THE CRADLE OF THE MODERN NAVY. 15 



mory Hall, 14th Street and Sixth Avenue, with a car for passengers operating for- 

 ward and backward through it, propelled by fans, one at each end of the tunnel, 

 alternating by pressure and exhaust, and later began construction of a tunnel of 

 similar design in Broadway at Murray Street. When his attention was called to 

 the difference in design between the one large tube as constructed and the two small 

 ones mentioned in the franchise. Beach said he would put the two small ones inside 

 the large one some time, but only a short section was ever completed. 



In 1868 Charles T. Harvey, an engineer who subsequently became known as 

 "the father of the elevated road," took out patents for a road of that character to be 

 operated by a cable with power developed by stationary engines located on the 

 ground. The cable sections extended over some 1,500 feet of track and carried 

 on them at intervals washers intended to strike on a boot, lowered from the car. The 

 impact of the washers on the boot would extend a spring and thus allow the car to 

 be impelled with gradually accelerated velocity. A section of this road was built 

 from the Battery up Greenwich Street to 14th Street and was intended to extend 

 from there to Kingsbridge and Yonkers. This method of propulsion did not prove 

 to be successful, and pneumatic power was considered with stations for air compres- 

 sors and storage tanks placed at intervals along the road from which locomotives 

 would be charged. 



In all of this development Mr. DeLamater took great interest, offering the use 

 of his works for experimental purposes and getting much of the work of construction. 



In 1875 Mayor W. H. Wickham appointed the first Rapid Transit Commission 

 to consider the general subject of transporting the public about the city, together 

 with the various projects already presented, and placed on it Messrs. Jos. Seligman, 

 Chairman, Lewis B. Brown, Chas. J. Canda, C. H. DeLamater and Jordan L. Mott. 



Out of the muddle into which that arch politician Tweed threw everything by 

 introducing a bill at Albany to put a masonry elevated road through the center of 

 the city blocks, there finally emerged the New York Elevated Railroad on Ninth 

 Avenue promoted by Harvey and designed by the engineer, John Baird, and the 

 Metropolitan Elevated Railroad, projected by Col. Q. A. Gilmore. 



Later, when the horse was supplanted by the cable on the surface car lines, the 

 grips and castings for the cable conduit were made at the works. 



In 1869 there was an insurrection in Cuba and the Spanish government, wish- 

 ing to protect the island from filibusters and insurgents, sent Capt. Raphael de Ara- 

 gon to Mr. DeLamater, commissioned to spend a considerable sum, but without any 

 plan. Naturally Ericsson was consulted. He had just been studying the defense 

 of Sweden, and at once suggested a scheme to build thirty gunboats, each armed 

 with a lOO-pounder gun mounted on her bow. He named two conditions only — to 

 make his plans without submitting them and that DeLamater should execute the 

 contract. The contract called for completion in eight months and they were ac- 

 tually completed in seven, notwithstanding the fact that the insurgents interposed 

 many serious obstacles by litigations in the courts. The hulls of fifteen were 

 built in Mystic, Connecticut, ten in Brooklyn and five elsewhere. The engines were 



