1901. J HAUPT — METHODS OF IMPROVING OCEAN BARS. 67 



This experience should have sufficed, but it did not, as the same 

 error was repeated at Galveston, where for many years an effort 

 was made to create a channel by building one jetty on the " lee- 

 ward " side of the channel which it closed by a shoal, and which 

 rolled the crest of the bar about three miles farther into the Gulf 

 and with no increase of depth. It was only after the windward 

 jetty was built which partially arrested the drift that dredges 

 were enabled to make any material impression on the depth. 



In this single instance, the repetition of this error in the order 

 of construction has increased the cost of the work more than 

 $6,000,000, and yet, notwithstanding the frequent discussions of 

 this subject, it does not seem to have been sufficient to have been 

 convincing, since it is again seriously recommended to repeat the 

 mistake by locations made on the "leeward " side of the channel, 

 and the success which has attended the opposite location is pro- 

 nounced " fatally defective.''* 



Moreover, it is true that several jetties have been partially con- 

 structed on the Pacific coast also based upon this erroneous idea, 

 that the best way to create a channel was, first, to dam it up by a 

 jetty to leeward and then to dredge it out, as the sequel will show. 



The report says (p. 19), "A single jetty at Coos Bay, Oregon, 

 has been built in accordance with this theory and appears to have 

 been successful in increasing the depth from ten feet to not less 

 than eighteen feet, which latter it has maintained for the last five 

 years." 



Unfortunately for this alleged increase of eight feet, caused by 

 a jetty built to leeward, upon which reliance is placed to prove the 

 theory, the official records of the Reports of the Chief of Engi- 

 neers show that the natural depths prior to the beginning of the 

 work were at one time twenty-seven feet, 1 while the latest report gives 

 the depth as ranging from eighteen to twenty-two feet and the map 

 shows the limiting depth to be nineteen feet, or a loss of eight feet in- 

 stead of a gain, thus disproving the theory of the leeward jetty, as in 



1 See Report, 1892, p. 2673: " Capt. Magee states that the best water and 

 safest channel is always found when the channel across the bar is in its most 

 southern position, i. e., about 500 or 100 feet south of the present position of the 

 bar buoy. It is safest because it affords the shortest and most direct route to 

 the sea, and enables a vessel generally to take the swell head on, or nearly so. 

 At one time when the channel was in the above position there were twenty-seven 

 feet at low water across the bar." 



