AND SHIP NEWS sible space of time are to be found at the two great piers of this company. All of these piers are practically brand new, six of which are now in use, and negotiations are at present being carried on with the Department of Docks of the City of New York for the lease of the remaining unused municipal piers. The Pan American Wharfage Company is offering unusual attractions to ships, in the way of low wharfage charges, rates that are not generally known to the shipping community, and which it would be well for owners and operators of ships to familiarize them selves with. In addition to the existing facilities for getting to and from Staten Island the City of New York is building a freight and passenger tunnel under the Narrows, connecting with Brooklyn and thence to the other boroughs of the city. The States of New York and New Jersey are also committed to the construction of two new bridges, one to connect with Perth Amboy at Tottenville, and the other to connection with Elizabethport, on what is known as the "North Shore" of Staten Island-over the Arthur Kills, the New Jersey shore of which is lined with great and important industrial plants from end to end. It is expected that improve ments now under way and contemplated along the west shore of Staten Island will rapidly lead to the erection of industrial plants similar to those now in full operation on the Jersey side. Most shipowners and ship operators, managers and agents, have hitherto thought that Staten Island was difficult of access and more or less isolated. The reverse of this is true. Because the waterfront of Richmond Borough (Staten Island) is not used to the same extent as the waterfronts of the boroughs of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and The Bronx, it is by some thought that Staten Island is remote from commercial, industrial and maritime centers. This is an erroneous view, as will easily be apparent to the unbiased observer. It should be borne in mind that Staten Island has been the center for years back of the port's Far Eastern activities; in fact, has been preferred in the time past for Far East cargoes and is today. The recent new ferry facilities provided will more and more tend to the tonnage seeking Staten Island where the required economy necessary in today's shipping can be effected. From the merchant's point of view his goods can be laid out better, not exposing them to damage, etc., more liable to be incurred where congestion prevails. Any shipping man who is loading on the berth in this port or loading or discharging occasional vessels has been and is facing with apprehension the various handicaps and out of proportion expense with the expense of his operations on any ordinary pier in Brooklyn or Manhattan. There is no question that the allaround layout of these two piers in particular with such a great capacity for accommodating trade will be a means of performing a service to the shipping trade of the Port of New York in general at a cost which will stimulate trade instead of retard it. Pick up any old picture of New York, the difference is in the skyline and that clippers occupy the waterfront, but the docks are the same old docks with some new piles put in here and there. With the advent of steamers and presently Diesel vessels the shipowning profession requires an investment not necessary in those days. Everything that is old does not, as we all know, have to be out of place, but one sometimes has to wonder when viewing operations on the ordinary dock in New York whether the port can still expect to advance without a more general use of the facilities engineered by the Pan-American Company as a first step to create docking facilities somewhat in proportion in efficiency to the vessels using them. (Continued on Page 28) 1. Vessel discharging to lighters at the same time using wharf cranes to shore. D Company, Inc. URING the early part of the war, in other words, in 1915 and 1916, the flour trade of New York found itself in a most uncomfortable position. The various railroads had formerly given very liberal storage rates for flour placed on their piers along the New Jersey shore and also in New York City. Then the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that it was not in the province of a common carrier to act as a warehouse and accordingly caused the railroads to increase the storage rates. These rates were gradually changed until they became almost ruinous to the various receivers of flour. The flour dealers were faced with the alternative of penalty storage rates or building their own warehouses. Tanner-Gross & Company Select Staten Island W. P. Tanner-Gross & Company, Inc., decided to build. They made a careful survey of the harbor and finally selected a stretch of waterfront at New Brighton, Staten Island. This site offered the best combination of facilities for receiving, storing and moving flour and kindred products to points within the Greater City. A firm of expert mill builders was engaged, plans drawn and building operations begun in the Fall of 1917. By the following Spring, the modern fireproof and vermin proof warehouse was completed. Wharfage Space The private dock stretched for 470 feet and is of sufficient length to accommodate the largest cargo carrier entering the port. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad runs alongside the plant and a double track siding connects with the property. Trucks drive up to the loading platform and carry flour direct to bakers on Staten Island, other parts of New York and nearby places in New Jersey. Exceptional Facilities for Exporters With the unusual facilities at the command of this company, they furnish flour for export shipment with a service that is unique. Shipments are packed in large or small sacks, with or without special covers, and go direct from the warehouse to steamers. Deliveries are made by lighter or truck. Because of the care used in packing and handling, sacks reach steamers in first-class condition. Exporters find they can get al most any grade of flour, packed as desired and delivered promptly. Capacity 100,000 Barrels A Mile-Stone in Port Progress Because of its construction, its purpose and location, this beautiful modern plant is a distinct asset to the city and especially to the locality in which it stands. It is a type of improvement making for the permanent progress of this great port. Coast-to-Coast Rail Line In these days of railroad mergers a new one is predicted in Wall Street daily. Recently the report was spread of a possible combination of the lines of the New York Central, the Chicago & North Western and the Union Pacific. Such a merger, if it could be carried out, would create the largest railroad system in the world and would give the United States its first "coast-to-coast" railroad. Harness Tide in Brittany A Paris dispatch states that a scheme for utilizing the flow of the tides for power that seems about to come to fruition is on the estuary of the Aber-Vrach in Brittany, where the tidal range is approximately twenty-five feet. The principal part of the plant is to consist of a barrage of 450 feet long with four groups of turbines driven by both the incoming and the outgoing tides. The power generated will vary from seventy-five to 1,200 horse power, but when operated in connection with a regulating plant higher up it will be possible to produce a minimum constant output of 1,200 horse power and a maximum of 3,200 horse power. Main building of W. P. Tanner-Gross Company, Inc., at West New Brighton, Staten Island. The floors are kept very clean and the white walls and numerous windows insure plenty of sunlight and air. Every effort is made to keep the flour, perhaps the most important of foodstuffs, free from dirt and contamination. The two buildings will hold about 100,000 bar rels of flour and kindred food products. Staten Island is the home of nine out of ten of the employees. In fact, the men prefer to live on the Island and invariably make their homes there when they come. Large New Dock For Madras A quay of a total length of 1,800 feet, consisting of three berths with a depth of water of thirty-five feet, will be constructed at Madras, British India. The structure will be of reinforced concrete. The piles carrying the superstructure will weigh in the neighborhood of twenty tons each and will be seventy-five feet in length. TH HE picture below shows one of the Thaten Terminal piers on Staten Island in active use since September the first. It had been surmised for some time that the City of New York would sooner or later adopt a more liberal policy to attract shipping to the new city piers, after rejection of the first policy by the original lessees. Through the concerted efforts of Mayor Hylan, Director of the Port Joseph P. O'Brien, Dock Commissioner M. J. Cosgrove, and Borough President John A. Lynch, Max Thaten, President of the Richmond Borough Board of Trade and Transportation, was placed in a position to take over the operation of two piers, as it was felt that Mr. Thaten's knowledge of and wide experience in the shipping business, would enable him to attract a fair proportion of the steamship traffic in the Port to Staten Island. Mr. Thaten has established himself in business as a steamship terminal operator and will conduct Piers 6 and 10 at Tompkinsville as the Thaten Terminals for the purpose of attracting steamers to these city piers on a reasonable business basis. His piers are now available for straight wharfage, pier or side, by the day, month or year, or at a flat rate per steamer. In addition to general wharfage, he is offering a complete port service on steamers' cargoes at a flat rate per manifest ton, which rate and service includes wharfage, stevedoring, (discharging or loading) clerking, checking, sorting, coopering, watching, telephone and lights. He proposes to employ an ALL STATEN ISLAND ORGANIZATION to demonstrate the efficacy of Staten Island labor in the handling of ships' cargoes and their efficient distribution. He feels from experience, that local services will prove superior and so establish a permanent reputation for creditable service at Staten Island piers. These activities will be confined. to the Staten Island piers only. During the first month six steamers have used his piers, to wit: steamship Will solo, full lumber cargo, steamer Monginevro, full cork cargo and part general, steamship Navarin, Canadian cargo, steamship William Green, crude oil from Mexico, steamship Golden Gate, loading coal for Italy and steamship Ignazio Florio, with a full cargo from Italy, Portugal and Spain. Mr. Thaten is well known in shipping circles for his ability to please and satisfy his patrons and to co-operate with his steamship friends in an unselfish spirit, rather to help and work for others, than to be helped. This policy, he feels, will eventually win for him increased patronage and permanency in business. The development of Staten Island as an integral part of the Port of New York is largely due to his actiivties in working out all the different phases of terminal growth and expansion for the past 24 years and his knowledge of traffic generally has made him the acknowledged authority on maritime affairs in the Borough of Richmond. His knowledge of local waterfront conditions, railroad, shipping, warehouse, trucking, and general working conditions, seems unmatched and his alertness in finding a practical solution of perplexing problems is the keynote to his success. Piers 6 and 10 are single deck piers and the longest of them all. The gross dimensions are 1137x125 feet, with adjoining slips 300 feet wide. Minimum depth of water at low tide, 30 feet. The piers are fronted by a paved street 40 feet in width, which runs the entire length of the bulkhead from Tompkinsville to Stapleton. There is ample upland for farm use. Railroad spurs connecting piers with the main-land railroad are now being laid. The main office is located at Pier 6, one block from station or within one-quarter mile of the ferry terminals to Manhattan, 39th Street and 65th Street, Brooklyn. Trucking distance, 5 minute. Telephone: Tompkinsville, 5140. Steamship Ignazio Florio Discharging Mediterranean Cargo, (General) Aggregating 3,000 Tons. New York City Increases its Wharfage Rates 100 Per Cent M True to Form the Dock Department of the City of New York is Out OST of the great ports of the world are well satisfied to run their wharves and docks in such a manner as will make them self-sustaining— barely that. Not so the great City of New York. Having made substantially more than $100,000,000, net, from its wharves, during the fifty-four years of its Dock Department, which the city could do no better than reinvest in acquiring additional waterfront property, including the privately owned wharves, it has spent 60 per cent and more of this net profit on its subways greatly needed, to be sure, but which should otherwise be provided for-and it now plans to spend 40 per cent more. Great is the City of New York! Some years ago a constitutional amendment was adopted in the State of New York relieving municipalities of that portion of their debt limits represented by self-supporting bonds. At that time some $75,000,000 of the city's dock bonds were declared self-supporting and therefore that sum became available for use without regard to the debt limit. Immediately $60,000,000 of it was taken for subway construction, but the remaining $15,000,000 was not then spent for additional wharves. And now, as a result of the Sinking Fund Commission's approval of the recommendation of Dock Commissioner Michael Cosgrove, wharfage rates on almost every kind of local craft, as well as such larger vessels as use the open or transient wharves except lighters have been increased 100 per cent. This increase is due to the fact, alleged by the Dock Commissioner, that the City of New York has not previously increased its wharfage rates during the whole period of its municipal existence. The reason for that was because the Legislature of the State of New York had until last year, reserved to itself the right to fix legal rates of wharfage in the City of New York-only because it could not legally increase wharf rentals was the greedy municipal hand of the city stayed. It was claimed (but nothing but the sum total has ever been mentioned to prove the claim) that the city has been losing about $327,000 a year in the expense of the upkeep of open and transient wharves. To meet this loss rates are so increased as to yield over $1,000.000 a year! Why is it increased so much? Because it is believed by city officials that the traffic of the Port of New York will bear the increase. Not only is it increased $1,000,000 a year, now, but it is announced that as existing long-time leases expire on shedded wharves, the rates on them, too, will be increased to conform to the increase already inaugurated. Not satisfied with a profit of over $100,000,000 in the operation of its waterfront during the past half century, not satisfied with an annual income of about seven million dollars the city wants to double its profits and its income, and it bids fair to do so, because the victims of this municipal grab-the vessel owners themselves--favor it, and they favor it, they say, in order to escape the extortions of the private wharf owners! Instead of standing firmly together and opposing, unitedly, any increase in municipal wharfage rates, and insisting upon a portion of the vast profits the city has made from its wharves being used to buy out these private wharf owners, so that the city can operate its wharves at the minimum of rates, the vessel owners fall in with the city's grab-all scheme, because the advance is so small-merely a cool million! And, while the vessel owners profess to believe that the private wharf owners will be obliged to limit their charges to those fixed by the city government, the private wharf owners say there is nothing to this belief, and one of the Supreme Court judges of the city has decided in favor of the private wharf owners, in litigation instituted against them by the local vessel owners, who have appealed from that decision and are momentarily expecting a decision by the Appellate Di vision of the Supreme Court. And that's that. When a Legislative Committee not long ago disclosed the fact that 24 municipally-owned wharves yielded over five million dollars a year to their lessees, of which the city received about one-fourth, the then Dock Commissioner, Murray Hulbert, declared that every dollar earned by the city's wharves should go into the city's treasury. Has that been done? During that same Legislative Committee's investigation it was shown that many millions of dollars were paid, annually, by lessees of city wharves to private companies for protection against pilferage, just because the city's police force could not or would not prevent such thievery of goods passing over the city's wharves. Has that condition been remedied? Four or five years ago a Cleveland capitalist owning a chain of over 100 warehouses in different parts of the United States offered to spend $100,000,000 in the erection of the greatest marine terminal in the world, at Jamaica Bay, if the city would lease to him for fifty years, 1,000 acres of land now under water and at the end of the fifty years the entire property would revert to the city, meanwhile the lessee paying several millions in rental. But the municipal government of this great city of New York has not found time yet to tell this capitalist whether or not it will accept his munificent offer, an offer that any other city in the world would grab with fervent thanks. All that is to be said is that the municipal government of the city of New York has, by the decision of its Sinking Fund Commission, made it just so much easier for other ports to divert ships and commerce to themselves that would prefer to come to New York if wharf rentals were not exorbitant. At this very moment committees of vessel men are arranging to fight the efforts of the outports to take from the Port of New York whatever advantages it possesses, so that the plucking of the bird may be the easier. To fight the systematic and generously sustained efforts of certain of the outports, notably Philadelphia and Baltimore, to win ships and commerce from the Port of New York, the city's budget, last year, pro AND SHIP NEWS vided $4,000 a year for a city statistician, who was to be a subordinate of the Dock Department. But, after wasting six months or more in trying to make this meagre sum do the work it was appropriated to do, the whole undertaking collapsed, and the city government is richer (?) by $4,000, as a result. What Does This Year's Budget Propose? Is there any wonder that New York is steadily, year by year, losing the percentage of the nation's foreign commerce that formerly it enjoyed? No! The wonder is, instead, all things considered, that the Port of New York manages to retain as much of the nation's foreign commerce as it still enjoys. Extra New York Port Charges August 30, 1924. Editor THE PORT OF NEW YORK AND SHIP NEWS: Sir: In the Journal of Commerce issue of August 16th I read an account of a proposed increase in wharfage rates at city piers, also that you were deeply interested in this matter and had protested any increased change in the wharfage rates. In this respect, I take the liberty of directing your attention to charges now assessed at the Port of New York, which do not apply at other ports and appear to be direct discrimination against the shipper using the Port of New York. The intercoastal lines, that is, the steamship lines operating out of New York via the Panama Canal, assess a handling or loading charge as follows: are On carload traffic, this applying where cars switched direct to the steamship pier, they assess a charge of 50c per ton for unloading the car. On all less-than-carload shipments (this usually consists of 8,000 pounds or over), which are known as ferry car shipments, forwarded in cars direct to the steamship piers, they make a charge of 5c for unloading consignments from the car to the pier. Now, these same steamship lines dock at Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. At Boston: The ships of the American-Hawaiian Steamship Co. and the Luckenbach Steamship Co. sail from Commonwealth Pier 5. On all shipments, both carload and less-than-carload, the flat rate from the interior to Boston delivers the consignment when forwarded in direct cars to the pier, the flat rate including any unloading charge and the carrier having the line haul absorbs the unloading charge, with the exception that, as I understand, the New Haven Road will load and unload all freight except lumber, shingles, and other bulk freight, so that at Boston, the unloading charge is absorbed by the rail carrier. At Philadelphia: On intercoastal business, the railroads make direct connections over their own rails on to the piers at which the steamers dock. Some piers are reached by the Penn. R.R., others by the Reading and the Baltimore & Ohio R.R. In addition, some are reached by the Philadelphia Belt Line R.R. This latter line being more or less of a connecting link between rail carriers and steamship piers. Each carrier performs its own Each carrier performs its own switching to the piers, except those reached by the Belt Line, where they perform the services and the flat Philadelphia rate, where the traffic pays a rate of 9c or more, is absorbed by the railroad company. In other words, where the traffic pays, by this connection, 9c per 100 pounds or higher, the rate will include loading from or to piers, from or to cars. On traffic paying less than 9c per 100 pounds there is a loading or unloading charge of 50c per ton added to the freight rate. Prior to this arrangement, the steamship lines absorbed the loading or unloading charge. At Baltimore: Intercoastal lines dock either at the B. & O., Penn., or Western Maryland railroad marine terminals. Regardless of the terminal at which the vessel docks, all three roads will place cars alongside the ship and unload contents of cars to pier, same being absorbed by the carrier. You will observe from this that the Port of New York is placed at a decided disadvantage. On all business from the interior, moving via the intercoastal lires, the handling charges in New York must be paid by either the shipper or the consignee, while at Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, the railroad companies absorb the handling charges. J. E. ATWATER, Capt. A. J. Henriques-Marine The shipping community of this port will undoubtedly welcome into their midst this gentleman who has become associated with the U. S. Marine Valuation Engineers, of the Cunard building, 25 Broadway. Captain Henriques, who for some time past has been engaged in the capacity of appraisal engineer for vessels, drydocks, and shipyards, for the United States Treasury Department, has had thirty years' experience as an officer in sail and steam vessels, in all grades, including fourteen years in command, besides which he served as an officer in the United States Navy during the Spanish-American and World Wars. In addition to this, Captain Henriques has been superintending engineer in the United States Transport Service, and marine surveyor and technical adviser to the Judge Advocate. He is a member of the American Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Surveyor for the United States P. & I. agency of the United States Shipping Board, and general consulting engineer. New Staten Island Market What is probably the largest privately owned market in New York city will shortly be opened on Bay street, Tompkinsville, Staten Island, by Messrs. Rohde & Schmidt, of the Central Market. The opening date cannot yet be announced, but we hope in an early issue to be able more fully to describe the activities of this enterprising firm. Fleet Corporation to Cut Costs Vice President Sheedy, of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, in charge of the organization's European affairs, has been in New York for a conference. He submitted the results of his preliminary estimate of conditions abroad, President Palmer explained, with a view to improving the Fleet Corporation organization, reducing costs, improving the turn-a-round and getting westbound cargo. |