546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Two years later this enterprise culminated in financial disaster, and left 

 him, at the age of twenty -seven, burdened with debts to the amount 

 of twenty-five thousand dollars. lie then returned to the business of 

 raising steamers, removing obstructions from the channel, and improving 

 the harbor of St. Louis. By the great fire of 1849, twenty-nine steamers 

 were burned at the landing of that city, and most of these wrecks 

 had to be removed by him. The capital with which he started again 

 at this business was supplied by his creditors, and amounted to only 

 fifteen hundred dollars. Ten years later he had increased this modest 

 sum to nearly half a million dollars, and had long previously paid off 

 his creditors in full. 



His first undertakings in this peculiar and instructive study of 

 hydraulics occurred while he was constructing the first diving-bell 

 boat, not then completed. A barge loaded with about a hundred tons 

 of pig-lead was sunk upon the rapids of the Mississippi River, near 

 Keokuk, in fifteen feet of water. A contract was made for the re- 

 covery of this lead. He had had no experience whatever with the 

 submarine armor, or diving apparatus of any kind ; but, engaging a 

 diver from the lakes who was familiar with it, with an armor, an air- 

 pump, and a sailor skillful in the use of rigging, he started — at that 

 time only twenty-two years of age — to the scene of the wreck. Ob- 

 taining a barge, this was promptly anchored over it, and preparations 

 made for the diver to go to work ; but the current was found so ex- 

 ceedingly raj^id that it was im2">ossible to use the armor with any 

 safety. A belt around the diver's waist was attached by a cord to 

 the bow of the boat to hold him against the current, and a ladder 

 procured on which the diver undertook to descend, but it was im- 

 possible for him to control his body in the current. Determined not 

 to be baflSed, Mr. Eads immediately visited the town of Keokuk and 

 purchased a forty-gallon whisky-barrel, with which to improvise a 

 diving-bell. With several pigs of lead secured around one end of the 

 barrel by a net-work of ropes, and with that head taken out, a block 

 and tackle attached to the net-work at the other end, and a temporary 

 derrick erected, he was soon prepared to commence the recovery of the 

 cargo. But the diver demurred and would not descend in this dangerous- 

 looking apparatus. Mr. Eads then set an example which he has followed 

 throughout all his varied experience as an engineer — which was, never 

 to ask a man in his employ to go where he was unwilling to trust his' 

 own life. The bell thus suspended was held against the current by a 

 rope which led up to the bow of the barge, and a strap across the 

 lower end of the barrel was used as the seat for the diver in it. He 

 at once got into the diving-bell and ordered his men to lower him 

 down. He had a trace-chain attached to a lead-line, the lower end of 

 the trace-chain having a ring in it, and with this he was readily en- 

 abled to form a loop, which was placed over one of the pigs of lead, 

 and at a given signal it was hoisted up. A small cord sufficed to draw 



