APPLICATIONS OP TIMBER. 199 



to answer very well, more especially with such a 

 depth, and in so rapid a current. Some of those 

 piles were of the immense len<^th of eigjhty or ninety 

 feet ; and yet they were driven and ])uddled with 

 clay between the rows so accurately, that, all things 

 considered, the leakage was very trifling. 



Ships. 



Ships of large dimensions have been constructed 

 in all ages. Some of the war gallies of the ancients 

 are represented as being hardly inferior in dimen- 

 sions to first rate line of battle ships of the present 

 day. The largest masses of timber that ever na\i- 

 gated the ocean were, however, those constructed by 

 Mr. Wood of Port Glasgow, in the Isle of Orleans, 

 in the gulph of St. Lawrence. The first of these, 

 the Columbus, was three hundred feet long on the 

 deck, fifty feet seven inches broad amidships, and 

 twenty-nine feet and a half deep in the hold. She 

 was flat bottomed, and wall-sided, or had the sides 

 nearly perpendicular, and the stern post with little or 

 no inclination. The admeasured register of the Co- 

 lumbus was about three thousand six hundred and 

 ninety tons ; and her actual tonnage not much less 

 than five thousand. She had four masts, the largest 

 of which, however, was hardly equal to that of a 

 seventy-four. She came to England with a cargo of 

 timber in 1825, and arrived safely in the Thames; 

 but went to pieces on her voyage outwards, owing, 

 as is generally alleged, to the pilot committing some 

 error, or not being accustomed to conduct a mass so 

 enormous through the hazards of the narrow seas. 

 The fate of the Columbus, and that of the Baron of 

 Renfrew, a vessel of equal, if not of larger, dimen- 

 sions, seem to have established the fact, that notwith- 

 standing the greatest attention to strength in their 

 construction, there is a limit in size beyond which, if 



