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oe A Rk i NE Bo oy Fog oF SCOTCH SHIPPING LETTER. Glasgow, July 14, 1904.--Our annual industrial holiday asso- ciated with Glasgow Fair begins this week. Work in the larger ship yards and engine shops in the district above and including Renfrew and Clydebank are suspended on Thurs- day night. At Clydebank John Brown & Co. will retain dur- ing the holidays a considerable number of carpenters, who will be engaged setting the frames of the Carmania, the sec- ond of the sister Cunarders. No other yard in the district is so busy as the Clydebank, and in no other case will the holi- day arrangements be different from those of previous years. In several yards there is so little work on hand that an exten- sion of the holiday is much more likely than work at overtime rates during the fair. The holiday nominally terminates on Monday week, but it will be prolonged for a few days, and in the present dullness of trade in so many of the yards this will be less of a grievance to the employers than formerly. The inclination on the part of masters and workers is rather 'to lengthen the holiday till the end of the month. At any rate, there is likely to be little said about broken time if the men fail to return promptly to work when the yards are reopened. In most of the establishments small squads will be retained over the holidays, overhauling plant and machinery. Some very interesting evidence has been given by Mr. John Denholm, shipowner, Greenock, before the select com- mittee of the House of Commons appointed to consider how far British regulations might be extended to foreign vessels trading to and from British ports. Mr. Denholm's evidence related chiefly to the transfer of British ships to foreign flags, and he appeared on behalf of the Clyde Steamship Owners' Association, which represents 4oo steamers with a gross tonnage of 800,000 tons. His own firm manages the Park Line, which is engaged largely in Continental and Baltic trades. Mr. Denholm said that British shipowners are at a disadvantage as compared with foreign owners. Proceeding to cases of transfers he mentioned first the steamer Gunther, which had been on time-charter by his own firm. The owners guaranteed her to carry 1,850 tons under Board of Trade restrictions, and 2,050 tons outside those restrictions. Those flgures were exceeded on several voyages. She was running on the Baltic and Continental trades and would make about seventeen round trips in the year. «An average rate of 6s from a Continental port meant: an advantage of £1,020. The loading and discharging might' be ts 6d per ton, which left a net profit of 4s 6d. After making necessary allowances the profit amounted to about £800. The ship was valued at about £15,000 or £16,000, so that the net profit would be 4 or 5 per cent. Another case was a steamer, the Dalbeattie, which was owned by an English firm. She carried 1,880 tons, all told, under Board of Trade regulations as fixed on her line. Since being transferred to the Norwegian flag, 1,964 tons were carried from Bilboa to the Clyde'on one voyage, and last month she was loaded in Glasgow with a cargo of 1,940 tons. He had not made the calculation' in the case of the Dalbeattie, but the result would be very much the same 'as in the case of the Gunther. The Board of Trade officials can stop foreign ships, but as a matter of fact they do not carry that out in practice. Their attention is not called to the loading because the line is not on the side of the ship. He proceeded to give other cases of ships which had been transferred, the capacity of which before and after transfer was represented by the following figures: 2,050 tons and 2,200 tons; 1,654 and 1,775; 1,350 and 1,450; 860 and gso; 780 atid 850; 1,450 and 1,600; 660 and 725; and 2,550 and 2,750. It was common knowledge that foreign ships loaded more cargo to and from the United Kingdom ports than British ship-owners could possibly do. The Board of Trade are not able to check them so effectually as they do British ships. The regulations ought to be applied to them all. The timber-carrying regulations had been applied to foreign and British ships, and those had worked satisfactorily. If for- eign ships traded with our ports they should comply with our regulations as British ships had to do in foreign ports, There could not be any hardship in such measures being taken. They could easily check an incoming cargo of coal, for instance, as the number of tons per day consumed by the vessel was easily got at. Foreign ships trading with our ports should have the British load-line. He does not think it would be resented by foreign powers, because they) compel us to comply with all their regulations. Those foreign ves- sels, he remarked, were chartered by British agents. It was to the interest of a British agent to charter a foreign ship, because he could get a capacity from a foreign bottom which could not be got from a British ship. He said that under present circumstances they were really providing a bounty for:foreign ships. The first ship he had named was chartered by himself for two years, and what he had described was a common practice. This showed that British shipowners were thrown out of employment under the present system, and the regulations were the cause of serious loss to British trade. Barclay, Curle & Co. Ltd., have launched yesterday a new steel vessel, S. Monica, built for the Red Cross Iquitos Steam- ship Co., Liverpool, for service on the River Amazon. This vessel, which is of a new type, has been specially built for carriage of a large amount of cargo and about eighty passen- gers. The vessel.is 150 ft. in length, 28 ft. 6 in. in breadth, 14 ft. 6 in. in depth, and of 464 tons gross. She is excep- tionally well equipped for the trade, having two winches, powerful windlass, and steering gear, two masts fitted with strong derricks, and teak decks, while the sanitary arrange- ments are particularly complete. There is considerable interest for Americans in the new harbors which have been opened this week at Dover and Folkestone, because of the fresh starting place they provide for the transatlantic voyage. The Hamburg-American Line has already begun to use Dover for the embarkation of pas- sengers from Great Britain for New York. There are two new harbors there, the admiralty and the commercial harbor. The latter is what will interest you most. The commercial harbor occupies the western corner of the area enclosed by the breakwaters and occupies sixty-eight acres. The admiralty pier, which was completed in 1871, was arranged for the use of Continental steamers and has a large railway station upon it. It has now been extended seaward for a length of 2,000 ft., so as to form with the eastern and southern breakwaters to the large admiralty harbor. For the use of Atlantic liners a new pier, known as the Prince of Wales pier, with a length of 2,850 ft. has been completed. The outer part of this-- 1,650 ft. of its length--is of concrete mansonry of the same massive construction as the breakwater, while the inner part of 1,200 ft. is an iron structure serving as a_ passengers' approach to Atlantic liner berths. The trains for conveying the passengers from these berths are to pass over a special viaduct, 800 ft. long, on to the main line of railway. The width of the Atlantic liner pier is 35. ft., and the height above high water ro ft. At certain parts of the pier landing stages have been formed at elevations to suit work at low water. For improving the facilities provided in connection with the Continental traffic, it is intended to construct a new pier 1,100 ft. in length and 280 ft. in width, on a site within the-commercial harbor and protected by the admiralty pier, This pier will: be sufficiently large to accommodate two outward-bound boats on one side , and two inward-bound boats on the other. The whole of the pier is to be covered by 4a railway station with three platforms, where four trains may lie at the same time. The principal difficulty is to arrange A time of departure from Hamburg or Bremerhaven to bring the ship into Dover at a convenient hour to suit London Passengers. The time to Southampton is practically twenty- four hours, and boats leaving the German port in the fore- noon can leave Southampton on the following forenoon,