Waterbury evening Democrat., 1907-11-15
A VESSELS TONNAGE,
The Method Of Figuring by Which
 It Is ASCertained
STANDARD IS FIXED BY LAW.
Our Government Recognizes Two Kinds of Tonnage, Gross and Net. Displacement, the Scale by Which Our Ships of War Are Described.

Our Ships of War Are Described.
 The vocabulary of the sea, always bewildering to landsmen. is crowded full of strange, technical Jargon and of words of familiar meaning on shore bitrary significance. Take, for exam. pie, this matter of tonnage of ship ping. On shore everybody Knows that q ton is 2,000 pounds if short ton or to the landlubber that 1000 ton ship ought to be, if it Is not. ship which can carry a thousand tons weight of cargo. AS matter of fact, a thou sand ton ship can probably convey about 1900 or 1,400 tons of coal or heavy merchandise.
 Yet the tonnage of shipping is not so arbitrary as 1t seems. It follows a fixed standard, established by national law. There are two kinds of ton mage recognized by our government ! authorities-gross tonnage and net ton mage. The gross tonnage of a vessel Is its entire internal capacity measured | in tons of 100 cubic feet, and the navi- gation laws of the United States pre- scribe in careful detail how this meas urement for tonnage shall be ascer- tained. Net tonnage is measured by subtracting from the gross tonnage of vessel all space used for the accom- modation of officers and crew, for cer- tain gear for the working of the ship and, if a steam vessel, for her pro- polling power or machinery, including boilers and engines.
 In other words, the net tonnage of ship is virtually the space, expressed in tons of 100 cubic feet, available for the carrying of passengers or cargo. In the case of sail vessels, from which no machinery space has to be deduct of vessel are very nearly the same. But in steamers the two measurements are widely different. Take, for exam pie, one of the largest of American merchant steamships, the American liner St. Louis. Her gross tonnage is 11,629. her net tonnage 5.S94. So with the well known steamer Governor Dingley of the line from Boston to Portland. Her gross tonnage is 3,S26. her net 2,S56
 In all or nearly all of the ports of the world ship taxes or dues are based upon tonnage, in the United States upon net tonnage. This is also the standard of tolls for the Suez canal. As a result the effort of naval archi- tects and shipbuilders and shipowners generally is to keep the net tonnage of a ship as small as possible, and many ingenious devices for cheating meas urement" have been adopted, design CTS of merchant vessels being as adept in this art as designers of racing yachts. But the navigation laws of the United States are exceedingly vigi- lant on this point and are regarded as fair and reasonable in their require ments, so that this evil of fraudulent tonnage is believed to be less serious under the flag of the United States than in the merchant navies of some other countries.
 Landsmen may we'll be pardoned for their perplexity that tonnage. in the vernacular of the sea, should mean sometimes one thing and sometimes another. The navy department adds to the inevitable confusion by describ- ing our ships of war in terms not of gross register or net register. but of displacement. Thus the Massachusetts is spoken of officially as battleship battleship of 10000 tons. This means in each case that the ship displaces so many tons of water. But the Massa- chusetts if measured as merchant yes sels are measured would have a net tonnage of only 3,204 and would have 10 pay dues on that only if passing through the Suez canal. This practice of the navy department of using dis placement tonnage instead of gross or net tonnage gives the public an exag gerated idea of the actual size of our ships of war. As a matter of fact. the greatest battleships we have fall short of :he bulk of the mightiest of our merchantmen.
 Again, another complexity as to ton mage arises in the cargo capacity of q merchant ship. Take. for example. a typical Boston steam freighter. the Lyra of the Boston TowbOat company. Her gross tonnage is 4.417: her net. 3.51G. But the Lyra has capacity of upward of 5000 tons dead weight of cargo
 These national measurements of shipping. though apparently arbitrary. are indispensable. for ships cannot be classified with any exactness on the basis of the tons Of cargo they will actually carry. A ship which could receive and transport safely 5000 tons Of weight of pig iron would not hold 5000 tons Of hay or cotton. There fore the governments of the world have had to prescribe measurement standards of their own. in which the great marine insurance companies have had a powerful hand. And the tendency is to bring these standards into more and more complete confOrmi- ty.-Boston Transcript.