The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

THE MARINE RECORD. te her. The Pope’s wheat cargo 91 bushels, 191 bushels over her bills ‘drew 15 feet 8inches forward and 15 C. Maytham, which went through herself igo, has been repaired and is again in er Niagara is kept busier than any boat in . She is run as an excursion steamer in the d in the winter is put on the ferry route to _ She has just finished a general overhauling week will start in on her winter btisiness. agara was built to go through the ice which n the Niagara river. She draws about 14 forward and 9 feet aft. nal convention was a great success, and the Eeclioye for motive power on this waterway, as ted several years ago at New York, was dwelt The feasibility of this plan is beyond question. week nine whalebacks, five being steamers, and mitor freight steamer Andaste, were in port at e. Right of the whalebacks brought down 700,- ishels of wheat. e Coal shipments for 25 days of October were over ,000 tons, or more than any previous record for an ire month. Tuesday the Western Elevator Co., which controls all Buffalo elevators, gave orders that the Richmond and Brown elevators, on Buffalo creek, should at once be put in condition to handle grain. The Richmond elevator has been idle for two seasons and the Brown for eight. The houses themselves have been kept in good repair, but a good deal of dredging will have to be done. This action on the part of the elevator combine shows that there is danger of a blockake similar to that of last year, and all steps are being taken to prevent such a general jam as occurred last fall. The two houses in question have 250,000 bushels capacity each. They are canal elevators and having no rail connection, could in any event be used only a short time, as the New York grain men have decided to receive no canal grain after November 15th. The Onoko’s damages, according to the survey here, amounted to $16,000. She had about 900 bushels of wet wheat. A diver was employed to remove a line from the wheel of the steamer F. L. Vance, which became disabled in that fashion while in tow of a tug. Capt. Lehman, of the new Davidson steamer City of Naples, is enthusiastic over his boat. He says she makes 12% miles an hour right along. He left Duluth on his last trip down 45 minutes behind the new Wheeler boat Bielman, and says he beat her out of sight to the “S00.” A curious crowd witnessed the workings of the tur- _ bine wheel canal boat from Lockport, which lay in the _ Erie basin one day last week. SS unnEEENEEneeee chee A NEWSY LETTER FROM THE HEAD OF LAKE SUPERIOR. Special Correspondence to The Marine Record. Duturs, Minn.—That the Duluth wheat trade has held up the vessel market the past week or two, has been very evident from the telegraph business of the vessel brokers here, and from the attention paid this trade in the east. Four cents was freely bid for room here all last week, and the rate from Port Arthur, also con- trolled by this city, went to 4%, with quite a number of charters made at 44. The wheat movement continues at _the rate of about 2,000,000 bushels receipts a week, and shipments last week were 1,400,000 bushels. ‘There is now in stock an even 5,000,000 bushels, which is double the quantity here a year ago at this date, and last year the elevators were all fulljbefore the opening of navigation, ‘giving an enormous forward movement from here in the early weeks of lake navigation this year. It will be Tememibered by vessel men that in the first three weeks of navigation, prior to May 15, when storage charges began to accumulate, there were over 600 cargoes taken out of this harbor, and shipments aggregated nearly 11,000,000 bushels. It now looks as if that business Would be imitated to a certain extent next spring. Of course it is very early to judge, but the present moye- ent hitherward, which is about equally divided over the Northern Pacific, Great Northern and St. Paul & ‘Duluth roads, leads to that conclusion, as does the fact that the Great Northern road is so pressed by its west Coast extension that it cannot furnish cars for the grain business at this end anywhere near as fast as needed. ‘The local terminal elevators of the Great Northern ave done very little business so far this year, and hold only about one-fourteenth of the grain in here, though their capacity is about one-sixth of ‘Nearly all the wheat so far arrived has been elevators of the Lake Superior and Union Im- companies, which have to-day 3,500,000 At the Steel Barge Company’s yard No. 127, the flour barge, with all port and no starboard gangways, will be launched in a few days, and the 126, a sister barge, in a week thereafter. Both will be of a size to get through the Welland canal. Material is ordered for new vessels, which will not be launched before spring. The long-looked for event, the arrival of the first car load of ore from the Mesaba range, occurred last week, and the car, containing twenty-five tons of Bessemer soft hematite from the Mountain Iron Company’s prop- erty, 60 miles north of Duluth, has been the center of attraction as it has stood in the big steel shed of the fine passenger depot. ‘The ore is so soft that before it had been tramped over five minutes in the car, the chunks were all reduced to loam, and not an atom of what is ordinarily looked on as ore appeared. Never- theless, it all ran 65 per cent. in pure iron. It had been mined by a steam shovel direct from the ore bed that morning. To-day the first train load is on the way down, and it will be loaded into the completed pockets of the ore dock on Allouez bay, it is claimed, this week. If so, there will be shipments of '8,000 to 10,000 tons of ore from this mine to the east this fall. The improve- ments of the year at old Superior, of which Allouez bay is a part, have been very large, and I shall expect to give quite an extended resume of the work of building this new harbor next week. The mills here bast week ground 50,000 barrels of flour, thus putting Duluth in second place among mil- ling centers of the United States ranking Milwaukee and St. Louis. Of the total, the Imperial ground 36,000, giving it a larger daily average than was ever made by any mill in the world for alike period. The Imperial is building a new 300,000 bushel elevator, and there is talk among the stockholders of adding another mill, of 7,000 barrels daily capacity, to the plant. The North Dakota Farmers’ Protective elevator, that was to have been built at Old Superior, is not yet started, but prob- ably will be soon. The experiment of the Shores Lumber Company, an Ashland concern which does all its shipping by water to the east, and to Chicago, is being looked on with great interesi by the lumber dealers here who domuch eastern shipping. The company bought two steamers, the Prentice C. Powers, and has leased one, the Shores, Jr., and has bought the schooners Middlesex, Halsted and Constitution, The entire fleet will carry four million feet, and left the company’s dock the other day with 3,940,000 feet, enough to, stock a good-sized yard, for Chicago. It is believed there is big money in such a company running its own vessels. The Shores Com- pany will probably build a vessel to take the place of the Shores, Jr. ‘The new Davidson schooner Aberdeen, has just taken her first cargo out of this port. She loaded 61,800 bushels wheat. Iron Range shipments of ore for the last week were only 26,000 tons, making total shipments for the year to date about 1,075,000 tons; it begins to look as if the expected business of 1,250,000 tons would scarcely materialize. Ore docks are badly crowded, is given as the cause for the light business. D. E. W. EDP Oe ee ADMIRALTY DECISIONS AT DETROIT. Judge Swan, of Detroit, recently rendered an impor- tant decision in the collision case brought by the owners of the barge John Sherman against the steamer Olympia. The collision occurred below Walkerville, in Detroit river, on May 8, 1891, and resulted from the Olympia’s steering gear having suddenly become disabled. After reviewing the evidence submitted concerning the Olym- pia’s tiller ropes and steering apparatus, Judge Swan concluded that they were all right as far as skill and care could make them, and dismissed the libel. A second case was that of the owners of the schooner S. B. Pomeroy against the Canadian propeller Pacific. This collision occurred on the afternoon of May 10, 1890, in the Sault Ste. Marie river. The Pomeroy was anchored and had on board 900 tons of coal. ‘The Paci- fic, a vessel of 1,000 tons register, came up the river at great speed, according to the stories told by the Pomeroy people, and struck a dock just below where the Pomeroy lay. The steamer then, it was alleged, bounded off, and continuing on, struck the Pomeroy on the port side, slightly injuring her. The testimony introduced at the time was very contradictory and Judge Swan, relying in good part upon the report of the weather bureau for that day, exculpated the steamer and, as the damage was slight, dismissed the libel. The third suit was that of the schooner J. F. Card against the steamer Iron Chief. The collision in this case took place in Waiska bay, at the head of the St. Mary’s river, at about 9 o’clock on the morning of July 24, 1891. ‘The schooner was laden with block stone and had been cruising about in search of a tug to tow her to the river. When the people on the Iron Chief first - saw her she was tacking, and as she was making to- ward the steamer, the steamer stopped, to find out if possible which way the Card was going. When the schooner came about and headed down the channel, the steamer sailed on again and whistled to indicate that she understood the schooner’s course. The steamer hugged the north side of the channel, which is about 600 feet wide. The Card lost her swing and headed across the channel towards the Iron Chief. The latter hugged the north side still closer, so as to give the schooner a chance’ to pass, but the schooner was not under control and the captain of the Chief, seeing that a collision was inevitable, kept away, soasto make the impact as light as possible. When the schooner struck the steamer, she slewed around and drifting back, collided with the steamer’s tow, the latter grounding on the bank of the channel. The bow of the Card was badly damaged and her anchor was knocked overboard, the chain running out until the anchor took to ground and brought her up. The grounds for the libel were that the steamer should not have attempted to run through the channel with her consort after being apprised of the schooner’s purpose to sail through; and that she failed to keep out of the schooner’s way. Judge Swan, after reviewing the tes- timony, held that the Iron Chief was not at fault, be- cause the schooner was blamable in taking the course she did and inviting the risk of a collision, and because even if the steamer did want to recede it was too late on account of her tow and her heavily laden condition. Oo ro FLOTSAM. JETSAM AND LAGAN, The first whaleback steamer to be built on the Pacific Coast will carry 5,000 tons. The steamer E. C. Pope loaded 120,000 bushels of wheat at South Chicago on a mean draft of fifteen feet eleven inches. The largest steamer ever built in Holland was launched on August 24th at Flushing, for the Rotterdam Lloyd. She is 358 feet long, and her name is Gedeh. It is announced from Nantes that when once the French Mercantile Marine Bounties law is passed, five or six large sailing ships will be built there for ship- owners belonging to that port. There are now forty-two electric lights around the French coasts, and they are constantly being increased in power. The three lights at Ushant, Barfleur and Belle Isle are each now eqttal to 900,000 candles. Captain Andrews, in his 16-foot dory, in which he crossed the Atlantic from Atlantic City, N. J., to Lis- bon, has terminated his voyage in safety, reaching Palos Tuesday, October 4th, where he received an ova- tion from the community. “There are only a few of us left and we are fast dy- ing off,’’ said an old American ship owner a short time ago. But the breed is not entirely extinct, and as it is a good strain, it is beginning to pick up again. The race will show many members again and some of the old survivors will be proud of the energy of their successors. A large sailing vessel named the Placilla has just made the voyage from the Lizard, in England, to Val- paraiso in 58 days, and from Iquique, with 4,300 tons of saltpetre, back to the Lizard in 76 days. She passed the Lizard outward on the 2d of March, and reached it homeward on the first of September, thus making the two passages out and home in just six months. The tug W. G. Wilmot, built at West Bay City by F. W. Wheeler & Co., was pontooned down the St. Law- rence, last Saturday by the Collins Bay Rafting and Forwarding Company. ‘The pontoons raised her from a draught of 12 feet to 8 feet. The tug is bound for New Orleans. It is expected that these Kingston pontoons will be patronized by the tonnage bound to and from . the World’s Fair. i ‘The Liverpool Mercury says that despite contradiction, some journals will maintain that the White Star line are having a huge steamer, to be called Gigantic, built. at Harland and Wolff’s yard. The facts are that this firm are having two steamers built—one a cargo steam~ er, and the other a passenger steamer—but not intended for the American passenger service. z The ‘‘ blizzard” flag and “‘ blizzard” warning, lately used in the Northwestern States by the Weather Bureau has very sensibly been taken in by Prof. Mark. W. Har- rington for repairs. The red flag with black center dis- played will continue to be known as the storm signal. “ Blizzard,” indeed! Such a high-falutin term beats the predictions, and the Westerners ‘‘don’t want no fun poked at it.” oy Milwaukee is to have a new and larger life saying sta- tion in the near future, one with a residence for the family of the keeper attached, and also ample accom- modations forthe crew. The building will cost between $7,000 and $8,000, and an improved landing place for the boats from $1,500 to $2,000 additional. Bids for the : work are to be advertised soon, with the requirement th: it must be completed within ninety days after the . re