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1901.) | MARINE REVIEW. 7 ... GRAIN, FLAX, FLOUR, ETC., AT DULUTH. Duluth, Minn., Dec. 4.--Duluth grain shipments have been averaging from 500,000 to 750,000 bushels per day for the past forty days and the coming week will be larger than ever. Saturday last they were more than 1,150,000 bushels, nearly half flax. Duluth has become the great flax market of the United States. There has been traded here daily for the past sixty days more than 500,000 bushels, cash and futures. The sales of cash flax alone have often reached as high as 500,000 bushels a day. In the last two days of November the Duluth deliveries on cash flax for that month were at least 1,500,000 bushels, which is a very remarkable quantity for so late in a month; in fact it is a quantity that has never been ap- proached in the history cf the linseed market. Receipts of grain at Duluth are very large, running about 3,000,000 bushels per week, and this rate is likely to be maintained for some time during the winter. Elevators will go into the winter with small stocks, but are expected to be well filled before spring. There is now 34,000,000 bushels elevator capacity at Duluth-Superior and the probabilities are that more will be added the coming season. The season is closing with all the accumulation of flour at the head of Lake Superior cleaned up. Three weeks ago it amounted to 40,000 tons, flour and feed. The car shortage and the lack of package freight ships has been a serious injury to the head-of-the-lake flour mills, several of which have been compelled to close down at the very time when of all others they should be running full. The average make of flour at Duluth-Superior for two months has been better than 40,000 barrels weekly and the indications are that this will be increased another season. AERIAL BRIDGE ACROSS DULUTH HARBOR. Duluth, Minn., Dec. 4.--Contractors Hugo & Tims have begun work on the substructure of the aerial bridge to be built across the entrance to Duluth harbor, at the ship canal. The same firm will erect the false work and may perhaps build the steel structure. On account of the lateness of the season it is not probable that anything more than the driving of piles | for the foundations will be carried out this year. The concrete piers to cover these pile foundations will be put in early next spring and work on the superstructure will, it is expected, be carried on during the summer. If so the bridge is to be completed next August, otherwise it will not be ready till the following spring. The consent of the local engineer in charge is said to have been obtained to the continuance of operations all summer, providing a clear space 250 ft. wide be left for ships, and the matter is now before the department at Washington. The American Bridge Co. will furnish steel through its Minneapolis works. For the foundation the piles will be sunk by water jet and seventy will be sunk under each of the two concrete piers in a space only 14 by 98 ft. The piling will be cut off about 10 ft. under mean water level and will be covered by 8 ft. of cak and pine timber, put in solid. One andi a half feet below low water datum concrete piers covering the entire space. and 9.5 ft. high will stand, on which the steel superstructure will be bolted. AROUND THE GREAT LAKES. Mr. E. L. Lenihan, well known on account of his conection for sev- eral years with insurance adjustments in the office of Chas. E. & W. F. Peck, Chicago, is now representing that firm in a branch office in the Williamson building, Cleveland. Adjustments will in future be conducted from the Cleveland office. The weather bureau has just completed a steel signal tower at Big ~Point Sable, similar to the one built last summer at Ludington. The ser- vice in both cases will begin with the opening of navigation next spring. The tower at Point Sable stands in plain view of passing vessels which , invariably run close to shore at this point. The weather bulletins will be communicated to the keeper of the Point Sable station by telephone from | Ludington. Officers of the International Seamen's Union of America, elected at the sixth annual convention in Buffalo, are: President, William Penje; vice-president, William Roberts; secretary and treasurer, W. H. Frazier. The president and secretary were reelected. A. Furuseth of San Francisco, Wm. Penje of Chicago and W. H. Frazier of Boston will represent the | union at the convention of the American Federation of Labor to be held this week in Scranton, Pa. In accordance with recommendation of the directors, the stockholders of the Cleveland & Buffalo Transit Co. at a meeting held in Cleveland Tuesday, added from surplus earnings $250,000 to capital, making it $1,000,000, and as shown by a statement published in these columns a couple of weeks ago the company still has a very creditable surplus, due to unusually large earnings during the past year. The new quarter of a million in stock is to be divided pro rata among the present stockholders. Two new steamers which F. H. Clergue has announced his intention of putting on the run between Windsor and the Canadian Sault next sea- son will, in connection with the Clergue steamers now running between Sault Ste. Marie and Michipocoten island, open up a vast country hitherto inaccessible to manufacturers, or practically so. The territory referred to is the land lying on the northern shore of Lake Superior eastward from Fort William and Port Arthur. This land is practically all virgin and is covered with timber of all kinds. Hudson Bay Co., established over 100 years ago, can be found doing business in the wilderness. Herbert C. Sadler, professor of naval architecture at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), spent a couple of days last week with ship owners of Cieveland and with some of the officials of the American Ship | Building Co. Prof. Sadler may undertake some consulting work in con- nection with his duties at the Michigan school, and proposes in any event to seek acquaintances that will keep him in touch with the ship building industry of the iakes. Before coming to this country he was assistant to Prof. Biles at Glasgow University and had-unusual opportunity for-acquir- ing experience dsian expert in the various lines of!.consulting work in which he was engagedwith Prof. Bites. He is a young man of apparent business;energy, his manner not at all like that of most college professors, and: it is-more than probable that the knowledge of steel ship building which he brings from the home of the industry on the other side of the Atlantic will soon gain recognition for him in the lake region. - subjected. is to be built has not been given out. ferry will be a duplicate of the steamer Pere Marquette, completed at the Even now the trading posts of the: TOWING-MACHINES ON THE PACIFIC. A few of the steam, towing machines that have been used to such great advantage during the past few years in handling large tows of the Atlantic seaboard and the great lakes have found their way to the Pacific coast, and as in all other cases where they have been introduced the steamboat men are most profuse in their praises of them. An instance of very severe service to which the machine has been subjected is found in _ the operations of the tug Samson, owned by the Hale & Kern Contract Co. of Portland, Ore. Letters from the United States engineer at Astoria, Ore., and from the engineer of the tug are decidedly interesting as showing what may be done with this machine under the most trying conditions to which a steam vessel is subjected in towing barges. Hale & Kern of Portland, Ore., who own the Samson, have a con- tract with the government for building the Gray's harbor jetty. The - Samson and the five barges which she tows were built by the contractors for the purpose of transporting rock and other material used in the con- struction of the jetty. The rock, procured on the Columbia river, is towed to Astoria from the quarry, 115 miles distant, by river boat. The Samson takes the barges from Astoria to Gray's harbor, crossing the Columbia river bar and Gray's harbor bar, going and coming. From the Columbia bar to Gray's harbor bar is about 35 miles of coast towing. The Samson is 126 ft. long, 26 ft. beam, and 14 ft. depth of hold. She has fore-and-aft compound engines, with cylinders of 20 and 40 in. diameter by 28 in. stroke, and Taylor water tube boilers that are allowed 225 lbs. steam pressure. The barges are 185 ft. long, 42 ft. beam and 16 ft. hold. They carry 1,500 tons of rock on 14 ft. draught. Writing to the American ' Ship Windlass Co; of Providence, R. I., manufacturers of the towing machine, Albert Rickards, United States engineer at Astoria, says: "On May 19, while lying off the Columbia bar in the lighthouse tender Manzanita waiting for flood-tide, the Samson and her barge came out. The bar was rough and we could see the Samson leap out of the water, . her whole hull in the air, while the barge was like a half-tide rock, the breakers going all over her with the force that is only known to those who battle with rough bars on this coast. Without this automatic machine such work would never be accomplished, as something must give when a heavy tug falls in such a séa and the barge butts into one at the same time. I think this work demonstrates more than anything else that I know of the worth of such a machine." Chief Engineer James W. Hare of the Samson also writes the manu- facturers at great length regarding the work of the tug in crossing the rough bars referred to. He is enthusiastic in praise of the towing ma- chine. Bar work, he says, is the hardest service to which hawsers are "During the worst weather in winter,' says Mr. Hare, "the barges were rigged as schooners, loaded with lumber and piles and towed to San Francisco, a distance of 600 miles, They carried 1,200,000 ft. of lumber on a draught of 16% ft., so you see we have done all kinds of towing, both bar and deep-sea. But the strain on a hawser in the worst weather at sea is so insignificant when compared with the bar work that it is not necessary to say much of the deep-sea towing. I am satisfied that we have done at least 25 per cent. more work with the towing ma- chine than we could possibly have done without it, to say nothing of the expense of parting hawsers and the danger of thus losing the barges. The machine has never failed to do all that was claimed for it. Two years ago I was in Seattle, Wash., and the Puget Sound Tow Boat Co, was building a new steel boat. 2,I advised them to put in a towing machine but they were indifferent, ag they were not fully informed regarding its worth. Last winter when,in San Francisco I had a-conversation with one of the principal owners of the tow boat company, and I so strongly endorsed the machine that he decided to put one in but could not convince the other owners. A short time ago one of their boats, the Tattoosh, came here to tow on the Columbia river bar. It was found that she could not do the work without a towing machine, so Capt. Libby, the manager of the company, came over from Seattle and after spending a day here concluded that he would send an crdcr to you as soon as he reached home. Of course you know that the steamer Geo. R. Vosburg put in one of the machines and I firmly believe that the day is not far distant when a tow boat will not be considered complete without this device. _You are at liberty to publish all or any portion of this letter." MORE NEW SHIPS FOR THE GREAT LAKES. Within the past week the American Ship Building Co. has booked orders for three steel steam vessels to cost about $900,000, thus increasing - to $8,545,000 the value of vessels to be delivered during the coming year. The vessels for which orders have just been placed are a car ferry for the Pere Marquette Ry. Co., to cost about $400,000, and two steel freight steamers, to be duplicates of the Colonial and Yosemite, built at the De- troit works during the past year, and which are to cost about $250,000 each. One of these freighters is for A. E. Stewart, C. F. Bielman and others of Detroit, but the names of parties for whom the second steamer In general dimensions the new car Cleveland works of the American company a short time ago, but.she will haye more power--enough to give a speed of 15 miles an hour. Dimen- sions of the freighters are: Length over all, 376 ft.; beam, 50 ft.; depth, 28 ft. They will have triple-expansion engines and Scotch boilers, the latter fitted with Howden hot draft apparatus. The cigar-shaped lifeboat in which Capt. R. D. Mayo of Frankfort, "Mich., and four:companions left Chicago last Saturday afternoon in an attempt to cross*Lake Michigan was overtaken and placed in tow during 'the night by the Barry line steamer Alice Stafford, which left Chicago 'early in the evening. When a point 22 miles off Grand Haven, Mich., was 'reached the tow line was cast off and the boat sailed the remainder of the 'distance to'Grand Haven, arrived there at 10 o'clock Sunday mo ning. The purpose of making the trip was to demonstrate that.the craft.was an - efficient life-saving device, and Capt. Mayo, its owner and inventor, asserts 'that its practicability. is now definitely settled. The boat ig about 15, ft. long and has an outside sheeting of steel. The interior contains two re- volving floors, so that if the boat should begin turning in a heavy sea its occupants would not be inconvenienced to any great extent. The craft ean only. run before the wind, and if head breezes had been encountered during the trip it would have been blown back to the opposite shore.