The Japanese training ship, Taisei Maru, arrived in Shanghai early on the 3rd instant after a three months' cruise on the coast of Japan and in the China fen, and is now lying in No. 9 section of the harbour. The vessel is manned by twelve officers, 123 cadets and 'a crew of thirty-nine men, and left Tokio on August 29. After visiting Vladivostok and Nagasaki, she sailed for Shanghai on October 29.
The vessel is a four-masted barque, with auxiliary engines and twin screw The sails were used all the way along the coast of Japan and across the China Sea, until sighting the Saddle Islands. She was built in 1904 by the Kawasaki Dockyard Ca., Ld., and is & fine steel vessel, being 270 ft. Jong, 44 ft. in breadth, and 98 Saas of 2,298.
in depth, with a gross ton-
This is the nineteenth cruise which the ship has made, the previous ones being to San Francisco, San Pedro, San Diego, ete., Valparaiso, Coquinbo, Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Freemantle, Capetown, and St, Helena, She has made two trips round the world, in her sixth and eighth cruises respectively, spending eleven months on the former and sixteen months on the latter.
The vessel belongs to the Nautical College of Tokio, and all the officers are graduates of that Government institution. She has two complete decks, a full poop, midship house and top-gallant f'c'ale and has accommodation for thirteen officers, 130 students and a crew of fifty-four. The ship has also a double bottom and deep ballast tanks. On the upper deck is a steel house arranged as a library, reading room, etc. She carries two sets of sails and four 98 ft. lifeboats, one 28 ft. steam cutter, one gig and two sft. Japanes> sampans. The dynamos, electric machinery, motors, steam steering gear and a refrigerating plant are parts of the fine equipment, The Work of the Cadets.
The complement of cadets con sists of four classes, and all the young men are being trained in the highest branches of the mercantile marine. The students are serving for a period of two years, having already spent two and a half years at the Nautical College in Tokio. Starting in the sixth class, they
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.