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May, 1914 The temperature in the thawing plant is maintained at about 200 de- grees, Fahr. In extreme cold weath- er, about one hour is required for thawing out a 50-ton, steel car loaded with bituminous coal; for thawing out a similar carload of anthracite coal, about 1% hours are required. In case of wooden cars, the time re- quired for thawing out is about twice as great. For this reason, wooden cars greatly reduce the capacity of the loading plant in cold weather. For supplying steam to the thaw- ing plant and engine room, there is a concrete boiler house, which, in ad- dition to four horizontal boilers, hav- ing total capacity of 1,800 H. P., is equipped with an underwriters' pump, boiler feed pumps, etc. The plant also is provided with a fully equipped ma- chine shop in order to facilitate the making of repairs to the car dumper and other parts of the plant when necessary. This is housed in a sepa- rate concrete building adjacent to the boiler house. The dumper is located on a con- crete-faced pier, 700 ft. long, and the THE MARINE REVIEW At this pier vessels are loaded with cargoes ranging all the way from 50 to 10,000 -gross tons. The coal goes Principally to New England points. Outside of this, the bulk goes to the West Indies. A large per centage of the shipments also are made to Italy, France and South America. While the coal dumper is owned and controlled by 'the Pennsylvania railroad, it is in charge of the Eastern 181 may be filled to that depth with sea water. In order to avoid unnecessary operations of gates and valves, the lower gate of the middle level was thrown open directly after the oper- ating gate at the lower end of the iower level was closed, making one chamber, 2,000 ft. long; this was filled a few feet and the vessels were towed into the intermediate level. The lower gate of this chamber was then closed, FIG. 3--COAL DUMPER AT GREENWICH POINT, SHOWING CAR COMPLETELY EMPTY slip alongside has been dredged to a depth of 30 ft. at low tide, which is ample to accommodate any vessel that can come up the Delaware. The steel frame of the dumper rests upon a foundation built up of approximately 25,000 cu. yds. of concrete and rein- forced with 50 tons of old steel rails; this foundation, in turn, is shored up on 750 piles, thus providing a very Substantial structure. For spotting the hatches with ref- erence to the chute, ships are moved by means of an electrically-operated cable which commands the entire face of the pier. In moving ships, it fre- quently is necessary to elevate the .Outer end of the pan in order to pro- vide sufficient clearance for the masts. This motion is effected by means of cables, and the pan may be brought into a nearly vertical position, thus taking it entirely out of the danger zone. Coal Dock: Co.,. which :-niamtains a force of about 125 men for operating the machiniery and doing the steve- dore work. Gatum Locks as Dry Dock The locks at Gatum were recently used as a dry dock in which to over- hall five submarines. The five vessels, each 105 ft. long by 16 ft. in maxi- mum beam were lashed together in one rank, side by side, and handled in a group. The movements of the group were controlled by means of four tow- ing lines, two attached forward and two aft, each line being handled by from 10 to 12 seamen of the division, walking on the lock walls. The draft of the vessels in salt water is 14 ft. The floor of the inter- mediate level of Gatum locks is 132-3 ft. below sea level, and the chambers and the chamber was filled to a level sufficient to float the vessels into the upper level arid in place over the cradles which had been prepared on the floor. The lower gate of the up- per level was then closed and the water was let out slowly through the culverts under the floor, allowing the vessels to settle into place in their respective cradles. In the upper east chamber, the shorter, or 400-ft. sec- tion, was used. The bulk freighter W. D. Crawford, building at the Lorain yard of the American Ship Building Co. for the Virginia Steamship Co., managed by M. A. Hanna & Co., was launched on April 18. The Crawford is built on the Isherwood system and is 524 ft. long, 58 ft. beam and 30 ft. deep and will carry 9,000 tons.