The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

‘€ Increasing Imports of Iron Ore Demand Modern Facilities for Handling the Enor- mous Shipments—New York Was Selected as Site for Largest Tidewater Ore Dock MPORTS of foreign iron ore by eastern steel companies in recent years have reached such a tonnage and their future growth is so plainly assured, that modern facilities now are being provided for the most efficient and rapid handling of these shipments at tidewater. The most important illus- tration of this development is furnished by the construction jointly by the Beth- lehem Steel Co. and the Lehigh Valley railroad at Constable Hook, N. J., in the New York harbor, of a new ore dock for the unloading of ocean-going ves- sels. This dock is of special design and will be the first of this type of equip- ment to be built in the east. Many of its features, however, will parallel the familiar units of this kind at the lower ports of the Great Lakes. This dock now is ready for operations. Because of this, New York, for the first time, will become an important port of entry for iron ore. The Bethlehem Steel Co., since its re- cent absorption of the Pennsylvania Steel Co., which carried with it the control of the Spanish-American Iron Co., by far the largest iron ore pro- ducer in Cuba at present, is the leading consumer of foreign ore in this country. The Cuban properties of the Spanish- American Iron Co. and those of the Juragua Iron Co., previously owned by the Bethlehem Steel Co., shipped to the United States in 1915, about 765,000 tons of ore, which barring 1914, was the smallest year since 1908. In addition, the Bethlehem Steel Co. is developing large ore deposits at Cruz Grande, Chili, from which it imported 146,000 tons: in 1915. General Description of Dock This unloading plant consists of an electric. substation, a machine shop, one Hulett automatic unloader of the stiff- leg type, and a Mead-Morrison unloader having a grab bucket operated by the rope system. Two types of ore unload- ers were installed on account of the various types of boats that will be un- loaded. The Hulett unloader is es- pecially adapted for unloading modern ore boats with many large hatches while the Mead-Morrison machine can operate advantageously in tramp steamers having restricted openings. The unloaders operate on 62-foot, 11- inch runways extending the entire length of a pier 1,060 feet long. The pier is provided with four railroad tracks under the unloaders. The slip alongside is dredged to a depth of 35 feet of water at low tide and is connected with the main ship channel to New York harbor by a channel 35 feet deep, 250 feet wide at the bottom and 1400. feet in length. The Hulett unloader operates a clam- shell bucket of 17-tons capacity which is rigidly attached to the lower end of a rotating vertical stiff leg carried by a walking beam mounted on a trolley which traverses a runway on the main frame. This main frame is propelled along the pier to line up with the cargo hatches of a ship being unloaded. The bucket discharges its contents into a 50- ton hopper which is located at the slip end of the main frame. This receiving hopper discharges by motor drive into a 30-ton scale hopper mounted on a larry car which travels on a runway on the main frame so as to register the scale hopper directly above the railroad cars on any of the four tracks. This -weigh- ing arrangement insures all cars being loaded to their full carrying capacity. The operating range of this machine is such that the bucket can extend 66 feet from the face of the wharf, 44. feet above and 10 feet below the water at low tide. All of the operations of lowering and hoisting, opening and clos- ing the bucket, rotating the bucket leg, trolley traversing and moving the ma- chine along the dock, are under the con- trol of one operator who is located in the bucket leg just above the bucket.. In this position the operator travels with the bucket and is thus enabled to have an unobstructed view of it at all times. GENERAL VIEW OF THE UNLOADING DOCK OF THE BETHLEHEM STEEL CO. AT CONSTABLE HOOK, N. J., UNDER CONSTRUCTION 295