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ae i 2 we Ricee Mit bn rsh Gobel ae 1 2 ee v} aj. sh a) a , Lene & ' MARINE REVIEW. 9 _ The Great Chicago-Mississippi Waterway. Chicago has surprised the world in many wonderful undertak- ings of late, and not least among them is the proposed waterway from that city to the Mississippi river, upon which contracts for one section, involving $10,696,755, were let a short time ago. In letting these contracts the drainage board in charge of the great sewer, as it is now commonly called, has shown considera- ble boldness. As it is claimed that this waterway will serve the twofold purpose of diluting Chicago sewage and for future com- merece between the lakes and the Mississippi, some details re- garding the plans upon which work has been begun will proba- bly be of interest at this time. 'The canal will have a width at bottom of 160 feet and a uniform depth of 19 feet, a gradient of five inches to the mile and a capacity of 600,000 cubic feet per minute. The Suez canal has a bottom width of 72 feet, just sufficient for one large steamer. It isin fact a "single-track"? canal with turnouts; the Chicazo canal will be "double track." The Suez canal has a top width of 197 feet, the depth in center being 26 feet, or 7 feet more than that of the Chicago canal. The superior dimensions of the Chicago canal were not so much demanded in the interests of navigation as in that of sewage dis- posal, the law demanding as it does a water supply for diluting Chicago's present and future excreta to the enormous amount of 600,000 cubic feet per minute. The position of the present work is neither the beginning nor the end of the programme of the sanitary commission. It isa stretch of fourteen miles of heavy cutting across what is called the Chicago divide or "height of land.' It commences at avillage called Willow Springs, twenty miles from Chicago court house, close to the present Illinois and Michigan canal, and runs in a southwester- ly direction to Lockport, a town three miles from Joliet The total length of cutting will be fourteen miles, the maximum depth in rock about 35 feet, and in clay about the same, Difficulties to be met with in this project are of course very numerous. It will involve a most prodigious expenditure, and notwithstanding the claims of its promoters that it is in- tended as a highway of commerce all attempts to secure appro- priations from the general government will be stubbornly fought. The local government engineer, Capt. Marshall, has already opposed the application of Chicago for government grants in aid of the enterprise, considering as he does that to do so would be to apply federal money to municipal purposes. Careful study has shown that no positive detriment would result to lake shipping on account of the abstraction of so large an amount of water from Lake Michigan, but the great cost of se- curing an entrance to the city of Chicago and the lake, and the effect of such entrance on the transportation problem are all im- portant questions. The present harbor entrance, narrow and with low banks, has been a barrier to rapid transit on account of the swing bridges which obstruct also the navigation. The pro- gramme of the sanitary board includes the entire filling up of this present harbor entrance, the creation of industrial proper- ties on its site, and the facilitation of rapid transit across the new cuts by means of.tunnels. Seeing that every street must have its tunnel, which will have to be about 1,500 feet long in- cluding approaches, in order to make one crossing of the same capacity asa present street, the cost will be about $1,500 per lineal foot, or $2,250,000 per street. 'This work alone would run into a big sum of money, and it is evident on every hand that in the matter of sewage disposal Chicago has an important subject to deal with. : In 268 B.C. Archimedes devised a marvelous ship for Hiero of Syracuse. Her three lofty masts hadbeen brought from Bri- tain. Luxuriously fitted sleeping apartments abounded and one of her banquet halls was paved with agate and costly Sici- lian stone. Other floors were cunningly inlaid with scenes from the Iliad. Stables for many horses, ponds stocked with live fish, gardens watered by artificial rivulets and hot baths were provided for use or amusement. Ptolemy Philopater possessed a nuptial yacht, the Thalamegon, 312 feet long and 45 feet deep. A graceful gallery, supported by curiously carved columns, ran round the vessel, and within were temples of Venus and of Bacchus. Her masts were 1oo feet high, her sails and cordage of royal purple hue, In General. The light-house tower at Cape Hatteras is 189 feet high from its base to the center of the lantern. It is the tallest light- house tower in existence. Newspaperdom, a publication "for the makers of newspa- pers," has just issued its fourth number, but gives promise already of being the best journal of its kind ever produced in the country. It is a monthly, and Charles S. Patterson, World building, New York, is the publisher. Norman L. Munro, the New York publisher, and owner of the fast little steamer Norwood, is again out with a challenge. He offers to wager from 5 cents to $25,000 that the Norwood is the fastest boat under the sun for miles, or that she is the fastest steamer in America for one mile to eighty knots. The cargo of 125,000 bushels of corn reported to have been taken out of Chicago Wednesday by the whaleback steamer Samuel Mather, does not break the record ot big cargoes from that port. The steamer KE. C. Pope last season delivered at Buf- talo from Chicago 125,730 bushels of corn. A Scotch shipbuilding firm recently built in twenty-three days a large gunboat for France, to be used on the Wheme river and coast lagoons, Africa. French shipbuilders wanted from _four to ten months in which to do the work. 'The vessel will carry 400 soldiers, three cannons mounted on a bridge, and four rapid firing guns on the spar deck. -- Speaking at the meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute at London, Mr. Andrew Carnegie said that an exhaustive series of tests just undertaken by the Pennsylvania Railway had placed basic steel alongside of acid steel for boilers and fire-boxes, and he had been informed that the question was being seriously en- tertained whether they would not specify that nothing but basic ~ steel should be used for that purpose. The whaleback steamer Joseph I. Colby is carrying fairly ' paying cargoes from points on the Gulf of Mexico and the Car- ribbean sea to Boston and Providence. With twenty-one hands aboard she carries almost 3,000 tons of Sisal hemp, and a cargo of cotton equal to those usually carried by steamers carrying from twenty-eight to thirty-two hands. 'The difference in the consumption of coal for power purposes is proportioned in about the same way. 'The two differences are enough to make up al- most the entire difference in cost between operating American and foreign vessels.--American Shipbuilder. Again the City of Paris has broken the Atlantic record. She made the trip from Queenstown to New York last week in five days, fifteen: hours and forty-eight minutes. The best pre- | vious record was made by the Teutonic, of the White Star line, namely, five days, sixteen hours and thirty-one minutes. 'The City of Paris made also the best record of average knots per hour and the best average for a single day. The average num- ber of knots per hour for the voyage was 20.48 as against the best previous average of 20.43 knots per hour. On one day dur-_ ing the voyage the steamer made a total of 520 knots, or 21.02 knots per hour for the day. ; Referring to the claim that the recent triple launch at the yard of the American Steel Barge Company, West Superior, was the first and only triple launch taking place from one shipyard in this country. Wm. H. Webb, veteran shiphuilder, says in the Marine Journal of New York: "In the fifties, precise year not now recollected, I launched from my works on the Hast river, in the city of New York, three large vessels at one tide. They were the steamer Golden Gate, built for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, clipper ship Gazelle, and Havre packet ship Samuel M. Fox. The last one was afloat in twenty min- utes from the time the first one touched the water, and without any hitch or accident whatever." 'Notice to Mariners. On or about Aug. 16, Kalamazoo light, near the outer end of the south pier, will be discontinued as a pierhead light, and re-established without change of order or characteristic as a coast light in the old light-tower surmounting the keeper's dwelling on the north side of the mouth of the Kalamazoo river, Michigan. 'The height of the focal plane is 35 feet above the base of the tower and 53 feet above lake level. The light should be visible in clear weather, the observer's eye 15 feet above lake level, 1434 statute miles.