tute of Naval Architects upon this subject, at their twenty-first session, "why in cargo steamers of the long-poop type, where the poop and forecastle together cover perhaps two-thirds the length of the ship, the further obvious and inviting step is not taken of covering in the well, and getting a good safe freeboard all fore and aft? The answer usually is that the prescribed draught of water would not admit of cargo being carried in the new part, whereas the tonnage dues would be considerably increased." The records of marine courts of inquiry go to prove how fully the danger of the welldecked steamer has for years past been recognised. So long ago as January, 1881, when this particular type was of comparatively recent creation, a court assembled at Middlesborough to ascertain the cause of the loss of the Muriel, gave it as their opinion "that well-decked steamers are not adapted for voyages across the Atlantic during the winter months." A good illustration of the peculiar peril attending this species of ship was afforded by the loss of the Egypt, whilst crossing from New York to Lisbon in March, 1887. The Egypt

was an iron screw

slender hull is additionally built up with a long cumbrous deck-house, the top-weight reduces her to a chronic condition of threatening to turn turtle at a moment's notice. Our illustration of the Tavium gives an excellent view of the theory of construction carried out in the spar-decked steamer. The chief danger of this type of vessel lies in her disastrous tendency to shift her cargo, owing to excessive labouring in a seaway. Numbers of these unstable ships have been lost simply by the displacement of their freight throwing them over on to their beam ends, from which posture their narrow proportions and excessive top - weight effectually prevent their recovering buoy

ancy.

Following close astern of the spar-decked steamer shall now come a Cardiff-built craft, laden with iron ore from Bilboa.

steamship of 1,571 tons, built upon the Tyne; she was a well-decked ship of the long-poop type, and held the highest class at Lloyd's, her builders asserting her to be in many respects of extra strength. But excellence of construction is unfortunately no guarantee of security in the welldecked steamer. The Court of Inquiry arrived at the conclusion that she was lost "because large bodies of water came into and remained in the well, and that there was no other contributing cause to the loss; the vessel herself being thoroughly seaworthy, her cargo being properly stowed, and the navigation, in all respects, quite efficient."

Of quite an opposite type, yet nearly as unpopular too in her way amongst sailors, is the "spar-decked" steamer. She is a craft rendered already horribly crank by the modern theories of "wallsides" and "box-beam"; but when her

Nothing rescues these vessels from falling into the ocean-tramp category but the fact of their being regularly employed in one particular traffic, and they cannot therefore be strictly said to belong to that great class of the Ishmaelites of the deep. The particular iron-ore steamer which is passing in review before our imaginary point of cliff is of that school which seafaring men in their grim suggestive humour term "drain-pipes"; her beam, approximately, is nine times less than her length. It has been repeatedly on behalf

of these Bilboa steamers that they very seldom come to grief. Yet sailors will unhesitatingly assure you they are craft of the worst possible proportions to be found afloat. To see them to advantage one requires to view them, not threading their way through the smooth green waters of the English Channel, but crossing the

Bay of Biscay in heavy weather; literally washing through it, with nothing visible above the storming surface of ocean save the masts and funnel, and a drenched figure or two up on the flying-bridge. Captain Millbank-a master mariner of wide experience in this Spanish traffichas stated it as his opinion that the only reason these ships do not over and over

we suppose ourselves to be standing. She is what the average landsman would call a very fine ship; that is to say she is large, with three or perhaps four masts, a big, gaudily-coloured funnel, and plenty of red paint about her; all which fills the eye and somehow conveys a suggestion of great power. But appearances, in the case of the grain-cargo ship, are deceitful.

In the second volume of the British Merchant Service Journal (1880) is contained a vigorous denunciation of these ships by the chairman of the Shipmasters' Society. "The causes," he says, "which make grain - cargo ships founder are very clear to those who take the trouble to search for the reasons. First of all, a man desires to make his ship carry something like double the quantity of that of his neighbour. What does he do? If you take one of their midship sections and look at it you will see. It is simply like a box, with the lower corners rounded off for bilges. He carries that midship section to a most enormous length forward and

again founder is because the cargo they carry is so heavy in proportion to its bulk, that their holds cannot be much more than half filled with it; and, though they may put to sea with scarcely the freeboard of a ten-ton cutter, yet the dead-weight at bottom and the surplus air on top preserves both the centre of gravity and the meta-centre, and enables the inelegant looking fabric to go on floating right side uppermost. Undoubtedly Mr. Samuel Plimsoll achieved a great national work when he carried his measure for obliging the shipowners to affix to their vessels' sides a disc, below which they were not allowed to be loaded; unfortunately for the

efficacy of this reform the slight oversight was committed of leaving it all but entirely as a matter of discretion where the mark should be put.

Another type, and then we will have done with the dangerous class of steamers, every one of which must certainly carry at least double the usual number of sweet little cherubs up aloft looking after the lives of the poor Jacks who man her. It is a grain-cargo steamer which next passes abreast of the vantage ground upon which

A STEAM COLLIER.

aft, and then closes the ends of her as best he may, to get the best entrance and exit for the water that the length of the vessel will allow him. Go down to the docks where these steamers are lying. There is one in the South-West India dock now, although of course I cannot mention names. You never saw such a thing in your life. If she were rigged as a ship you would find the midship section somewhere about the foremast and mizzenmast, leaving very little for the entrance and

exit. The builder says, 'I will build to a certain class at Lloyd's.' 'Yes,' says the other contracting party, but do not put into her one pound of scantling that you can possibly keep out, because every pound put into her will rob me of a pound of freight. Starting with such a condition of things as that, what sort of vessels are they likely to produce to carry heavy cargoes across the North Atlantic, with a proper and due regard to the lives of those on board her, and the safety of the ship? Why, nothing but a coffin!" Into the yawning hatches of such a huge metal tank as this the grain is poured in bulk from the elevators of the American ports, and away she steams to sea, frequently without being allowed time to trim her cargo, which, from its loose nature, has a most disastrous habit of shifting bodily when the vessel begins to labour heavily. The narrative of the voyage of the graincargo steamer but too often comes to be chronicled in a side column of the newspapers under the heading of Shipping Casualties.

But all the cargocarrying steamers sailing under the

getting well on for half a century since the first screw collier left the Tyne with a cargo of Wallsend coals bound for London. She rejoiced in the enigmatic name of the Q.E.D., and was a queer-looking craft of 272 tons burthen, described as heavily barque-rigged, and in style and build not unlike the celebrated Baltimore clippers' that were then running. Her mizzenmast, a hollow iron tube, served the purpose of a chimney stack, so that, to the casual spectator, she presented the appearance of an ordinary sailing ship, with the somewhat alarming spectacle, when under steam, of thick clouds of smoke issuing forth from the neighbourhood of her crosstrees. The steamships engaged in the coast-wise coal trade are, for the most part, small vessels, seldom rising to a thousand tons in burthen. Lindsay gives a

British mercantile flag are not by any means either monsters of marine architecture, or specimens of cheap and scamping workmanship. Outside the great passenger liners there are countless very fine steamers trading to the various ports of the world. As an example turn to the portrait of the Clan Matheson, a steamship well known in the Indian trade, and a very representative type of a race of craft which are seaworthy and powerful in the highest degree. Let the next vessel to command our attention be the steam-collier, if for no better reason than that she belongs to a class infinitely more numerous than any other species of merchant steamer to be found afloat. The collier has indeed been most unduly maligned. To be sure, in so prodigious a fleet as these ships constitute there will necessarily be no lack of crank and unseaworthy steamers; plenty of "tramps" and well-decked" vessels, fragile as egg-shells, and inadequately engined. But there are also innumerable good ships employed in the coal trade. It is now

good description of a modern screw collier, so far typical of the scores of ships to be met with to-day hailing from the ports of South Wales, and the north of England, that we reproduce it. "The King Coal," runs the account, "which was contracted for in the year 1870, cost, complete for sea, £15,000. She carries 900 tons coal cargo, with bunker space for 100 tons more, and has extra water ballast for making a passage when she has no cargo on board; against strong winds her speed is 8 knots an hour when loaded, and from 9 to 10 knots when light in fine weather; her power, go horse nominal. She has an excellent saloon cabin on deck for the captain, with four berths and accommodation for the chief mate and steward at the entrance; her crew consists of seventeen persons all told. The voyage from Newcastle to London and back usually occupies from six to eight days. Hoisting sails, lifting anchor, and other heavy work is done by 1 Presumably meaning quod erat demonstrandum, "which was to be proved.

steam winches. The crew are accommodated in a roomy and well-ventilated forecastle level with the main deck, the seamen occupying one side of it, the stokers the other, with a bulkhead between them. The engineers have cabins on deck in the bridge-house; the wheel-house stands on the platform which spans the deck in midships, and is so arranged that, while the helmsman can see everything ahead, he is protected from the inclemency of the weather." The Geordieman of the present day is inpresent day is indeed usually a great deal better off than the majority of his brother

frozen, but alive and bellowing. The Western Ocean cattle boat is chiefly a large powerful steamer, of a burthen ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 tons. Indeed, many of these vessels belong to the great emigrant carrying lines, and each voyage takes out a living freight consigned to Castle Garden. We give a portrait of a very representative type, the Assyrian Monarch. The beasts (the oxen, not the emigrants) are all carried on deck in rude sheds built against the bulwarks, with a gangway running between them amidships. Two hundred head of cattle is an average cargo; the animals are stowed in lines fore and aft, with their tails against the bulwarks and their heads looking inboards, so that, to walk betwixt the double row of horns, with the air full of the sound of lowing and the smell of fodder, might well make you fancy yourself in Smithfield meatmarket rather than on board a ship. One may figure in fancy the sea blessings showered by the unfortunate sailors, trying to sleep out their watch below in the forecastle, upon the creatures whose ceaseless trampling and bellowing disturbs their rest. The mariner is a person who is commonly accredited with the quality of being able to peacefully slumber with his head in a bell." Apparently, however, he finds it difficult to sleep with his head pillowed in the bunk of a cattle boat. A few years

sailors. His wages are generally higher, his food better, and his voyages of shorter duration, while, taking the average run of the ships in which he goes to sea, they are on the whole quite as good a class of vessels as those to be found in any other trade. Collier Jack, it is true, has a few discomforts to put up with which his brother seamen are spared. His beef and duff come to him from the galley impregnated with particles of coal-dust; during the time that he is at sea he is chronically in the condition of a sweep just returned from his morning's rounds, and whilst in port he is seldom without a shovel in his hands. Then again, there is always the disagreeable feeling that the cargo under foot is ceaselessly and insidiously generating coal gas, and perpetually menacing him with spontaneous combustion and a skyward flight. But, to whatever department of the mercantile marine he may chance to belong, the life of the average sailor cannot be called a particularly luxurious one. Consider, for instance, the very great inconveniences which a seaman on board a cattle steamer has to suffer. American beef is unquestionably a good and wholesome article of diet, and there is plenty of it annually sent into this country from across the Atlantic, not dead and

ago there appeared in the columns of the London Daily Telegraph a graphic account of the voyage of one of these live-stock craft. The narrative was given in the words of a seaman belonging to the ship: "There were some of us," he said, "who never could get used to the noise of the cattle--I mean the scraping of their hoofs upon the decks, and their moaning kind of bellowing. It was bad enough to hear these sounds in the daytime in one's watch below, but in the night when everything was quiet I could hardly endure them sometimes. It seems a queer confession for a sailor to make, for, when Jack turns in, he is always supposed to fall asleep. But really the sea doesn't alter people, as landsmen, and more especially 'longshore writers, like to make

out; and in respect of being disturbed and worried by the cattle, I was no better than had I been a passenger-only, perhaps, I may have gone a little further than some passengers would, by putting a meaning into the bellowing that went on on deck, which kept bothering me with all sorts of fancies about the poor beasts. There were others like me in that vessel. The chief engineer told me he would lie awake listening to the moaning of the cattle, until he could almost put the sounds into words."

In the New Zealand mutton steamers they manage things a good deal better, at least from the point of view of the sailor who wants to sleep in peace all through his watch below. Dead sheep cannot bleat, neither is the vessel littered all over like a farmyard with fodder for their consumption. Gliding swiftly through the water that stretches opposite our fanciful foreland eminence comes one of the stately yellow-funnelled, barque-rigged steamers of the New Zealand Shipping Company. The ships of this line convey across the seas more than one-half the dead mutton imported from that colony; they are perhaps the most graceful vessels which fly the flag of the British Merchant Service. The Ruapehu, a portrait of which is given, may be accepted as a complete type of the finest

to hold her own longer than in any other after steamers had entered the field to compete against her. The merchants of the celestial ports had a theory that steam would affect the quality of the leaf. Down to the year 1875 the clipper fleet was still racing home season after season, though since 1863 steamships had been engaged in the trade. It was in the last-named year that the first English steamer loaded a cargo of tea at Hankow for Great Britain. Her voyage, as a speculation, proved highly successful, and other screw ships speedily followed. But they found formidable rivals in such grand old "seaskimmers" as the Thermopyla, Sir Lancelot, and Fiery Cross; and it took them at least twelve years to fairly vanquish that race of lovely little vessels. Memorable among many celebrated ships employed in this trade is the Stirling Castle, built in 1882 by the famous Fairfield firm of Glasgow for the great China house of Skinner and Company. She was constructed to beat all previous records on the Eastern

class of ocean-going steamers afloat at the present day. In a little more than twice the length of time which it occupied Captain Cook to make his ambling tour of circumnavigation in the old Endeavour, the Ruapehu has travelled sixteen times round the circle of the globe, performing the voyage, upon an average, in a trifle more than eighty days, reckoning the stoppages at way ports.

If it comes to a question of mere speed, however, there are undoubtedly no faster steamships, the Atlantic "greyhounds" alone excepted, than those to be found running in the tea-trade. The China clippers of the days of tacks and sheets were notoriously rapid sailers, and their modern successors are built to fully sustain the old traditions. In this particular traffic the sailing ship seemed

route, which she most certainly succeeded in doing, her mean rate of speed being something like eighteen knots an hour. At the time she was launched there was no merchant steamer afloat that could have surpassed the Stirling Castle. Her gross burthen is close upon 5,000 tons, her length 421 feet, her beam 40 feet, and her depth of hold 30 feet. The nominal power of her engines is 1,500 horses. Her career has been a curious and slightly romantic one. After making several astonishingly rapid passages in the tea trade, she was sold to a firm of Genoese merchants, and employed by them in carrying Italian emigrants to the Rio de la Plata. By her new owners she was rechristened the Nord America. In 1885, when the Russian war scare suddenly swept like a panic through this country, the British Admiralty hastily went to work

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