Shipping.

Evening Star, Issue 3219, 14 June 1873, Page 2

Shipping.

HIGH WATER. To-morrow. d Heads I Port Chalmers I Dunedin 6.3 p.m. I 6.33 p.m. | 7,18 p.m. PORT CHALMERS. DEPARTURES. June 14—Ben Leuohen, 66 tons, Campbell, for Hokitika. CUSTOM HOUSE, DUNEDIN. This Dat. inwards. Stormbird, 67 tons, Fraser, from Bluff. Elderslie, 203 tons, Young, from Melbourne. OUTWARDS. Flying Squirrel, 19 tons, Chambers, for Shag Point. Pretty Jane, 101 tons, Christian, from Molyneux, projected departures. Beautiful Star, for Lyttelton, June 17 Claud Hamilton, for Bluff, June 20 Isabella, for Hokitika, early Lady Bird, for Northern Ports, June 17 Mary Ogilvie. for Hokitika, early Samson, for Oamaru, June 16 Storm Bird, for Bluff, June 10 Tararua, for Northern Ports, J one 26 Wanganui, for Northern Ports, June 25 Wallabi, for Bluff, June 16 Wild Deer, for London, July 10 Vessels in Port Chalmers Bay this day Ship : Wild Deer. Barques: Black Watch, Lyttelton. Brig; Derwent. At the Railway Pier:—Ships: Oberon,Naomi, Michael Angelo. Barque : Queen of the Seas. The splendid clipper ship Oberon leaves this evening for Newcastle, in ballast. The Beautiful Star was taken out of the Graving Dock this forenoon, when i reparations were being made to take the Wild Deer in. The new schooner Ben Leuchen has lost no tin™ in getting ready, for sea. She dropped down theharbor this afternoon, bound to Hokitika, with a full cargo of oats and flour. The Araby Maid, 837 tons, for Otago, left the Downs on April 14 ; and the Cospatrick, from London to Port Chalmers, passed Portland Island on March 23, and landed her pilot. The J. N. Fleming sailed from Glasgow on April 17; and the Glenary, 661 tons, from LiverSn March 22. The vessels on the berth for when the mail left were : Dalton Tower, tons, in London; St. Kilda, 864 tons, at Liverpool. SHIPPING TELEGRAMS. Wellington, June 13,—Lady Bird and Wellington, from the North ; Taranaki and Wanganui, from the South. Lyttelton, June 13.— Forfarshire, for London, with a cargo valued at L 40,000, and the Brechin Castle, also for London, with a cargo valued at L 75.000 ; Australian Sovereign, Jane Spiers, Sylphiades, and Ben Nevis, for Newcastle, MR PLIMSOLL’S BILL. This Bill hasjbeen issued. It consists of four parts, the first relating to the survey of ships, the second to deck loading, the third to the load-line, and the fourth to the legal proceedings necessary to enforce the measure. It is wril known that Mr Plimsoll’s object is to check overloading, and to ensure proper repairs being made to ships, in order to render them seaworthy, until a more perfect measure than he tnow submits can result from the report of the Royal Commission. It cannot be too broadly stated that the only object of the Bill is to ensure such a survey of every vessel that not a single one may be allowed to depart on her voyage unsea worthy; and, while ensuring this end, great care has been taken to malra the provisions of the Bill as little troublesome as possible to the shipping interest, a full half of which is at present voluntarily subjected to the same precautions. Although professedly . a temporary measure, intended solely to last until the result of the Royal Commission can be utilised, the Bill has been drawn with the utmost care, every point having been maturely considered. THE MAN-OF WAR OF TO-DAY. Britannia's latest-born “ water-baby ”—the breast-work turret vessel Devastation—took her first publicsdring on 15th April, off the Isle of Wight. The Devastation is a black mass of Iron. With no mast, except a little bit of stick for signalling purposes, with enormous twin screws, massive turrets hiding four 36-ton guns, and a huge conning-tower weighing in itself 110 tons, she is like nothing that ever before carried the flag of England, and, with her fashion of burying her forecastle under a sheet of green water, she looked more like a marine monster tb«j) a ship of war as she steamed out into the Channel to show her qualities. Yet in what she is we see the fighting ship of the present, and the result of the most anxious thought and lavish expenditure to give England the strongest man-o’-war in the world. She is splendidly engined, and goes well in smooth water; and with such power of machinery, and the increased righting faculty given her by the wing-passages, there can be little doubt that she wiU prove herself a seaworthy vessel in the rollers off Cape Clear or in the Bay of Biscay. She has bo top-hamper like the hapless Captain to pull her over, and by a diminution _in her coal supply she rides no deeper in spite of great structural additions to her weight, than was originallySntended, while her freeboard haspeen made much higher than in the orginal plan. Thus there is no reason why she should not make good weather of anything she can encounter at this season, and her engines are so powerful that, even with the lessened supply of coal, she Ban steam as far and as long as was originally demanded. She steams thirteen knots, and may touch fourteen; she carries twelve hundred tons of coal, and when she starts from port in fin* weather she might perhaps be trusted to bear another three hundred tons. She could race off to Cape Trafalgar, sink a dozen vessels •f almost any existing pattern and be back again in Portland or Portsmouth with no more consideration for the wind which happened to be blowing than for the spots on the sun. To piece her sides, an enemy must come close enough to her 35-ton guns to send his shot and shell through twelve inches of rolled iron. If, again, he seeks to “ram” her, she is equipped to may also at that game, and taking her actual bulk as she site upon the seae—ten thousand tons if an ounce—one touch of her stem will be enough for the hardiest antagonist. She is fitted with all kinds of cunning donkey engines and machinery of a complex sort, protected in the most careful manner. She costs so much in material and equipments, and is so complctly a product of expensive manufacturing gear and the highest metallurgio skill, that only the wealthiest nations can afford to imitate the type. The metal in her would make a railway, and the coal which she will bum would pay for a squadron of wooden ships. She steers wonderfully well, rights herself at fifty-five degrees, and carries one hundred and seventy rounds of her tremendous seven-hundred-pound projectiles for each gun, making in all six hundred and eighty shots. This huge floating mountain of iron is so controlled by clever engineering devices, that, whereas a line-of-battle ship in the old times demanded eleven hundred hands, the Devastation is managed by three hundred men, of whom only two hundred are blue jackets. It remains, of course, to try experiments with her in actual bad weather, if any can bo found at this period of the year. She ynada bar six hours’ continuous stoaming trial on the 15tb, off the Isle of Wight, with most satisfactory results.