RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 122, 23 May 1908, Page 12

Signs of the times are so significant that every attempted innovation in conduct of nautical matters is made the subject of comment. Latest of all is a statement no%v current that the British Admiralty will construct in -the coming year a battleship of almost irresistible power, the^ motive appliances of which will render unnecessary the use of funnels, so that her heavy armament will have a complete deck range, excepting where the placement of a single signalling staff is established.

Ships cdn now go to sea with frozen ammunition, a method of utilising liquified air on warships having been discovered which will render tho explosion of a magazine, even when the ship is in action, almost impossible. The method is to so plage the liquid air that it will freeze the ammunition to several hundred degrees below zero. In that condition |t could not explode, even if a shel should burst in the magazine.

From information to hand from Japan it would appear that the Nippon Yusen, the principal Japanese steamship company, has not escaped some of the difficulties which affect shipping enterprise in other parts of the world. ' It is stated in the last half-yearly report that coal is 30 per cent, dearer than before the Russo-Japanese war. Labour is also more costly. Agaiu, the fact that so many more steamships are now competing for trade has tended to bring freights odwn to a comparatively low point. Thus, although the Nippon Company's boats traversed a greater distance than in any preceding half-year, and carried more goods and pa&sengers, its business by no means yielded a corresponding profit. The Japanese, nevertheless, go on building in their own yards AH though now tonmijtu wit* iv great dojHOOiie "