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

MARINE REVIEW. 5 Soong eh ese na A aS ST EE ee ee Reports of the Lake Freight Market. The MARINE REVIEW has been about right on the freight market this season. The following is taken from our issue of June 11, last: “The turning point has been reached in the lake trade. A most active season is assured from this time on,. and it is more than probable that any of the ore dealers who may have sold ore at the very low prices of the past few weeks with- out providing for the lake freight will find small margins on such sales. The middle of June is at hand with the ore move- ment fully 1,500,000 tons short of that of a year ago and labor matters in such shape that it will yet be several days before boats are unloaded at Lake Erie ports with the usual regularity. The fall movement of grain will undoubtely be very heavy, as all preparations are being made with a view to handling the big- gest crop the northwest has ever seen, and coal shippers admit that it will be necessary to continue throughout the season the present heavy movement of coal. The work of making contracts for delivery of ore during the season is about at an end and it is doubtful now ifany more ore could be covered at the season rates that have prevailed during the past three weeks.” Not- withstanding a slight drop in the market during the week fol- lowing the report just quoted, the improvement anticipated has now come to stay. Instructions for Navigating the Rivers. A meeting of the Cleveland Vessel Owners’ Association was to have been held, Wednesday, for the purpose of taking up the question of rules for navigating the rivers, a subject upon which the Lake Carriers’ Association has been unable to agree. The meeting was postponed but will probably be held Thursday. After consulting managers of leading steamship lines in the ore trade, Capt. McKay and Mr. Harvey D. Goulder have prepared the following instructions, which differ somewhat from the code presented for the conisderation of the Lake Carriers’ Association some time ago: INSTRUCTIONS FOR NAVIGATING THE RIVERS. To the Master of the Steamship: The following suggestions are not intended to add to or take from the regularly prescribed rules, but to keep before your mind the necessity, in the crowded state of the rivers, for all steamers to carry out the spirit and the letter of the rules of navigation. 1. Make the safety of your ship and of other ships in her vicinity your first and chief consideration. Speed and quick time must be subordinate to this. Do not hesitate, then, where prudence and safety demand or suggest it, to check, or stop, or back your ship. 2. So far as it depends on you, always have a clear under- standing with any approaching steamer before you come within a half mile distance, as to how you are to pass. Blow your whistle anyway, and if an approaching steamer fails to blow enter the facts on your log and report the same to the manager on your first arrival thereafter. 3. Do not meet or attempt to pass vessels where the chan- nel is crowded, but keep back out of the way. Avoid meeting or passing where more than two vessels will come abreast at substantially the same time. This should be done by the craft farthest away from the meeting point keeping back, but in all cases do what you can to keep out of and to prevent such an accumulation of vessels. 4. When overtaking another craft give the proper signal to indicate which side you will take. When an overtaking steamer is about to pass you, and blows the signal for either side, always answer such signal according to circumstances. If you have doubt about her ability to pass safely, take the extra precaution to promptly give the signal indicating your doubt. 5. Reduce the speed of your ship by checking in all narrow places, and when about to meet another craft on a bend. At all other times when about to meet something check down unless you can give so wide a berth that the displacement of water or s.iction cannot affect either vessel. : : 6. Do not attempt to pass any craft going the same way in any shoal or narrow place; nor at any time or place where you cannot give her so wide a berth that the displacement of water or suction cannot affect the steering of either vessel. 7- When going up give a descending boat preference in narrow water, especially at the Neebish and the Lime-Kiln crossing. 8. Ifa faster boat is coming up on you and requests and proposes to pass you, you are entitled to hold your course, but fair play requires that if you can yield, you should do so and give a faster vessel every reasonable facility in passing by you. 9. If another craft attempts to pass you in narrow or shoal water, blow her a signal to keep back. If she persists and comes close enough for the suction of either boat to affect the other, or in any case within 200 feet, do what you can, with safety to your own and other crafts, to let her go by. But in every such instance enter the facts at the time on your log and report the same to your manager on your next arrival. 10. In all cases where it is prudent or desirable to check, or to stop, or back, bear in mind that the efficacy of such precautions lies in adapting them in time. ‘Therefore, be alert and ready to take any such precautionary steps early. Notices to Mariners. Commander Nicol Ludlow gives notice that the red second- class nun buoy, marking Ten foot shoal of Point Peninsula, north end of Green bay, has gone adrift. It will be replaced as soon as possible. Vessel captains going to Chicago should beware of a plat- form being erected 8,000 feet from shore north-northeast of the Marine hospital and 2,000 feet west of the Lakeview crib. The city authorities announce that the platform will be lighted, bu it will probably be by small lamps. ~ ; Bilge Keels on Yachts. Eprror MARINE REVIEW :—Reading your account of the launch of the steam yacht Wadena, I[ notice an error that it may be worth while to cor- rect. You say “her bilge keels are the first ever used in yacht construction in this country, and excepting one case unknown until recently to the builders, the first in any country.” Permit me to inform your readers that I put bilge keels on the steam yacht Idler, which I built for Mr. Warrington, of Chicago, as loug ago as 1872, think. He desired some- thing to counteract rolling, and I recommended, and supplied the bilge keels, which were about afoot deep in the mid-length, tapered to six inches atthe ends. They extended about one-third the length of hull, and were put on outside the plank shortly before launching. Bilge Keels were patented in this country by Mr. John W. Griffiths, once a partner of mine in publishing the Nautical Magazine and Naval Jour- nal, more than twenty-five years ago. When he built the steam sloop of war Enterprise at Portsmouth N. H., about 1873, he put bilge keels on her on the order of the chief naval constructor, Isaiah Hanscome. Floor and bilge keels are well calculated to take the place of a center-board, for the purpose of furnishing resistance to lee-way. I recommended them in lieu of lee-boards to the owner of the James Couch when she was built about twenty years ago but he preferred and tried lee-boards. I have recommended bilge keels and they were put on the schooner America in dry dock at Chicago several years ago. So bilge keels are not new on the lakes or in the United States, but have been used more or less by those knowing their utility. Gu, 2 I might as well also remark on what you call “one way of securing 1n- creased speed,” for instance in the case of the Virginia which is “seen to come into port with her head a foot and probably two feet out of water” being ‘trimmed in this way with a view to speed.” I understand the meaning to be that the Virginia runs with a reduced draught forward. Any architect looking at your picture of her on the ways ready for launch- ing would be prepared to endorse the idea that a diminished draught for- ward would reduce her resistance in running. Thus reducing the draught sharpens the body for running easier. All light draught vessels, where speed is an object, should run over the water, as a sled runs over the snow. I have built several fast steam yachts, and fully tested this princi- ple of reduced draught forward. So that beyond the gain from immersing the screw fully, there is another gain that should be credited, to wit, the fining of the immersed bow of the vessel, especially the casing of the curves of resistance of the bow, i. e., the straightening out of the section and diagonal lines. W. W. BATES. Washington, D, C., August 18. It is recorded that a ton of wheat will feed six persons for a year, so that the cargo of 100,400 bushels or 3,030 tons of wheat just taken by the steamship Emily P. Weed from Chicago to Buffolo for export is enough to supply 18,180 Englishmen with food for a twelve month,