THE HAVRE MARITIME EXHIBITION.
The Havre Maritime Exhibition opened on the 7th of May.
Will this exhibition awaken general interest, or will it prove a local affair simply? This is a secret of the weeks that are to follow.
Should nothing chance to discourage the general interest that surrounds Havre, to dampen the enthusiasm of the public, or to act to the prejudice of the exhibitors, whose very evident desire is to show nothing but remarkable products in every line, the International Maritime Exhibition will prove a great success.
THE INTERNATIONAL MARINE EXHIBITION AT HAVRE.—THE PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE.
The people of Havre have two points of comparison that more particularly concern themselves: Their Maritime Exhibition of 1868, which, as far as exhibition goes, was a complete success, is the first. The financial results of it were not brilliant, but that was due to certain reasons upon which it is not necessary to dwell. On the contrary, the Rouen Exhibition of 1884 proved profitable.
The Havre Exhibition, under able management, can have only a like good fortune. It must be said that the people of Havre would be deeply humiliated should it prove otherwise.
A very appropriate location was selected for the Exhibition, in the busiest quarter of the center of the city. Its circumference embraces one of the finest docks of the port—the Commerce Dock, thus named because it could not be finished (in 1827) except by the financial co-operation of the shipowners and merchants of the city. For the purposes of the Exhibition, this dock is now temporarily closed to navigation.