The daily gazette., 1880-03-03
From the N. Y. Star.
ls ship Building a Lost Art?

We are thus asked Ia look at home
to calculate the sum of one hundred and
thirty million dollars that has been au-
nually paid by us to those foreigners for
transporting ourselves and our mer-
chandise and may we not add the in
quiry, Is shipbuildlng a lost art in Amer
lea? Have we given up the race In skill
industry, enterprise and capital? and is
II from recognition of our own inca
pacity we surrender the record of the
days when our sailing packets almost
! monopolized the ocean on account Of the
excellence of our naval architecture and
"the skill of our officers and seamen ?"
We shall not have far to 60 for an an
swer. Among the blessings In disguise
showered upon the nation by The beauty
and the bounty of Republicanism is th q
almost total extinction of the American
atlantic merchant service
We have had our thoughts directed to
this special topic by new evidences of
English enterprise in shipbuilding. A
few weeks ago we referred TO the new
ship, The Alaska, projected by the
Guion Line for the North Atlantic carry
Ing trade-a ship to exceed in beauty, in
size and in all the attributes neces-
sary to speed and safety even the far
famed Arizona, added to the feet of the
company last year.
And now we hear Of similar develop
ment Of progress-greater, indeed, If we
estimate size and tonnage of the new ship
oh the part of the Inman Line. The
largest and finest merchant vessel in the
world Is, we are informed, now being
built at Barrow, England, for that line.
She will be ready for use in the spring
of 1881, and will then begin making
regular trips between this port and
Liverpool. The City Of Rome was re-
garded asthe most appropriate name which
could be given to this addition to the
Inman feet. Her dimensions are to be as
follows: Length of keel, $40 feet
length over all, 500 feet; breadth of
beam, 81 feet; depth OF hold, 3S feet 9
inches, and depth from top of deck-houses
to keel, So feet.
measurement will be $500 tons or over
1000 tons larger than either the City of
Berlin or the Arizona, and 800 tons lar
ger than the Servia, the new CunaId
steamship, which will be completed this
fall. She will be over four-fiftbs of the
size of the Great Eastern. The engines
of the City of Rome will be of 1900
horse power, with six cylinders, three
of which are high pressure and three
low pressure. There will be eight boil
ers, heated by 4S furnaces, and the ves-
sci can be propelled at the rate of 1S3
knots an hour.
The detailed accounts from which we
quote tells us of the saloons, drawing
rooms, bathrooms, etc.-the all of
which are in thorough keeping with the
Inmanidea of the comfort Of passengers.
What we are concerned in, however, is
the building process, and the contrast
thus disaereeably presented to us Of the
silence of our paralyzed industry in
this regard at home, and the. busy hum
of active operation on the Tyne, the
Clyde, and the Lagan in Great Britain
and Ireland.
Besides the national reproach there is
the national loss; it is not alone thst
Britannia is permitted to 'rule the
waves" but If we go to South street, in
our city, we shall find that American
captains and seanen, shipwrights and
iron founders, the multitudinous hands
of all kinds needed in great shipbuild-
ing industry, have been forced from the
waves into their occupations for which
they were unfitted-pauperized to death
and protected out of existence by the
patent process of Radical protection
ideas.