THE CHERBOURG BREAKWATER. 189 



caused him at once to select Cherbourg 1 as one of the best points for forming an artificial 

 harbour, protected by suitable fortifications. Other engineers recommended the same port, 

 and one, M. de la Bretonniere, proposed that a number of old ships should be loaded 

 with stones and sunk, while a large quantity of stone should be also thrown around 

 them to form a grand breakwater, which should rise fifty feet from the bottom. This idea was 

 abandoned, as it appears, partly from the fact that France had not old vessels enough 

 to spare for the purpose, and that it would cost too much to purchase them from foreign 

 nations. 



In 1781 an eminent French engineer proposed that, instead of one continuous break- 

 water, a number of large masses or congregations of stones, separated from each other on 

 the surfaces but touching at the bases, should be built on the sea bottom, believing that 

 they would break the force of the waves almost equally well. As a part of his plan he 

 suggested that they should be sunk in large conical caissons of wood, 150 feet in diameter 

 at the base and sixty feet broad at the top. These wooden cones were practically to bind 

 and keep the stones together. They were to be floated to the site with a number of empty 

 casks attached as floats, then detached, filled with stones, and sunk. An experiment at Havre 

 having been considered satisfactory, the Government accepted the idea, and ordered that 

 operations should be immediately commenced at Cherbourg. A permanent council was 

 appointed, as were officers and engineers. In 1783 barracks and a navy-yard were built, 

 and at Becquet, a short distance from Cherbourg, an artificial harbour, capable of holding 

 eighty small vessels for the transport of the stone, was literally dug out. 



On June 6th, 1784, the first cone was floated to its destination, and a month later 

 a second was similarly conveyed, in the presence of 10,000 spectators. Before the latter 

 could be filled with stones a storm, which lasted five days, half demolished it. In the 

 course of the summer and autumn not less than 65,000 tons of stone were deposited in 

 and around the cones. In 1785 several more cones were completed and sunk; at the 

 end of the year the quantity of stone deposited amounted to a quarter of a million tons, 

 and at the end of 1787 a million tons. At the end of 1790, when the works had been 

 seven years in progress and the Government was getting very tired of the whole matter, 

 between five and six million tons of stone had been dropped into the sea. M. de Cessart, 

 the engineer, found that, in order to sink five cones per annum, he had to employ 

 250 carpenters, 30 blacksmiths, 200 stone-hewers, and 200 masons. 



One could hardly expect much permanency from a wooden covering sunk into the 

 sea, and it is not surprising that, one by one, they burst, few lasting more than a 

 year. The outbreak of the Revolution put an end, for some time, to the operations at 

 Cherbourg. 



When the construction of the Cherbourg breakwater was resumed, the wooden cone 

 system was abandoned, and the stone was simply sunk from vessels of peculiar construction. 

 The breakwater was completed under Napoleon III., at a cost exceeding two and a half 

 million pounds sterling. The actual breakwater itself was finished in 1853,* but since 



* It was exposed twice to terrific storms during its construction. In 1808 the battery was submerged, the parapet 

 upset, and the barracks and garrison, with sixty men, swept away. But the large blocks of stone were afterwards 

 found to be more securely stowed than they had been before. 



