26 ON THE MAXIMUM DIMENSIONS OF SHIPS. 
Stability is not what we must arrive at so much in our ships, as Admiral 
Bowles has said and Sir William has said. Of course, we can get this quality in 
smaller ships—— 
Sir WILLIAM WHITE:—You mean steadiness? 
Mr. Nrxon:—Yes, steadiness. Absolute regularity of arrival and departure 
possibility is not so strictly necessary. It is a question of dollars and cents to 
which we must figure the matter in the long run, and in figuring this question of 
dollars and cents we must take into consideration that if we build a ship to do a 
certain work, and then the ship is not able to do the work from the fact that we 
have not deep enough harbors to dock it, that we are failing to realize the object 
for which the big ships were built. 
Sir William makes the statement: “If ships cannot be made to pay dividends 
on the capital sums invested in them—after meeting working expenses and cost 
of upkeep, and making due allowance for insurance and depreciation—they are not 
likely to be built.” But what about the converse of that proposition? Suppose 
they will meet working expenses and cost of upkeep, then does not the inference 
follow that we must have greater and greater ships if we can make them pay. We 
know perfectly well that in the history of handling freight upon the ocean, the big 
ships put the little ships out of business every time, but, of course, if we get these 
ships so big that we cannot utilize their displacement to the best advantage, that 
great advantage of size will not hold 
Sir WILLIAM WHITE :—That is my point. 
Mr. Nixon:—Sir Henry gives some very interesting light upon the building 
of the Lusitania and Mauretania to the effect that the British Government has 
granted a loan of 2,600,000 pounds sterling, at 23 per cent., to be paid in twenty 
years, and a practical subsidy, which would pay this amount back to the steamship 
company. I will not go into a discussion of that policy, but here are the two 
greatest ships of the world brought into competition with the carrying trade on 
the North Atlantic, held there by the power of the great Government, and may we 
not hope that our Legislative bodies will take from that a lesson and find a way by 
which we can put some ships on the ocean and then drive them fast in spite of 
the gales. 
Sir William speaks of detention. It is quite true we might to-day in the 
harbor of New York be unable to unload boats and reload them and clear them, 
in the time during which they are in port. Is not that another consideration for 
the attention of the naval architects? Is it not a question of brains? If we are 
to build our boats in these large sizes, and have not brains to design methods 
by which we can unload them, are we not wanting in some capacity in our par- 
ticular chosen profession? Go up to the Lakes and see what they have done there. 
I saw 10,000 tons of ore loaded in a few hours. It is a question requiring study, 
