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18 ; TAe Marine REVIEW INSTITUTION OF NAVAL ARCHITECTS. - The 'spring meetings of the Institution of Naval Archi- tects were held in London on April 4, 5 and 6, presided over by the Right Hon. the Earl of Glasgow. The an- nual report of the council stated that the membership had increased in all classes, and was now I,7II as compared with 1,632 in 1904. The Martell scholarship, which was competed for last spring, attracted a number of candi- dates from the principal ship building centers of the country, and. was awarded to Mr. A. T. Wall, of Devon- port dock yard, as the result of the board of education's examinations in the prescribed subjects. The reports re- ceived from the director of naval education upon the work of the previous Martell scholar, Mr. Lloyd Wool- lard, who completed his course at the Royal naval col- lege, Greenwich, and had since been appointed to the construction department at the admiralty, had been most gratifying, and the council were encouraged to hope that the establishment of these scholarships would prove of lasting value both to the institution and the profession. This year's "Institution of Naval Architects" scholarship, the first of the two due to the liberality of Dr. Elgar and Mr. A. F. Yarrow, would be competed for shortly under very similar regulations to those of the Martell scholar- ship. The council had awarded the gold medal for the past year to Mr. W. W. Marriner, for his paper on "De- duction from Recent and Former Experiments on _ the Influence of the Depth of Water on Speed," and pre- tmiums to Mr.:J. H. Heck for his paper on "The Varia- tion of Angular Velocity in the Shafting of Marine En- gines," and to Mr. Harold' Yarrow for his paper on "The Effect of Depth of Water on Speed." .The Earl of Glasgow in the course of his presidential address said that the well known turret deck type of ship seemed to. be steadily gaining in favor with ship owners. The tendency to increase the sizeof steamers showed no signs of abatement. The Hamburg-Ameri- can liner Amerika registered 22,724 tons, and the Car- mania, about which so much 'interest attached on ac- count of her turbine engines, was 19,594 tons gross. At the close of 1905 thirty-seven vessels of over 6,000 tons each were under construction, and eight of these were over 12,000 tons. Abroad, the increased activity in ship building has been almost as marked as in Britain. The output from the German yards was again very large, and the growth of the industry in that country was well illustrated by the figures of the Norddeutscher Lloyd company, which showed that while the company's ton- nage had more than trebled in the past fourteen years, the proportion of German built ships in that fleet had risen during that period from 30 to 80 per cent. In France, however, the depression of the past few years was still apparent in the ship building returns, and the output of mercantile tonnage shows unbroken -- shrinkage since 1902. New proposals were under consideration in ' the French legislature to remedy this state of affairs, and their effect, if adopted, will be followed with interest. In the British parliament this session, a bill has been brought in to modify some features of the merchant ship- ping acts, based on the reports of certain committees that have been inquiring into the working of these acts at the present time. The bill is designed to remedy inter alia, the disabilities under which British ship owners have suffered in competition with foreign rivals in the matter of overloading. It is proposed that, after a rea- sonable lapse of time, foreign ships trading with this country should be subjected, where necessary, to the same regulations as are imposed upon British vessels in the matter of loading and safety appliances, thus abolish- ing the unfair advantages that have been hitherto enjoyed by foreign owned vessels. It would also be an object of the present bill to provide greater freedom in the future, to adapt the act to the warying conditions affecting the mercantile marine by allowing certain modifications by means of orders in council; and advisory committees would be created to report upon regulations that might appear from time to time to require adjustment. The favorable reception that the bill has met with from both sides of the house augurs well for the future, and it was confidently hoped that the measure would prove of real benefit to the welfare of the British mercantile marine. The Earl of Glasgow then dealt with the output of marine engines, and said among the firms that had made substantial progress was the Parsons Marine Steam Tur- bine Co. who were credited with 50,000 I. H. P. for the past year. This total, however, was far from giving an idea of the advance made by the steam turbine as a means of ship propulsion. The largest engines of this type yet constructed had been or were being made in other works under license from this company. Thus the turb:nes for the Cunard liner, the Carmania, one of the largest ships in the world, were made in the works of the builders of the vessel on the Clyde, whilst the two new Cunarders, which will surpass any ship, will also have Parsons turbines constructed under license. The rapidity with which the steam turbine had taken its place in the very front rank as a marine engine was, the president observed, unprecedented in the annals of the mercantile marine, but its progress in the Royal navy was no less striking. The Dreadnought, the largest bat- tleship ever built was to be propelled by steam turbines, and the statement made by the first lord of the admiralty went to show that all vessels projected for this year are to be propelled by steam turbines. In conclusion the president said the council had under consideration the provision of an experimental tank, either as a central testing station for the use of ship builders wishing to try models for resistance, or as a place where scientific re- search into the various problems connected with ship re- sistance might be carried on. The provision of such a tank was of vital importance to the development of naval architecture on scientific lines. : WATER STORAGE OF COAL. _Important experiments are being carried on by the naval authorities at Portsmouth dock yard to ascertain to what extent the steaming properties of the Welsh coal used in the British navy are improved by storage in the sea. Eighteen months ago iron crates, each containing two tons of coal, were sunk in the big basin, and at the time a similar quantity of coal was carefully stored in the open air at the coaling point, and sheltered from the weather beneath tarpaulins. At intervals of six months, 2-ton samples from each storage have been taken out and carefully burned, and the results of the experiments have shown conclusively that by submarine storage of coal its calorific value steadily increases, while by storage - in the open air a decided decrease is shown. At the naval coaling stations in the tropics this decrease in calorific value is very great, the sun's heat drawing all the light, volatile oils out of the coal. The admiralty having satis- fied themselves of the physical and financial advantages of the storage of coal in the sea, have now directed that experiments be made to ascertain its practicability on a large scale. The earnings of the Clyde Steamship Co. last year were $852,792 net.