James B. EadsHoughton, Mifflin, 1900 - 120 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
able air-chambers arches armored ask an employee Bates bed-rock Benton bill bridge build built Cairo caissons called Captain Mahan Captain Mahan says channel Civil Engineers commerce commission contract course depth diving-bell boat draught dredging Eads's energy Ericsson's Europe father fight finished force fore Fort Saint Philip freight friends George Montague Wheeler gulf gunboats harbor hulls improvement interest inventions iron ironclad JAMES BUCHANAN EADS Jetties later less letter levees machinery means ment miles mind Mississippi Valley Missouri mouth Nathaniel Lyon naval Navy needed never NUMBER Ohio River once Orleans perhaps piers plans realized river bottom river fleet Riverside Press Saint Louis sand scheme seems sent shaft ship-railway showed snag-boat South Pass South West Pass span steam steamboats Street Chicago sunk talent thought tion turrets vessels Washington width workmen wrecker wrecking business wrote young Eads
Popular passages
Page 7 - Be not surprised if you are called here suddenly by telegram. If called, come instantly. In a certain contingency it will be necessary to have the aid of the most thorough knowledge of our western rivers, and the use of steam on them, and in that event I have advised that you should be consulted.
Page 19 - ... the Benton, with sixteen guns protected by as much as three and a half inches of iron. He later wrote to President Lincoln that "the St. Louis was the first ironclad built in America. She was the first armored vessel against which the fire of a hostile battery was directed on this continent, and so far as I can ascertain, she was the first ironclad that ever engaged a naval force in the world.
Page 4 - My boat was held by a long anchor line, and was swung from side to side of the channel, over a distance of 500 feet, by side anchor lines, while I walked on the river bottom, under the bell, across the channel. The boat was then dropped twenty feet further down stream, and I then walked back again as she was hauled towards the other shore.
Page 98 - In 1884, to Captain James Buchanan Eads, " the distinguished American engineer, whose works have been of such great service in improving the water communications of North America, and have thereby rendered valuable aid to the commerce of the world.
Page 76 - Here by the gentlest influences the mighty current is swayed and directed completely obedient to his will. There is no instance indeed in the world where such a vast volume of water is placed under such absolute and permanent control of the engineer through methods so economic and simple as those adopted at the head of the passes of the Mississippi river.
Page 65 - Should it then be needed, that the lateral outlets should be closed. Finally, should all these fail, a ship canal might be resorted to. "The...
Page 73 - ... thing that makes a river slower is an increase of its width, because then there is more frictional surface; and contrariwise, one of the things that makes it faster is a decrease of its width. Narrow the Mississippi then, at its mouth, said Eads, and it will become swifter there, and consequently will remove its soft bottom by picking up the sediment (of which it will then hold much more), and by carrying it out to the gulf, to be lost in deep water and swept away by currents, you will have your...
Page 98 - Canal ; and in June, 1881, he was awarded the medal of the British Society of Arts, in token of its appreciation of the services he had rendered to the science of engineering...
Page 94 - ... drainage of the Sacramento River, as Consulting Engineer of the State of California. In 1884, by request of the Mersey Docks and Harbor Board of Liverpool, he appeared before a Committee of the House of Lords and gave his testimony as to the effect of the terminal works of the Manchester Ship Canal upon the estuary of the Mersey and the bar at Liverpool. He brought to the solution of this question that same keen insight into hydraulics and the same close application that had made him so successful...