for her trial trip early in October, Her dimensions are 107 feet oyer all, 94 feat. load water line; extreme beam, 24: 103¢ feet; draught, 12: 437; overuang afc, 12 — feet; displueement 216 ions. ; : Dixon’s Black Lea [OR POT LEAD] 4 Bios The ap- |. For Bottoms of Yachts Speciaily Prepared for the Purpose and qualled for Purity and Uniformity JOSEPH DIXON CRUCIB Jersey City, N.J. New York Offi 3 Fresh and Salt per i <) deck six large rectangular structures of heavy A Be ice it a plate iron fitted with shield lids, which can be are for sale b raised or lowered by screw gear, When| | dropped down, a sufficient space exists for | — the entry of air. In fine weather they are raised to an inclined ponition, and deflect air | down the trunks. ‘These trunks reach down | to the fire-rooms, and each is rovided at the nches diame | bottom with a fan about 5 feet 6 i ter driven by a seperate engine at a revolutions per minute, These fans deliver