34 



REPORTS ON TORONTO HARBOUR. 



REPORT 



ON THE PRESERVATION AND IMPROVEMENT OF 

 TORONTO HARBOUR, 



BY IIDGII RICHARDSON, ESQUIRE, HARBOUR MASTER, TORONTO. 



[A Supplementary Premium of Seventy-Five Pounds teas awarded 

 to the author of this Reports-See Extract from the Minutes of the 

 Harbour Commissioners on page 38.] 



To the Commissionf.es or Toronto Harbour : — 



Gentlemen-,— Not with any pretention to engineering, not 

 ■with the presumption of competing with scientific men, in plans, 

 and estimates of plans, for the improvement of the Harbour: 

 but, if I have understood the advertisement right, it admits the 

 opinions of observers and of practical men, as well nautical as 

 scientific, to compete in a sort of essay on the subjects embraced 

 therein, which may lead to some beneficial decision, or induce 

 more scientific aid. 



If projects are in agitation, which, if carried into effect, I think 

 would be destructive to the Harbour, nautically of little value, 

 and commercially onerous, I, as a nautical man, a practical man, 

 and an attentive observer of the Harbour of long standing, am 

 entitled to intrude an opinion, and compete in the race of compe- 

 titors, the labours of whom tend to the public benefit. 



In my Report to the Commissioners of Toronto Harbour last 

 year, I stated as my opinion that the breach then open was inju- 

 rious to the Harbour, and urged the necessity of closing it, and so 

 simple and trifling was the injury then, that the beach that was 

 made on the 13 th and 14th January last, closed by the operation of 

 Nature on the 17th February following, and had the Harbour be- 

 longed to myself (with the opinion I held of its injurious tendency), 

 I should then have raised the beach with the material around me 

 to a height above the reach of the wave. If the aspect of the 

 breach now is in any way formidable, the delay in closing it must 

 be attributed to the public divided opinion, as to its beneficial 

 or prejudicial effect upon the Harbour. But the mass of material 

 that has been removed from the beach, essentially altering its 

 feature, and the drift that has been brought into the Harbour, to 

 say nothing of the undetermined effect it has had upon the Bar 

 must convince the most sceptical of its injurious effect ; and an 

 examination of the shallow shelving coast is sufficient to preclude 

 the idea of a natural channel ever forming there, if such an idea 

 was ever entertained. 



Further neglect may bring this Harbour into the perilous and 

 costly condition of Erie Harbour at this time, to which it has a 

 close resemblance, where, from having allowed it to become a 

 presqu'isle by a breach at the West, it is continually inundated 

 with sand, and threatened with destruction. 



The means of closing the breach when no more formidable than 

 ■when I observed it last fall appear to me very simple. It can hardly 

 have escaped the notice of the observer that whenever the height 

 of the Peninsula was above the reach of the wave, the wave was 

 rolled back from whence it came harmless to tbe beach ; and that 

 it was only where the wave surmounted the apex of it that it be- 

 came injurious in its descent on the opposite side. 



To repair the breach in its then form with a current through 

 it, it required first to stop the current, which might be done with 



as many rough plank of 2 inches, made into cases feet long by 

 2 feet 6 inches X 2 feet G inches, filled with the material of the 

 beach, as would stretch across the narrow neck of the breach in 

 double row, ten or twelve feet apart, and filled in between, this 

 would effectually stop the current, (the narrow part being only 

 sixty feet wide and far removed from the beat of the wave), the 

 current once stopped the process of raising the beach is the mere 

 affair of carts and wheelbarrows, with labour and a plentiful sup- 

 ply of the material of the Peninsula. The object of these casoons 

 being only to stop the current, which done all would be buried up- 

 "With moderate winds at S.W. and N.E., the lip of the wave would 

 repair the beach in a fair line to a certain height almost as soon 

 as the most active labour would raise the other part to the required 

 height. More scientific and a more expensive process might be 

 adopted, but none more efficient. 



On examining the beach I observed the wave had never reached 

 a height above five feet, where that height was twenty feet from 

 the line of calm water, and treating the Lake for all immediate 

 practical purpose as at a constant level, I had only to consider 

 the casuality of an easterly storm ; then looking round me for 

 even the lowest part of the Peninsula that withstood that storm, I 

 placed in imagination in the interval of the storm a section of it 

 in the breach, and I felt myself secure, convinced that nothing 

 could be so effectual in repairing the breach as the material of 

 which it was composed. 



The Lake was, when I observed it last fall for the purpose of 

 estimating the height of beach required to resist the sudden en- 

 croachment of the Lake, two feet lower than the highest level, and 

 two feet higher than the lowest ; I therefore concluded that a 

 beach six or seven feet above the highest water at 20 feet from 

 the line of calm water, and a hundred feet wide in all, would be 

 amply sufficient to secure the Harbour against further inroad from 

 the Lake. I do not think that for many years the beach in that 

 part has been five feet high. Be it remarked that the water being 

 shoal without, the wave in any storm is greatly reduced in height 

 and force in passing over the shoal water before it reaches the 

 beach. 



If cribs are made use of to stop the breach, the retrocession of 

 the Peninsula (as I shall show) will in the course of time lay them 

 bare, and even if they extended all the way to the head of Ash 

 bridge's Bay, yet in time the whole line would be taken in reverse. 

 Keeping the beach at all times and in all parts above the reach of 

 the solid water of the wave, the retrocession will proceed safely, 

 uniformly, and almost imperceptibly, but proceed it will, as it has 

 done, and still does ; breaches accelerate this, as witness the 

 present effect, and examine the marks all the way from the 

 fishing houses below the cross beach to some hundred yards West of 

 Privat's Hotel. 



But until the important question of a canal at the East end of 

 the Bay is settled, I fear even the preservation of the Harbour will 

 be a secondary consideration, I shall therefore publicly treat this 

 question fully in all its bearings upon public interests, that is 

 physically, nautically, and commercially. 



Physically. — The superstructure of the Peninsula, the southern 

 boundary of the Port is composed of drift — that is, clean washed 

 sand and stones ; the base of it I believe of all the material of the 

 cliffs of Scarboro', the substratum most probably of indurated 

 play.' The. bar or western boundary of sand and clay. 



