EADS, JAMES BUCHANAN. 



229 



Galena, III., and into the tributaries of the Mis- 

 sissippi. While engaged in this business he 

 gained a knowledge of the laws that govern 

 the flow of silt-bearing rivers, and it is said 

 that there was not a stretch in the bed of the 



JAMES BUCHANAN EADS. 



Mississippi fifty miles long between St. Louis 

 and New Orleans on which he had not stood 

 on the bottom of the stream beneath a diving- 

 bell. In 1845 he disposed of his interest in 

 this business and built the first glass-works in 

 the Mississippi valley. This proved unsuccess- 

 ful financially, and he resumed the wrecking 

 business. In 1845 twenty -nine steamers were 

 burned at their landings in St. Louis, most of 

 which were raised by him, so that in 1859 he 

 had paid off his losses and acquired a fortune 

 of $500,000. He made a proposition to Con- 

 gress in 1856 to keep the channels of the Mis- 

 sissippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Arkansas rivers 

 clear of snags, wrecks, and other obstructions 

 fora term of years: but the bill giving him 

 the contract, after passing the House, was not 

 acted on by the Senate. Impaired health led 

 to his retirement from business in 1857, but in 

 1861, soon after the fall of Fort Sumter, he 

 was summoned to Washington and consulted 

 by the President and his Cabinet relative to the 

 practicability of using light-draught iron-clad 

 vessels on the Mississippi and its tributaries. 

 Almost immediately a contract was given to 

 him for the construction of eight iron- clad 

 steamers, fully equipped, to be completed within 

 sixty -five days. The timber to form their 

 hulls was still uncut, the rolls for the manu- 

 facture of the armor-plates were not in exist- 

 ence, and the engines were nothing but pig- 

 iron and bars ; yet in forty - five days the 

 " St. Louis," the first American iron-clad, was 

 launched. The remainder of the fleet followed 

 in quick succession, and with them the capture 



of Fort Henry was accomplished, followed by 

 the conquest of Fort Donelson and Island No. 

 10. In 1862 he designed and built six turreted 

 iron vessels, all heavily plated. The turrets 

 en these were different from those of Ericsson 

 and Coles, and the guns were worked entirely 

 by steam. In this way the 11- and 15-inch 

 guns could be loaded and discharged every 

 forty-five seconds, and this record stands as 

 the first application of steam in manipulating 

 heavy artillery. These boats proved of great 

 service in the campaigns of Gens. Halleck and 

 Grant. From 1867 till 1874 he was engaged 

 in the construction of the great steel - arch 

 bridge across the Mississippi at St. Louis. In 

 the execution of this work, Mr. Eads had to 

 do with problems that had never before been 

 met by engineers. The bridge consists of three 

 arches, of which the central one has a clear 

 span of 520 feet, and is recognized as u the 

 finest specimen of metal-arch construction in 

 the world,*' while the side arches are 502 feet 

 each in span. The granite piers all rest upon 

 the bed-rock underlying the river deposits. 

 Two are much deeper than any built at that 

 time, and one, weighing 45,000 tons, was sunk 

 to bed-rock, 136 feet below high-water mark, 

 through 90 feet of sand and gravel, while 

 the other, weighing 40,000 tons, is founded 

 on rock 130 feet below high- water mark. 

 It was opened on July 4, 1874, after an ex- 

 penditure of exactly $6,536,729.99. Mr. Eads 

 then turned his attention to the deepening 

 of the mouth of the Mississippi by means 

 of jetties. His plans, which were strongly op- 

 posed by the engineers of the United States 

 Army, to whom the matter was referred by the 

 Government, were submitted to Congress, and 

 finally a bill was passed granting him permis- 

 sion to attempt the improvement of the South 

 Pass. Work was begun in the summer of 1875, 

 and four years later the inspecting officers re- 

 ported that a maximum depth of 30 feet had 

 been secured, and the least width of the 26- 

 foot channel was 200 feet, where previously 

 the maximum depth had been but 9 feet. 

 The jetties extend from the land's end at the 

 mouth of South Pass about 2 miles out over 

 the bar and into the gulf. They are parallel, 

 and are built of willow mattresses sunken by 

 stone, and capped near the sea-ends with mass- 

 ive concrete blocks, the largest of which weigh 

 265 tons, and were, at the time they were put 

 in position, the largest blocks ever placed on 

 sea-walls. The character of this work, its 

 great importance to the commercial interests 

 of the country and the world, its successful 

 accomplishment, the continued maintenance ot 

 the deep and wide channel that the works 

 created, the difficult engineering problems that 

 were so successfully solved, placed Mr. Eads 

 among the first of hydraulic engineers. Mean- 

 while, be outlined one of the grandest pbms 

 ever undertaken by hydraulic engineering, 

 having for its object the extension of the 

 deep-water from the Gulf of Mexico to the 



