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22 : MARINE REVIEW (Jan: 14; VISIT TO THE GREAT LAKES WORKS. On Friday afternoon a delegation from the Lake Carriers' association and invited guests visited the plant of the Great Lakes Engineering Works, being conveyed there by a special train on the Michigan Central railway. There were about seventy- five in the party and undoubtedly there was not one who was. not considerably surprised with what he saw. The works are splendidly constructed. Due regard has been taken of present requirements and future demands, for every building is capable of enlargement, notwithstanding the fact that the vital machin- ery is already carried in duplicate. Everything about the plant is pneumatic and electric which induces largely to system, clean- liness and smoothness of operation. In the mold loft, a spacious and well-lighted building, the visitors saw the molds of the steamer which is being built for Frank Seither of Cleveland, and which is to be named after the man who is to sail her--Capt. R. W. England. No part of the buildings was missed, not from the rivet storage room to the great machine shop with its traveling electric cranes. Every one carried away with him the impres- sion that the utmost thought had been put into the arrangement, construction and equipment of the buildings and that no point had been overlooked which might contribute to the economical building of ships. The visitors were taken through the buildings by the officers of the company and every detail explained to them. | Lunch was served on the train. BATTERED BOTTOM OF THE HUTCHINSON. Buffalo, Jan. 14.--Marine men are taking a day off just now tc look at the steamer J. T. Hutchinson, which has had a history from Nov. 29, when she left Duluth with a cargo of flaxseed, till lest Saturday, Jan. 9, when she went into dry dock here, that has not yet been equalled on the lakes in many respects and possibly not anyvhere else. A great part of this history has been written up from day te day in a fragmentary way, but a great part of it will not be written at all unless there is litigation to bring it out. It is at least safe to say that the vessel man who looks at the steamer as she lies in the dock now is much more astonished at her history than he could have been at any previous time. There were revorts while she was on the way down that she leaked but. comparatively little and that her bottom might not be very much injured. as she merely balanced on the rock off Keweenaw: point with deep water almost all about her. There will not be any more such views of the case. Those who are best acquainted with navi- gation are saying now that her bottom is a sight to go a long way to see and some of them go far enough to add that had all the facts been known it would have been very hard to get a crew to come down on her. In all the experience of lake freighters with heavy bottom damages there has been nothing so bad as the bot- tom of the Hutchinson. She appears to have struck the rock pretty well forward and on the starboard side of her bottom. Then for a considerable dis- tance she is not injured, but well aft begins the crushing contact that crumpled the bottom up as though it were a blanket flapping in the wind, or a tin pan the boys have kicked about the street. All this is on her starboard side and does not extend quite up to the keel. The plates' are good stuff and are practically all there, but the frames have given way to the number of 130 to 140, ac-. cording to present estimate, so that the bottom is a sieve. This condition of things is estimated to be 120 ft. long. For a distance of about 80 ft. amidships everything is pushed up about 5 ft. so that there is no difficulty in standing or walking erect under the -steamer while viewing her battered bottom. The breach does not show up on the steamer's side except where the plates are crumpled up, mostly on the stretch of 120 ft. or so, and then only at the turn of her bilge, where the plates give one the notion that they must have been hot and the steamer had sat down on great round masses of solid matter. The top of the water bottom inside shows the actual strain the vessel stood on the way down. It is bulged up for a distance of about 50 ft., in some places as much as 18 in. Had this strain been too great the tank top, as it is called, would have given way in some form and it might have split across and opened up wide enough to have sent her to the bottom like a shot, unless the waxy condition of her cargo had held the water back for a short time. It was a wonderful voyage that was made down the lakes --wonderful without the added peril of storm and ice fields to encounter. A couple of months, steady work, will certainly be required to rebuild the steamer. Of course everybody is asking how much it will cost to do the work. Those who will have the bills to pay are not saying much, except to remark that $50,000 will do a lot of work these days. One of the representatives of the ship build- ing combination is quoted as saying that the job will cost $110,- 000 to $115,000. Then there is the great cost of getting the steamer to Buffalo. The bill of the Great Lakes Towing Co. is said to be $22,000, and this does not include the cost of the pumps or of the two ferries that helped the steamer through the ice be- low Detroit, a matter of $500 a day each for two and a half days and called cheap at that. About 100,000 bushels of dry flaxseed was saved and such of the rest as was not jettisoned was sold in various-sized lots, the aggregate price not yet being figured out. As to the work to be done there is but one observation very pertinent and that is on the wonderful advances made in metal ship building since the day, only about a dozen years ago, when a very large rebuild had to be given the steamer Northern Wave. Vessel plates of that day were hard and inflexible, often breaking like glass when bent, and they could not be rolled out cold. Moreover all removal of rivets and plates had to be done by hand, a process very slow and tedious. Steel plates are now rolled cold, often straightened out when badly bent. Some say that the Hutchinson's tank top will come back to place when the obstruc- tions are removed. We now have tools that will do this work in a fraction of the time then required. 'The air drill will re- move the rivets and the air chisel will cut the plates and other steel so fast that it is estimated that it will take 25 per cent. less time than it would a dozen years ago to repair the steamer. Joun CHAMBERLIN. SPE"IAL HONOR FOR CAPT. J. J. H. BROWN. Capt. J. J. H. Brown of Buffalo, one of the ex-presidents ot the Lake Carriers' association and who has for years been among its most active members, was offered congratulations from all quarters at the Lake Carriers' meeting in Detroit upon his election on Wednesday last to the presidency of the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce. This honor is looked upon as the best within the gift of the people of Buffalo, as the membership of the Chamber of. Commerce comprises more than 1,100 of the business men of the city. It was expected that the contest for the presidency would be spirited and the vote close, as there was unusual interest in the election this year, but the ticket on which Capt. Brown was elected had about two to one of the votes. Capt. Brown has lived in Buffalo for forty years and has conducted a vessel business there for twenty-five years. OPPOSED TO GOVERNMENT DREDGES. At their annual convention in Chicago recently the Interna- tional Brotherhood of Steamshovel and Dredge Engineers and Cranesmen of America adopted resolutions asking the govern- ment to discontinue the building of dredges that are to compete under government direction with the contractors of the country who have vast sums of money invested, and appointed a com- inittee to present the resolutions to President Roosevelt and to bring the matter to the attention of congress, This committee will also urge the passage of a bill to congress to protect organ- ized labor in the construction-of the Panama canal. The following scale of wages was adopted for the United States and Canada: Minimum for engineers, $125 per month; cranesmen, $90 per month; for Cuba and Mexico, $160 per month and board for engineers, and $125 per month and board for cranesmen. Scale of wages for Panama canal work, $300 per month and board for engineers and $250 per month and board for cranesmen. A committee was appointed to meet the contractors of the great lakes next month to adjust the scale of wages and working agreement for the season of 1904 on the lakes. : Officers elected for the ensuing year are: President, Chas. Rees of Chicago; first vice-president, Wm. Osnor of Chicago; second vice-president, Thos. McKinney of Thorold, Ont.; third vice-president, Robert Farrell of Philadelphia; vice-president at large, John Dillander of Philadelphia; secretary and treasurer, T? 3. Dolan, Jr., of Chicago, PILOT RULES OF THE LAKES. It was expected that the matter of trying to bring about uni- formity in rules of the road for both Canadian vessels and ves- sels of the United States on the lakes would come up at this week's meeting of the Lake Carriers' association in Detroit, but this question will probably be left, as far as the Lake Carriers' association is concerned, to the executive officials. It is well known, of course, that since the passage of the White law by congress there is a great difference on the lakes in the rules of Canada and the United States. The Dominion Marine associa- tion proposes to make another effort through conferences and agreements with the Lake Carriers to assimilate these rules. On this score, Capt. Thomas Donnelly of Kingston, who has given a great deal of attention to the subject, says in a letter to the Review :. "During the past few days the press of Canada in publishing the notice of the proposed meeting of representatives of the Lake Carriers' association with our Dominion Marine association has stated that 'it is the intention of Canadians to adopt the United States lake navigation rules,' and during the past week I have re- ceived five inquiries from Canadian vessel masters asking if this statement is true. Would you please allow me to state that the proposed meeting is for the purpose of taking steps to assimilate the rules of navigation for use in lake navigation, and every one interested must agree that this is an important and worthy ob- ject. For fifteen years past I have endeavored by individual effort and in conjunction with others to bring this to the notice of the authorities on both sides of the line and for the first time I have hopes of success. I cannot foretell what action may be taken by the joint committee of which I have the honor to be an humble member, but no one who has studied your Pilot Rules for the Lakes and your White law would want to accept both of these imperfect measures as they now stand." Next season the Goodrich Line will operate three steamérs between Chicago, Grand Haven and Muskegon, as against two in the past. Great growth in the travel to and from summer resorts is the cause of this improvement in service. _ _An Ashland dispatch says that the C. Reiss Coal Co. has nego- trations under way for the erection next summer of a large coal dock at that point.