ON THE MAXIMUM DIMENSIONS OF SHIPS. 31 
the large battleships from the ocean. In my opinion then, the development cannot 
move backwards, the size of large capital ships must either go on increasing, or 
this type must be abandoned altogether. 
I may add that the above remarks refer only to navies built for ocean service. 
Navies built for service in more shallow water may already have reached their 
limit in size. 
Mr. W. M. McFarvuanp, Vice-President:—This paper, like every contribution 
of Sir William White to the literature of the profession, is full of valuable informa- 
tion and worthy of very careful study. Although he has told us of the rather 
unfavorable surroundings when it was written, there is no evidence of this in the 
paper itself. 
The point upon which I wish to comment is to express my appreciation of 
the careful consideration of the commercial side of the question which Sir William 
gives. Of course, we all know that he has had a wide experience outside of his 
service as Director of Naval Construction of the British Navy, but that probably 
is what occurs to most people when thinking about him. I know from my own 
experience in the Government service that the commercial side of engineering 
questions does not receive the consideration there which it naturally does from 
people whose engineering work has to be done with the constant remembrance 
that it must result in a profit on an investment. 
Until a comparatively recent time our great engineering schools gave scarcely 
any attention whatever to this aspect of the profit which must result from engineer- 
ing work if it is to be considered a real success, and I believe I was among the early 
writers to call attention to this vitally important part of engineering education 
and training. ; 
I do not think any of us would have considered it a fault if Sir William’s paper 
had dealt almost entirely with the strictly physical side of the question as distin- 
guished from the financial, but it is a great pleasure to me to have this splendid 
example to put before our students and younger members of the profession where 
in the discussion of this great question of the limiting size of ships Sir William 
pays so much attention to the commercial or financial aspect of the case. 
THE PRESIDENT :—I wish to say, for your information, gentlemen, that I sent 
copies of this paper to the managers of the Hamburg-American line, the White 
Star line, the Cunard line, and the North German Lloyd line. The manager of 
the Hamburg-American line very courteously replied that unfortunately he would 
be out of town and could not attend this meeting, and did not have any one in 
his office that could take up the discussion of this paper. The manager of the 
White Star line has courteously replied he would like to attend, but he would be 
out of town and had nobody that he could send to discuss the paper. The man- 
agers of the other two lines have not up to the present moment responded. 
In compliment to the author and the importance of this paper, I have per- 
