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rivers. The Uraga Dockyard commenced work with the construction of five small gunboats to the order of the American authorities in the Philippines. There are, besides, a number of smaller shipbuilders, which need not be mentioned here. Suffice it to say that the shipbuilding industry has of late years attained great development.

In conclusion we may mention some figures relating to Japanese shipbuilding efforts in the past twenty-six years, commencing with the year 1877, when, as already stated, ships of some pretension were first turned out. The number of merchant vessels of 500 tons and upward constructed during that period of time totalled sixty-eight, with the aggregate tonnage of 88,539 tons. With the exception of seven sailing vessels, of which one was fitted with auxiliary steam-engines, all the rest were steamships. Moreover, with a few unimportant exceptions, the above total represents the result of private enterprise. Besides these ships, over 100 vessels of 300 to 500 tons each were also turned out at private dockyards during the same period.

Of the sixty-eight ships mentioned in the preceding paragraph, eighteen (48,078 tons) were built at the Mitsu Bishi Dockyard at Nagasaki, fourteen (13,827 tons) at the Kawasaki Dockyard of Kobe, and eleven (9,186 tons) at the Osaka Ironworks, the rest being distributed between several minor dockyards. It may be interesting to mention here that, of the eighteen ships built at the Mitsu Bishi Dockyard, four are over 6,000 tons each, two being employed on the Nippon Yusen Kaisha’s European line, and two on the same company’s American service.

The following were some of the ships building at the leading dockyards at the end of the year 1902: