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MARINE REVIEW. 9 s . Modern Wooden Steamers on the Lakes. An engraving on this page gives a fair idea of the modern wooden steamboats, built mainly at West Bay City, Mich., dur- ing the past year. Although steel vessels being turned out from big plants at half a dozen ports on the lakes are replacing toa very large extent the wooden fleet, the class of wooden boats shown here has held its own in Detroit and West Bay City yards. The boat on the stocks, the Uganda, is already in com- mission. She was built by F. W.Wheeler & Co. of West Bay City a for James McBrier and others of Erie, Pa., and is a duplicate of the steamers Sauber, Tampa and Tosco, all turned out recently e by the same builders. 'These boats carry about 2,500 gross tons > on 16 feet draught. : eae: diculars 290 feet, length over all 308 feet 6 inches, beam, molded = 40 feet, beam, extreme 41 feet, depth, molded 23 feet. 'The en- Ber gine is a triple expansion, with cylinders 20, 32 and 54 inches ae by 42 inches stroke, and there are two boilers 11 feet 6 inches e in diameter and 12 feet long, built to withstand 160 pounds pres- sure. The engraving is from the Railroad and Engineering Journal, New York. ee 3 The Uganda's dimensions are: Length between perpen- interest of the nation in maritime commerce is steadily*increasing. The necessity of concentrating all official matters connected with this under the control of one active, intelligent department is now imperative. 'The desire for such a change is strong and it has been presented with good support and sound arguments. But the improvement. will not be secured without much hard work. 'There is active objection made to any increase in the number of government departments, and the reasons given are in the main sound. Where work is done in a slovenly way, so that a great industry really suffers. from an inefficient adminis- © tration of the laws caused by the overburdened condition of a government department, it is evident that a new department must be created. The treasury department has not only to supervise the legal regulations governing the merchant marine, but in addition it is the head of the light-house board, the life- saving and steamboat inspection services. 'There will in time be further regulations made, such as wreck inquiry courts, government examination of masters and mates, physical examin- ation of seamen and similar matters. It is manifestly absurd to believe that such important affairs can be well looked after under the present management. They should be consolidated under the control of a marine board. The interests concerned are of such importance as to warrant this. The good that would come would not be confined to smoother and better administration of re- gulations, but a more active participation in the work by the ~" 3 2 a ; 3 es. Demand for a Shipping Department. E 7 Recent letters from Mr. E. C. O'Brien, commissioner of , navigation, relative to the establishment of a wreck inquiry 3 board and with reference to several subjects of a maritime bs nature, will tend to show the merits of the claim that the - shipping interests of this country should be reprepresented in a department of the government. A writer in the Maritime Register of New York presents this subject very ably in the following: : "The secretary of the treasury, better than any other man, : must know how little personal attention the treasury chief can ' give to the many marine matters that are now placed under his jurisdiction. 'The work is now divided among many bureaus, , each entirely independent of the other. There is no sympathy between them, much of the work is done in a purely perfunctory manner, few suggestion of any value come from them, with the result that instead of obstacles being removed, a sort of circum- locution office is maintained and reform and simplicity in our navigation laws and regulations are made almost impossible. The secretary of the treasury is the ostensible head and the secretary knows nothing about shipping affairs. The work of the treasury department connected with the finances of the nation is on the increase,and the prospects of closer attention to purely shipping affairs, therefore, becomes more remote. The MODERN LAKE STEAMER. official head would bring him into closer relationship with ship- ping people, with the probability of suggestions and reforms be-_ ing presented that would be to the great benefit of our merchant marine." Another Record Broken. The steamer Western Reserve, built by the Cleveland Ship Building Company and owned by Phillip Minch and others of Cleveland, on Wednesday took on at Escanaba for Ashtabula a cargo of 3,281 gross tons of ore. With the addition of r per cent. allowed for moisture, this cargo aggregates 3,314 gross or 3,717 net tons, and is the largest load ever carried through the rivers. Cargoes carried by the steamer Maryland between Hs- canaba and South Chicago are, of course, still in the lead, on ac- count of the advantages in deep draft secured to vessels in that trade. 'The steel steamer Gilcher, which left Escanaba just previous to the Western Reserve carried 3,181 gross tons bill of lading, or 3,213 gross, full cargo weight. Members of the firm of M. A. Hanna & Co. of Cleveland are largely interested in the new company which will rebuild the abandoned furnace plant of the Union Iron Works, Buffalo. The new corporation, capitalized at $200,000, will be known as the Buffalo Furnace Company. Work of rebuilding will be- gin immediately and the plant will have a capacity of a little more than 200 tons daily. The product will be mainly foundry iron. Names connected with the enterprise insure its success.