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= - have become historic. N Goine ieee: WIth RUDIMENTARY NorES 0 ON STABIL- ‘ITY AND CASUALTIES IN FOREIGN WATERS. * By Joseph R. Oldham, N. A., Cleveland, 0. In after years—and it may be within a very short period—the statisti- | cal: tudent or-the business man, -will point to the year A. D. ., 1891, as the ‘commencement of the pre-eminent reign of the god Vulcan, such as the _earth had never before realized, and in doing so his thoughts must inevit- _ ably revert to the northern states of the great republic. If his endeavor _ tends towards location as well as to the volume of production, the finger must follow the eye to our northwestern lake district and, if that beso, : shall we be too prophetic if we assume that this very point of earth will be, as it now is, perhaps the most interesting seaport in the known world when the subject under consideration is that of iron and steel production, and the carriage of same, which is the raw material out of which the na- —vi's of the immediate future will be constructed. -For the first time in the remarkable, or rather wonderful, history of the United States of _ America, she has completely eclipsed any other nation in the amount of pig iron and bessemer steel production, ten and one-third million tons of _the former and nearly four million tons of the latter bei g our output for the year 1890. These products should have great interest for us in this | large shipbuilding center, for though they may not be the ‘raw material to the shipbuilder, they are to the iron master and there is.but. one step. from the rolling. mill to the shipyard. | -It was well said that the early times, dating far back through | the centuries, ‘formed the age of bronze, « and that the last two or three hundred years, leading up to our own time, may be called the age of iron. We have now, however, advanced into the age of steel and ere many years have passed away iron will practically Probably before another decade is over, the age of bronze, possibly of a different kind, will again be lived EYED, history thus repeating itself. Permit me to draw vour attention to the means by which much of our most valuable metals are transported. Of course, your thoughts will in the first place revert to our lake vessels, and many of you will narrow your cogitations down to steam vessels some even still further to those of metal construction. As regards these large modern lake steamers I trust you will not attribute the admission to innate modesty when I say that neither my imagination nor experience prompt me to suggest, as an im- provement any marked departure in the design of these steamers, con- sidering the work they have to do and so long as financial results in con- nection with them are satisfactory. Should it be found, however, that many of these large steamers are too costly in construction and insurance under the severe test of modern competition; should they be found more spacious as iron ore carriers than requirements demand, and alteration might be required, and so, in a tentative manner, I committed to paper some time ago an outline of a steamer that might suit such a situation. I will be pleased to give you my views regarding this craft at. some future time. I wish to make it clear, however, that your present, large, high class steamersare, as atype, far and away handsomer, more capacious and seaworthy for the work they have to do than any class of sea-going cargo steamers in the world. Moreover, these vessels cannot capsize and they do not founder in deep waters, except after severe collision. Notwithstanding the difficulties attending the work of sending large vessels from the lakes to the coast by way of the St. Lawrence, several of our lake builders, as well as owners, are figuring on such a proceeding. By virtue of the stimulus likely to be given to the building of high class, foreign going steamers, when our mail subsidy lawis put into force, we may look for at least a small, but lucrative foreign trade, and I see no reason why our lake shipbuilders and owners should not be the pioneers on some of the foreign routes, especially in the Pacific, for the direct trade between China, Japan, Australia and North America already amounts to $75,000,000 per annum. To absorb this trade there will be three new high powered British steamers in the Pacific this spring. Think of China re- quiring railroads to supply the wants of 300,000,000 of people! With steel plate at 2 cents a pound we could build steel steamers eligible for the $1 per mile bonus for something like $250,000, and such steel steamers would be as cheap as wooden ones per ton, dead weight ability. A sum equal to about one-tenth of the first cost should pay for cutting and rejoining; or ten per cent. of the first cost expended on some of our fastest existing steel lake steamers, might be sufficient to render them fit for the trans- atlantic trade, if they could be run profitably on domestic insurance. Less money than this would, however, equip such vessels for the Pacific or even South American trade, as westerly winds prevail on our eastern coast, resulting in comparatively smooth water, for a large portion of the year. In the north Atlantic trade it is different. I need hardly tell you that it is the continued hammering that strains the butts and’ places un- usual strain on the crank shaft, and that is why no ordinary steamer can endure the North Atlantic trade for any great length of time. Of course, * Read before the Excelsior Marine Benevolent Association, order of lake captains, our : dotlee or so > per mile is not a clear gain over the foreigners, for they ~ subsidize and the men are less expensive, both as regards wages and keeping., For instance, their masters may average $100 a month in the better class of vessels we are now considering; their chief engineer re- ceives $90 or $75, second $50, third $35, sailors and firemen $20. The mas- ters find the ship in provisions for about 30 cents a man per day. Though we can build equal steamers as cheaply as they can we cannot work them so economically, nor insure them so cheaply. Still, if our government officials only interpret the new act liberally and do not harass our ship- owners, there should be a good opening for lake steamers in the foreign trade, When we build steamers for the ocean trade it will, I believe, be found advisable to increase our depth in proportion to the breadth, and as this would be a step in the direction of the tramp type of steamer, a3 may ' give some statistics illustrative of the risks incident to steamers of narrow ' beam and low freeboard when loaded with light homogeneous cargoes. During the five years ences with 1885 some.187 British vessels foundered at sea. Many of these were ‘“‘missing” vessels, but loss by stranding, known collision or fire are not included, and I fear that such losses last year were ' -much greater, notwithstanding the load line act and i increase of breadth. These vessels were mostly new but their great peculiarity was that their - depth was equal to from 70 to 80 per cent. of the breadth, and the depth of one “missing” vessel was equal to go per cent. of the breadth. so hardly tell you that these are extreme proportions, for our ay ag amer does not equal 60 per cent. of her breadth in depth. Many sels were known beyond a doubt to be deficient in eras. eon and experiment. - one was struck by a heavy sea and rolled over. broad “‘missing” ships, and from the remaining a and d es estimate that nearly one-third of the foundered vessels | we , reason of their unstable equilibrium. This should bea warning, . must not be inferred that these vessels generally capsize sudde: such is not the fact. They heel over towards an inclined ‘pos stable equilibrium, the cargo shifts further over to the lee side, the de fittings strain or are washed away, water accumulates in the holds and _ they eventually capsize or founder. This excessive depth would not be b = ‘any means objectionable in awning or even spar deck vesssels, if loaded as such, like our large lake steamers, but when these vessels are loaded down in proportion to their great depth, with a homogeneous cargo of low specific gravity, it not only brings about a high center of gravity, but this is accompanied by a comparatively low freeboard, which prevents the . center of buoyancy moving out from the center of the vessel sufficiently to give an adequate righting movement at large angles of inclination. As I have already said these lake steamers are the finest cargo vessels afloat for the work they have to do, but you know our steamers have very full lines ; indeed some are only about 15 per cent. better than a parallel- opipedon, or say a square box in model, and in my opinion a very full vessel ought not to be loaded so deeply as a comparatively fine vessel of the same general dimensions. As these steamers may some day be ap- pointed to the ocean trade, permit me to offer you a word or two of cau- tion: To favorably compete with the three-deck tramp steamer there would be an ever present incentive to deeper loading. A tramp steamer of the same depth as our typical large steamer would be worked with about 3% feet of freeboar to her upper deck. Need I say then that it would be hazardous in the extreme to attempt to put sucha weight as would correspond to such a freeboard on these vessels? Would you not shrink from the opprobrium of having some thirty-seven or forty missing or foundered vessels entered on our list of casualties in each year? There are various reasons for this caution, I will just touch on one: Whena , vessel is posted as having capsized or foundered. or is missing at sea, the first question among the underwriters is, not what were her dimensions, where or when was she built, or who was the master—the latter a most important query as I fancy many of the gentlemen present will readily admit—but what was her freight, where was she loaded, did she carry cotton and seeds from Bombay, maize from New Orleans or wheat or oats from San Francisco? Some one having suffered from spontaneous com- bustion, might wish to know if the vessel carried coals from the Tyne, which are frequently poured into the hold quite innocent of the trimming shovel. Again it might e asked whether she had water ballast tanks or not for in these vessels the water ballast tanks, as they construct them, called forth the disapproval of all cautious underwriters; so much so at _ one time that it was difficult to effect a reasonable’ insurance policy on them at Lloyds. On the other hand the double bottom as arranged in our steamers is only second in meritorious importance to the bottom itself, and, as I have already said or implied, the underwriter’s mind instinctive- ly turns to the most flagrant source of loss- If a vessel could he filled like a bushel measure, when loaded with such homogeneous cargoes as I haye named, the dimensions or the proportionate principal dimensions of the hull, would then be the point of paramount importance, but there is al- ways some empty space left and it is these little vacant corners that do