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22 © LAKE UNDERWRITING. | Buffalo, May 21--The lake under- writers are not feeling very pleasant just now. They see their losses pil- ing up from all sources and are help- less to prevent any of it though the ice loss would be mostly preventable if. the underwriters had the _ requisite nerve and stamina to forbid vessels _from plunging into an ice field, as they are doing right along every spring. A month ago there were steamers going outside here by the dozen when there had been others in the ice for days, unable to move. The dry docks here are still very busy with the vessels that have had a tussle with the ice and have come out the worse for it. The last report was that' the docks were full of craft that had 'mostly bottom work to be done, for there have been a good many strandings along with the ice damage. Besides some very heavy losses have resulted from collisions and these have a bad way of creating cargo as well as hull losses, as with the Gault-Whittaker case. When there is a full quota of fire losses the list will be complete, though there have not been any total losses yet. : The underwriters say that they are not really bound to stand the average ice losses, for the captain who deliber- ately goes to bucking ice is not exer- cising "due caution' by a long way. Then why do not the underwriters set a-firm foot down and stop it all? The answer is that they do not quite dare to undertake it. But how does anyone know that there is a lack of due pre- caution? Because if there was no in- surance forthcoming to meet ice dam- age the vessels would stay out of the ice, is. the quick reply. The owner is not going to do anythmg of the sort on his own risk. Of course there have been unusually heavy ice losses this' spring that cannot be met by insurance. Some of the larger vessels have lain for weeks waiting for the ice to move out of the. way and besides, as an underwriter notes, there is always much loss from the time a vessel must lie in dry dock Pepaiine. This is. not taken into proper account, it is claimed. A vessel owner is proverbially the most uneasy person living when there is a possibil- ity of getting the fleet started, even iron-clad agreements to start on cer- 'tain days not always saving him from the fever. Sometimes there is cargo that should be delivered in April, sometimes there is chance of a lull af- ter the first round trip and there will be trouble if it is not made early. So 'were hung up awhile there. THe Marine Review the attack is made on the ice usually before it is soft enough to navigate safely. A Buffalo lake underwriter estimates that the insurance loss from ice dam- age already incurred this spring will not be less than $500,000, though he admits that any estimate must be a wild guess as yet, and then he refers ruefully to the fleet still stuck fast in the ice at Fort William and the reports of ice accumulations above the Sault and wonders if his figures are to be added to very much yet this spring. As it looks now the insurance com- panies doing business on the lakes are already pretty nearly past all possi- bility of making a profit this season, for if the elements were to turn in their favor as they once in awhile do there are always so many things to pay for that cannot be laid to stress of weather that it is not easy to catch up when the losses are away ahead of the earned premiums. It is true that the premiums will be larger than they were last season. The rate is a frac- tion higher and the higher tonnage val- uation with the cutting off of minor losses will all contribute to the earn- ings of the insurance companies, but it seems certain that it will all be needed and more with it to make up for the extra losses already in the list. The slow conditions on the lakes seem to hang on as never before. Some big vessels have not made a round trip yet. Some of them were in the big tush of coal: to the upper lakes. and The lum- ber fleet is still suffering more or less from not being able to get into certain Lake Superior ports after the lake in general was open. The new practice of loading large amounts of coal at Lake Erie ports during winter cuts down the amount offering to first arrivals and in case of hard coal obliges a great part of the regular coal carriers to go 'up next time light. The tendency is to ship hard coal more and more to the three or four leading upper-lake ports. At the end of April the 400,000 tons of hard coal shipped from here had all but about 18 per cent been consigned to Chicago, Milwaukee and Duluth-Superior, with Chicago leading about as usual, spite of the comparative ease of making rail shipments there. When there is any desire to cover any lake port or to push forward through shipments east or west the united trunk lines make a very small showing as compared with what can be done by lake. Joun W. CHAMBERLIN, NEW AZIMUTH TABLES FOR THE LAKES. Announcement was recently made in these. columns of. the . acw 'azimuth 'tables for the great lakes, to be published by Frank Hen- rich, Master Mariner, Duluth, Minn. The publication has come from the oréss and is now. on the market. It is a splendid work and merits a careful consideration on the part of every navigator, if not the owner and insurer. The convenient arrangement of the whole table re- flects much credit on its painstaking author. ' The object of this new publication _is to eliminate, so far as possible, the tedious operations of interpolating for the intermediate minutes of apparent time, latitude and declination. The chief objection to the government azimuth. tables is the time interval of 10 minutes between the true bear- ing for every hour of the day, which necessitates almost constant interpo- lation, with consequent loss of time and lability of error. Captain Hen- rich, after a thorough examination of the government azimuth tables for use on the great lakes, was con- vinced that improvements were nec- essary, also that the immense mari- time commerce on these inland seas, -conveyed by means of modern con- structed and equipped steel steamers, 'merited a special publication on this subject. In this opinion the author was sustained by a large number of progressive navigators. The work consisted of re-computing, re-arrang- ing, and extending the existing azi- muth tables for the latitudes 41 de- grees to 49 degrees north. Numerous - ship masters to whom the nature of the undertaking. was explained were enthusiastic and urged its completion at the earliest possible moment. The arrangement of the new tables is entirely novel and thoroughly orig- inal. Instead of the 10 minute inter- vals between the true bearings, 4 min- ute intervals are employed, and _ in- stead of the 'bearings being given for one latitude for the entire year for each even degree of declination, on a single page or two pages facing each other, as contained in the government tables, the true bearing for each even degree of latitude comprising the great lakes region is given on the same page for each even degree of declination. For example, if the true bearing of 'a celestial object be re- quired for a p. m. hour angle of th. 8m. for any degree of latitude corre- sponding to any degree of declina- tion, it will be found grouped on two single pages facing each other; the true bearing corresponding to each