A Favorable Outlook - $1,800,000 to be spent in New Docks

Special Correspondence of the TRIBUNE

Duluth, Minn., June 7. - There has been but little vessel building during the past season, the tug Spirit, 17 tons, being the only new boat. She was built during the winter and equipped with the engine from an older boat. Four boats, the tug R. W. Goodman, iron ferry Queen of the Lakes, steamer A. Booth, and the tug Cora B., are added to the list of Duluth's home fleet this year. The Goodman is owned by the Duluth elevator companies, and cost them $5,000. Queen of the Lakes cost $10,000. A. Booth is owned by the big fish man of that name, who has established his northwestern headquarters here. An expedition is now engaged in saving the machinery of the steamer Martin, owned here, which was wrecked last fall on the north shore. (7) Thirty-six steam craft are owned in Duluth and inspected here, about half of them fishing tugs. These tugs are engaged in log-towing and dredge work, the latter work employing six tugs and twelve dredges.

But little work has been done in Duluth during the winter in marine engines and boilers, the small necessary repairs to tugs and dredges covering the list, and the value of these repairs has not exceeded $6,000. A small though gradually increasing ship-chandlery business is also carried on. The outlook in all these departments of marine business is flattering in the extreme. The large increase in the carrying business of Duluth, and the consequent increase in the number of vessels plying to this port, necessitates an increase in the store kept by the chandlers and a better attention to this class of trade. There is an opening here for a first-class ship-chandler. In marine boilers, engines and repairs work there is a constantly increasing business. The comparative smallness of the work done this season is partly due to the unremunerative towing rates of last season. There is no special project work in vessel building for next year here, except a couple of new dredges, which will be built to replace some now wearing out, and a few new flat and dump-scows.

Freights have been very active during the month of May, over 2,500,000 bushels of wheat being loaded out of Duluth elevators for Buffalo and Montreal. Rates during the greater part of the month were the same as from Chicago to Buffalo, though the last week ran them a cent above Chicago. At present the carrying business is dull, and but little grain is offering for below. This is owing to the glut in Buffalo and New York and the rise in ocean freights. Nearly all the Duluth wheat that has gone forward this spring has been for direct export out of the country. Coal freights are slow now, there being but little unchartered room needed for Duluth before August. Vessel owners refuse to bring up coal for less than 50 cents and coal men will not pay that except occasionally, so the matter rests. The shipments of flour from Duluth this season promise to exceed those of last season by fully 50 per cent. Last year 1,200,000 barrels, in round numbers, were sent forward, and for 1886 will not fall short of 2,000,000 barrels. The boats of the Lake Superior transit company,Ward'sDetroit and Duluth line, the Sarnia line, and others chartered by the Baltimore and Ohio road and the St. Paul and Duluth are engaged in the traffic and are carrying out in the neighborhood of 100,000 barrels a week. Ward's line has chartered the Cuba, Russia, Nebraska, Wallula, and Fred Mercur for single trips with flour, and these great vessels, with capacity for from 15,000 to 19,000 barrels are now going forward. At the opening of navigation there were 150,000 barrels in store here, and that amount has not been decreased by the tremendous shipments. Duluth will soon be noted as the great flour shipping port of the United States.

The outlook for the carrying trade from Duluth this season is good, despite the present inactivity in wheat. There are now in store here nearly 6,000,000 bushels of grain, and receipts from the west keep up at the remarkable rate of 75,000 to 100,000 bushels a day. The crop prospects for the spring wheat of 1886 are fine, and Duluth will undoubtedly receive more wheat this fall than ever before. This must go forward this season. Ore shipments from Two Harbors will be from 250,000 to 300,000 tons, using a large amount of tonnage at good rates. The flour shipments are also numerous, and the receipts of coal are expected to reach in the neighborhood of 900,000 tons, and increase over last year of 305,000 tons.

Vast and comprehensive improvements are now being made by the different railroads centering on Duluth and by her dock companies. Among them first stands the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba road, which is spending for an elevator and dock over $600,000. Next comes the St. Paul and Duluth road, which has built flour houses with a capacity of 150,000 barrels, a solidly filled coal dock holding 200,000 tons, with discharging capacity for five vessels at a time, and has cut a deep slip. The entire cost of this work, when finished, which will be in August, will not be far from $300,000. The Northern Pacific, for a slip, a dock 1,100 by 200 feet and large warehouses, has paid out over $125,000. The Omaha road, belonging to the Northwestern system, for a slip, a dock, solid gravel filled, 1,100 by 200 feet, and iron warehouse, and five miles of side-track filled by dredgings from the harbor, is paying over $200,000. The Northern Pacific and Duluth improvement company for a dock 2,700 feet long and a coal dock of twenty-one acres in extent, work on which is just begun, will pay about $175,000. The Lehigh coal company, a new corporation with docks at West Superior, a suburb a mile from Duluth's limit, will spend $150,000 for a seven-acre coal dock to be ready in September. In addition to these great corporations nearly $300,000 more will be spent by smaller concerns, the Duluth dock company, the new flouring mill, Corrigan's limekilns, and others who will need dock privilege. So that it is safe to say that not less than $1,800,000 have been and will be spent in Duluth this year for docks and dredging.

Notes

7. Propeller passenger steamer MARY MARTINI (US#90978), which went ashore on Brule Pt., near Grand Marais, Minn., on Dec. 23. She was 85 feet keel and 91gt.

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