The Industrial Canal
Of New Orleans
V,
By Thomas Ewing Dabney
ri
c
WILLIAM O. HUDSON
President, Board of Commissioners of Port of New Orleans
FOREWORD.
Oh the mind of man! Frail, untrustworthy, perishable —
yet able to stand unlimited agony, cope with the greatest forces
of Nature and build against a thousand years. Passion car
blind it — yet it can read in infinity the difference between righl
and wrong. Alcohol can unsettle it — yet it can create a poem 01
a harmony or a philosophy that is immortal. A flower pot falling
out of a window can destroy it — yet it can move mountains.
If Man had a tool that was as frail as his mind, he would
fear to use it. He would not trust himself on a plank so liable tc
crack. He would not venture into a boat so liable to go to pieces.
He would not drive a tack with a hammer, the head of which is
so liable to fly off.
But Man knows that what the mind can conceive, that car
he execute. So Man sits in his room and plans the things the
world thought impossible. From the known he dares the un-
known. He covers paper with figures, conjures forth a blu€
print, and sends an army of workmen against the forces oi
Nature. If his mind blundered, he would waste millions in money
and perhaps destroy thousands of lives. But Man can trust his
mind ; fragile though it is, he knows it can bear the strain of any
task put upon it.
All over the world there is the proof : in the heavens above,
and in the waters under the earth. And nowhere has Man won
a greater triumph over unspeakable odds than in New Orleans,
in the dredging of a canal through buried forests 18,000 years
old, the creation of an underground river, and the building of a
lock that was thought impossible.
The Industrial Canal
and Inner Harbor of New Orleans
History, Description and Economic Aspects of Giant
Facility Created to Encourage Industrial
Expansion and Develop Commerce
By Thomas Ewing Dabney
Published by
Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans
Second Port U. S. A,
May, 1921
(Copyright, 1921, by Thomas Ewing Dabney).
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
THE NEED RECOGNIZED FOR A CENTURY 5
NEW ORLEANS DECIDES TO BUILD CANAL 8
SMALL CANAL FIRST PLANNED 13
THE DIRT BEGINS TO FLY 17
CANAL PLANS EXPANDED 22
DIGGING THE DITCH 27
OVERWHELMING INDORSEMENT BY NEW ORLEANS 31
SIPHON AND BRIDGES 36
THE REMARKABLE LOCK 40
NEW CHANNEL TO THE GULF 48
WHY GOVERNMENT SHOULD OPERATE CANAL 54
ECONOMIC ASPECT OF CANAL 60
CONSTRUCTION COSTS AND CONTRACTORS... 66
OTHER PORT FACILITIES 70
COMPARISON OF DISTANCES BETWEEN NEW ORLEANS AND THE
PRINCIPAL CITIES AND PORTS OF THE WORLD.... .. 78
(Stf
THE NEED RECOGNIZED FOR A CENTURY.
There is a map in the possession of T. P. Thompson of New
Orleans, who has a notable collection of books and documents on
the early history of this city, dated March 1, 1827, and drawn by
Captain W. T. Poussin, topographical engineer, showing the
route of a proposed canal to connect the Mississippi River and
Lake Pontchartrain, curiously near the site finally chosen for
that great enterprise nearly a hundred years later.
New Orleans then was a mere huddle of buildings around
Jackson Square ; but with the purchase of the Louisiana territory
from France, and the great influx of American enterprise that
characterized the first quarter of the last century, development
was working like yeast, and it was foreseen that New Orleans'
future depended largely upon connecting the two waterways
mentioned — the river, that drains the commerce of the Missis-
sippi Valley, at our front door, and the lake, with its short-cut to
the sea and the commerce of the world, at the back-
When the Carondelet canal, now known as the Old Basin
Canal, was begun in 1794, the plan was to extend it to the river.
It was also planned to connect the New Basin Canal, begun in
1833, with the Mississippi. This was, in fact, one of the big
questions of the period. That the work was not put through
was due more to the lack of machinery than of enterprise.
During the rest of the century, the proposal bobbed up at
frequent intervals, and the small Lake Borgne canal was finally
shoved through from the Mississippi to Lake Borgne, which is a
bay of Lake Pontchartrain.
The difference between these early proposals and the plan
for the Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor that was finally
adopted, is that the purpose in the former case was simply to
develop a waterway for handling freight, whereas the object of
New Orleans' great facility, now nearing completion, is to create
industrial development.
Under the law of Louisiana, inherited from the Spanish and
French regimes, river frontage can not be sold or leased to pri-
— 5—
507S3G
vate enterprise. This law prevents port facilities being sewed
up by selfish interests and insures a fair deal for all shipping
lines, new ones as well as old, with a consequent development of
foreign trade ; and port officials, at harbors that are under pri-
vate monopoly, would give a pretty if the Louisiana system could
be established there.
But there is no law, however good, that meets all conditions,
and a number of private enterprises — warehouses and factories
— have undoubtedly been kept out of New Orleans because they
could not secure water frontage.
An artificial waterway, capable of indefinite expansion, on
whose banks private enterprise could buy or lease, for a long
period of time, the land for erecting its buildings and plants,
without putting in jeopardy the commercial development of the
port ; a waterway that would co-ordinate river, rail and maritime
facilities most economically, and lend itself to the development
of a "free port" when the United States finally adopts that
requisite to a world commerce— that was the recognized need of
New Orleans when the proposal for connecting the two water-
ways came to the fore in the opening years of the present cen-
tury. The Progressive Union, later the Association of Com-
merce, took a leading part in the propaganda ; it was assisted by
other public bodies, and forward-looking men, who gradually
wore away the opposition with which is received every attempt
to do something that grandfather didn't do.
And on July 9, 1914, the legislature of Louisiana passed Act
No. 244, authorizing the Commission Council of New Orleans to
determine the site, and the Board of Port Commissioners of
Louisiana, or Dock Board, as it is more commonly called, to build
the Industrial Canal.
The act gave the board a right to expropriate all property
necessary for the purpose, to build the "necessary locks, slips,
laterals, basins and appurtenances * * * in aid of commerce,"
and to issue an unlimited amount in bonds "against the real
estate and canal and locks and other improvements * * * to be
paid out of the net receipts of said canal and appurtenances
thereof, after the payment of operating expenses * * * (and) to
fix charges for tolls in said canal."
This was submitted to a vote of the people at the regular
election in November of that year, and became part of the con-
stitution.
To avoid the complication of a second mortgage on the
property, the Dock Board subsequently (ordinance of June 29,
1918) set a limit on the total bond issue. To enable the develop-
ment that was then seen to be dimly possible, it set this limit
high— at $25,000,000.
—1—
NEW ORLEANS DECIDES TO BUILD CANAL.
The canal for which the legislature made provision in 1914
bears about the relation to the one that was finally built as the
acorn does to the oak. It was to be a mere barge canal that
might ultimately be enlarged to a ship canal. Its cost was esti-
mated at $2,400,000, which was less than the cost of digging the
New Basin canal nearly a century before, which was a great deal
smaller and ran but half way between the lake and river.
The panic of the early days of the World War shoved even
this modest plan to one side, and it was not until the next year
that enthusiasm caught its second wind. Then the leading men
and the press of the city put themselves behind the project once
more.
As the New Orleans Item said, October 22, 1915, "the lack
of that canal has already proven to have cost the city much in
trade and developed industry."
Commenting on the "astonishing exhibition of intelligent
public spirit" in New Orleans, the Chicago Tribune said that "no
other city in or near the Mississippi Valley, including Chicago,
has shown such an awakening to the possibilities and rearrange-
ments that are following the cutting of the Panama canal. * * *
The awakening started with the talk of the new canal."
Other papers throughout the country made similar expres-
sions.
In 1915 the engineering firm of Ford, Bacon & Davis made
a preliminary survey of conditions and how development would
be affected by the canal. At about the same time the Illinois
legislature voted to spend $5,000,000 to construct a deep-water
canal, giving Chicago water connection with the Mississippi
River; and the New Orleans Item linked the two projects when it
said, January 16, 1916, "the Illinois-Lake Michigan Canal and
the New Orleans Industrial Canal are complementary links in a
new system of waterways connecting the upper Valley through
the Mississippi River and New Orleans with the Gulf and the
Panama Canal. This system again gives the differential to the
Valley cities in trade with the markets of the Orient, our own
west coast, and South America."
Commodore Ernest Lee Jahncke, president of the Associa-
tion of Commerce, issued a statement to the press January 16,
1916, declaring that the prospect of the canal "brightened the
whole business future of this city and the Mississippi Valley";
the New Orleans Real Estate Board and the Auction Exchange,
in a joint meeting, urged its speedy building; and Governor
Luther E. Hall, in a formal statement to the press January 16,
1916, gave his endorsement to the construction of the canal "long
sought by many commercial interests of New Orleans," and said
that work would probably begin in "three months."
In August, 1916, the governor dismissed the Dock Board
and appointed a new one.
In the confusion attending the reorganization 'the canal
project was again dropped. The New Orleans American, on
August 28, 1916, attempted to revive it, but the effort fell flat,
and the plan laid on ice until 1918.
America had in the meantime thrown its hat into the ring,
and the cry was going up for ships, more ships, and still more
ships. National patriotism succeeded where civic effort had
failed. New Orleans brought out its Industrial Canal project to
help the country build the famous "bridge of boats."
But this new phase of the plan was far from the canal that
was finally built. In fact, the accomplishment of this project has
shown a remarkable development with the passing years, re-
minding one of the growth of the trivial hopes of the boy into
the mighty achievement of the man.
Ships could not be built on the Mississippi River. The
twenty-foot range in the water level would require the ways to
make a long slope into the current, a work of prohibitive expense,
and as nearly impossible from an engineering standpoint as any-
thing can be.
Early in 1918 a committee of representative Orleanians be-
gan to study the situation. This was knowm as the City Ship-
building Committee. It comprised Mayor Behrman, 0. S. Mor-
—9—
ris, president of the Association of Commerce; Walter Parker,
manager of that body; Arthur McGuirk, special counsel of the
Dock Board ; R. S. Hecht, president of the Hibernia Bank ; Dr.
Paul H. Saunders, president of the Canal-Commercial Bank; J.
D. O'Keefe, vice president of the Whitney-Central Bank; J. K.
Newman, financier; G. G. Earl, superintendent of the Sewerage
and Water Board; Hampton Reynolds, contractor; D. D. Moore,
James M. Thomson and J. Walker Ross, of the Times-Picayune,
Item and States, respectively.
On February 10, 1918, this committee laid the plans for an
industrial basin, connected with the river by a lock, and ulti-
mately to be connected with the lake by a small barge canal.
Ships could be built on the banks of this basin, the water in
which would have a fixed level.
Mr. Hecht, and Arthur McGuirk, special counsel of the
Dock Board, devised the plan by which the project could be
financed. The Dock Board would issue long-term bonds, and
build the necessary levees with the material excavated from the
canal.
The committee's formal statement summarized the public
need of this facility as follows :
"1. It will provide practical, convenient and fixed-level
water-front sites for ship and boat building and repair plants,
for industries and commercial enterprises requiring water
frontage.
"2. It will provide opportunities for all enterprises requir-
ing particular facilities on water frontage to create such facili-
ties.
"3. It will permit the complete co-ordination, in the City
of New Orleans, of the traffic of the Mississippi River and its
tributaries, of the Intracoastal Canal, the railroads and the sea,
under the most convenient and satisfactory conditions.
"4. In connection with the publicly-owned facilities on the
river front, it will give New Orleans all the port and harbor
advantages enjoyed by Amsterdam with its canal system, Rotter-
—10—
W. A. KERNAGHAN
Vice President
RENE CLERC
Secretary
ALBERfMACKIE HUGH McCLOSKEY
COMMISSIONERS
Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans
—11—
dam and Antwerp with their joint river and ocean facilities;
Hamburg with its free port, and Liverpool with its capacity as
a market deposit.
"5. It will give New Orleans a fixed-level, well protected
harbor.
"6. It will serve the purposes of the Intracoastal Canal and
increase the benefits to accrue to New Orleans from that canal.
"7. In connection with revived commercial use of the inland
waterways upon which the federal government is now deter-
mined, it will open the way for an easy solution of the problem
of handling, housing and interchange of water-borne commerce,
and of the development of facilities for the storage of commodi-
ties between the period of production and consumption.
"8. It will prove an important facility in the equipment of
New Orleans to meet the new competition the enlarged Erie
Canal will create. The original Erie Canal harmed New Orleans
because Mississippi River boat lines could not build their own
terminal and housing facilities at New Orleans/*
This meeting made industrial history in New Orleans. The
Hecht plan was studied by lawyers and financiers and declared
feasible. Mr. Hecht summarized the confidence of the far-vis-
ioned men in the new New Orleans when he declared in a public
interview: "I feel there is absolutely nothing to prevent the
immediate realization of New Orleans' long dream of becoming a
great industrial and commercial center and having great ship-
building plants located within the city limits."
And the Item said, in commenting on the undertaking (Feb-
ruary 17, 1918) : "Millions of dollars of capital will be ready to
engage in shipbuilding in New Orleans the moment that pile-
drivers and steam shovels are set to work on the shiplock and
navigation canal."
It was a time of great industrial excitement. Victory was
at last in the grasp of New Orleans. The eyes of the country
were on New Orleans. The cry was, "Full Speed Ahead !"
-12-
SMALL CANAL FIRST PLANNED.
The plan at this time, was to have a lock-sill only 16 or 18
feet deep. This would be sufficient to allow empty ships to
enter or leave the canal, but not loaded. The mere building of
ships was thus the principal thought, despite the rhetoric on
commercial and industrial possibilities. Perhaps the leaders
who were beating the project into shape were themselves afraid
to think in the millions necessary to do the work to which New
Orleans finally dedicated itself; perhaps they realized that
figure would stagger the minds of the people and defeat the un-
dertaking, if they were not gradually educated up to the mark.
Meeting on February 15, 1918, the Dock Board resolved
unanimously to put the plan through, if it proved feasible. W.
B Thompson was president of the board; the other members
were Dr. E. S. Kelly, Thomas J. Kelly, B. B. Hans and 0. P.
Geren. Later, E. E. Lafaye took Mr. Kelly's place on the board.
The Public Belt Railroad board had in the meantime (F
ruary 13) voted to pay the Dock Board $50,000 a year; and the
Levee Board (February 14) to give $125,000 a year. As the
plans were increased, the Levee Board later increased
$925M0a°yor Behrman, Arthur McGuirk and R. S. Hecht laid the
proposition before both bodies. Action was unanimous. Colonel
J D Hill, speaking for the Belt Railroad Board, said:
eiad'that at last there has been outlined a plan which seemingly
makes it possible to construct the canal. It will not only result
Tthe eventual construction of a big fleet of ships buwil pre-
pare the way for a tremendous industrial activity in other lines.
The consensus has been that a navigation canal is needed
induce large manufacturers, importers and exporters to es ab-
Ifeh their factories and warehouses here. This project will be
Members 01 ine Public Belt Board voting, besides Colonel
Hill and Mayor Behrman (ex-officio) were Gmder Abbott, Ar-
—13—
thur Simpson, John H. Murphy, W. B. Bloomfield, Adam Lorch,
George P. Thompson, Thomas F. Cunningham, Victor Lambou,
Edgar B- Stern and Sam Segari.
Members of the Levee Board voting were: William McL.
Fayssoux, president, Thomas Killeen, Thomas Smith, John F.
Muller, James P. Williams, John P. Vezien.
W. B. Thompson, president, put the matter before the Dock
Board. "The idea" he said, according to the minutes of the
meeting of February 15, 1918, "had always received his ap-
proval, and he thought that the mayor would recall that in the
preparation, he with the city attorney, had a very considerable
part in framing the same, and he had taken an active interest in
the matter ; he had always been in favor of the Industrial Canal,
and he believed in the possibility of development of New Orleans
through this, as a terminus ; and it was entirely logical that the
Dock Board should do all that may lie within its power to bring
about the successful consummation of this project; the only
doubt in his mind being as to the feasibility of the project from
the financial standpoint. It seems now, however, that a plan
has been devised, through efforts of the mayor and Mr. Hecht,
which gives every promise of success. The co-operation of the
city on behalf of the Public Belt Railroad, and of the Levee
Board, apparently removed the difficulties in respect to the finan-
cial end. The Dock Board welcomes the assistance and co-oper-
ation of the city and of the Levee Board, but inasmuch as these
boards are merely contributing certain amounts per year, and
whereas the Dock Board is the obligor in respect of the principal
of the bond issue, it devolves upon the Dock Board to use great
caution before committing itself to any particular plan in a mat-
ter which so vitally affects the credit of the Dock Board, the
city of New Orleans and the Levee Board. President Thompson
further stated that he unhesitatingly endorsed the project and
that he was sure that every member of the board agreed, and
the board would be glad to give prompt consideration to the
—14—
particular plan in question and reach some conclusion which
will insure the realization of this great project."
To estimate the probable cost of the canal, Mayor Behrman
appointed the following committee of engineers : W- J. Hardee,
city engineer; A. F. Barclay, engineer of the Public Belt Rail-
.road ; George G. Earl, superintendent of the Sewerage & Water
Board; C. T. Rayner, Jr., engineer of the Levee Board and
Hampton Reynolds, contractor.
On February 22, the committee reported that, not counting
real estate, a' canal could be built for $2,626,876. This estimate
called for a lock 600 feet long, 70 feet wide, and 18 feet deep,
and a barge canal to the lake. The cost of constructing the lock
was put at $1,370,660, and of digging the canal $1,256,216.
This report was first received by a special committee com-
posed of Mayor Behrman, W. B. Thompson, Col. J. B. Hill, R. S.
H_echt and Major W. McL. Fayssoux. This committee referred
it.to the Dock Board, which adopted it February 22.
Financial arrangements were completed at this same meet-
ing. In order to have sufficient to pay for the land which would
have to be expropriated for the canal, and to give some leeway,
it .was decided to issue bonds for $3,500,000, with an option of
floating $1,000,000 more within 30 days. A financial syndicate,
consisting of the Hibernia, Interstate and Whitney-Central banks
of New Orleans, the William R. Compton Investment Company
of St. Louis, and the Halsey, Stuart Company of Chicago, agreed
to take the entire issue. The bonds were to run 40 years and
begin to mature serially after 10 years. They were to bear 5
per cent interest, and to be sold at 95- They would be secured
by a mortgage on the real estate of the canal site, and by the
taxing powers of the state, for they were a recognized state
obligation, as Arthur McGuirk, special counsel of the Dock
Board, pointed out in his opinion of July 10, 1918.
He added: "I am likewise of opinion that said bonds are
unaffected by any limitations upon the state debt, or upon the
rate of taxation for public purposes; that the said bonds are
entitled to be paid out of the general funds, or by the exercise
—15-
of the power of taxation insofar as the revenues, funds or prop-
erty preferentially pledged or mortgaged to secure said issue
may fail, or be insufficient, to pay the same."
The following sat with the Dock Board and its attorneys
at the meeting of February 22 : Mayor Behrman, J. D. Hill of
the Public Belt Railroad, R. S. Hecht, president of the Hibernia
Bank, J. D- O'Keefe, vice-president of the Whitney-Central
Bank, C. G. Reeves, vice-president of the Interstate Bank, W. R.
Compton of the Compton Investment Company, H. L. Stuart of
Halsey, Stuart and Company, W. J. Hardee, city engineer, and
Hampton Reynolds, contractor.
The selection of the site was left, by the state law, to the
commission council. There were a number of possible routes,
and the selection was made with the utmost secrecy to prevent
real estate profiteering. At first the area bounded by France
and Reynes streets was chosen. This was on February 28. On
May 9, however, the site was changed to the area bounded by
France and Lizardi streets, north from the Mississippi River
to Florida Walk, thence to Lake Pontchartrain. This is a vir-
tually uninhabited region in the Third District, through the
old Ursulines tract. The site chosen for expropriation is five
and a third miles long by 2,200 feet wide, 897 acres.
For this land the Dock Board paid $1,493,532 24, which is
at the rate of $1,665 an acre. The valuation was reached by
expropriation proceedings.
In the meantime, Commodore Ernest Lee Jahncke had asked
to be allotted the first site on the Industrial Canal, and Doullut
& Williams for the second. Both were for shipyards. The
Foundation Company, which was operating a number of ship-
yards in various parts of the country, sent an engineer here to
see if it would be feasible for the concern to build a shipyard
here.
Even before the piledrivers and dredges were on the job,
the millions were being counted for investment in the city whose
remarkable enterprise had won the admiration of the country.
—16—
THE DIRT BEGINS TO FLY.
Until the money for the bond issue should be available, the
Hibernia Bank authorized the Dock Board to draw against it
on open account. It only remained, then, to secure the authori-
zation of the Capital Issues Committee of the Federal Reserve
Board, which controlled all bond issues during the World War,
to start the work. The grounds on which the authorization was
requested sunmmarize conditions that make possible a great
industrial development in New Orleans, and will stand quoting.
They are:
"(a) Semi-tropical conditions, which make it feasible to
work every day and night in the year;
"(b) Admirable housing conditions which render it feas-
ible for labor to live under most sanitary conditions in houses
closely proximate to both the plants and the city, with sewerage
and water connections, and with street car transportation facili-
ties to and from the plants and to and from the amusement
centers of the city;
"(c) Ample labor supply and satisfactory labor condi-
tions ;
"(d) Proximity to timber, steel and coal sources of sup-
ply with all water as well as rail transportation facilities
thereon ;
" (e) State control of the canal facilities and operation of
the same, not for profit, but for the economical and expeditious
development of shipbuilding."
Two shipyards were established on the canal. They poured
millions of dollars into New Orleans. The tremendous tonnage
built in the United States during the war, and the slump in for-
eign trade that followed the armistice, due to financial condi-
tions abroad, have caused many shipyards throughout the
United States to close down, among them one of these at New
Orleans. The other one is now finishing its war contracts, and
—17—
will be more or less inactive until the demands of the American
Merchant Marine and business in general open up again. If
they are not used for shipbuilding, they can be used for ship
repairing or building barges. And it is obvious that the same
conditions that made ship building an economic possibility, will
encourage other industrial production, especially production that
requires the co-ordination of river, rail and maritime facilities.
The Canal means millions of new money to New Orleans, as its
proponents said it would.
On March 12, the authorization of the Capital Issues Com-
mittee was given. On March 15, the George W. Goethals Com-
pany, Inc., was retained as consulting engineers on the big job-
The services of this company were secured as much for its en-
gineering skill, proven by its work on the Panama Canal, as
for the prestige of its name. The Goethals Company, co-oper-
ating with the engineers of the Dock Board, which did the work,
designed the famous lock and directed the entire job. George
M. Wells, vice-president of the firm, was put in active charge
of the work. General Goethals made occasional visits of super-
vision.
The dirt began to fly on June 6, 1918.
Before coming to New Orleans to take up his work, Mr.
Wells, acting upon instructions of the Dock Board, called at the
office of the Foundation Company in New York, whose engineer
had already studied the possibilities of establishing a shipyard
on the canal, and guaranteed an outlet to the sea by the time
its vessels should be finished.
The river end of the site chosen for the canal consisted of
low and flat meadow land. There were a few houses helter-
skeltered about, like blocks in a nursery, but the principal signs
of human life were the cows that grazed where the grazing was
good, and sought refuge from the noonday beams of the sun
under the occasional oaks that had strayed out into the open
and didn't know how to get back. The middle of the site — -
—18-
N. O. ARMY SUPPLY BASE
BUILDING LAKE ENTRANCE
—19—
several miles in extent — was a gray cypress swamp, with five
or six hundred trees to the acre, and always awash. The lake
end was "trembling prairie" marsh land subject to tidal over-
flow and very soft.
With dredges, spades, mechanical excavators, piledrivers
and dynamite the work opened.
A great force of men began to throw up by hand, the levees
that were to serve as banks for the turning basin, the lock and
other portions of the canal. This levee would keep the liquid
material, dredged out, from running back into the excavation.
The turning basin, 950 feet by 1,150 feet, was an expansion of
the original industrial basin. Situated several hundred feet
from the lock, its purpose is to enable ships entering the canal
from the river, and passing through the lock, to turn in, as well
as to furnish a site for the concentration of industries. The
Foundation Company had in the meantime decided to establish
a shipyard on this basin ; its engineers were on the ground, and
its material was1 rolling.
One dredge was sent around Lake Pontchartrain to com-
mence boring in from that end. This could not be done on the
river end. The Mississippi is too mighty a giant to risk such
liberties. The 2,000-foot cut between the river and the lock
would have to be done last of all, when the rest of the canal and
the lock were finished, and the new levees that would protect the
city against its overflow, were solidly .set. But a few hundred
feet from the turning basin, was Bayou Bienvenu, which runs
into Lake Borgne, part of Lake Pontchartrain, and one of the
refuges of Lafitte in the brave days when smuggling was more
a sport of the plain people than it is now with European travel
restricted to the wealthy. So through Bayou Bienvenu a small
excavator was sent to cut a passage into the turning basin, to
allow the mighty 22-inch dredges to get in and work outwards
towards the lake and the lock site.
The problem was further complicated by the Florida Walk
—20—
drainage system, which emptied into Bayou Bienvenu, and by
the railway lines that crossed the site of the Canal.
These railways were the Southern Railway, at the lake end,
the Louisville & Nashville, at the middle, and the Southern and
Public Belt near the turning basin on Florida Walk. For them,
the Dock Board had to build "run-around" tracks, to be used
while their lines were cut to enable the dredging to be made
and the bridges to be constructed.
For the drainage, the plans called for the construction of
an inverted siphon passing under the Canal, a river under a
river, so to speak. In the meantime, however, the drainage
canal had to be blocked off with two cofferdams, to cut off the
water from the city and the bayou, and enable the construction
of the siphon between-
Additional railroad tracks, too, had to be built to handle
the immense volume of- material needed for the work; roads
had to be built for getting supplies on the job by truck; the
trolley line had to be extended for the transportation of labor.
Week by week the labor gangs grew, as the men were able
to find places in the attacking line of the industrial battle. Great
excavators stalked over the land, pulling themselves along by
their dippers which bit out chunks of earth as big as a cart when
they "took a-hold"; the smack of pile drivers, the thump of
dynamite, and the whistle of dredges filled the air. Buildings
sprouted like mushrooms; in the meadow, half a mile from the
nearest water, the shipyard of the Foundation Company began
to take form. It was the plan to finish the Canal by January,
1920.
—21—
CANAL PLANS EXPANDED.
Work in the meantime had begun on the commodity ware-
house and wharf, another facility planned by the Dock Board to
relieve the growing pains. Built on the Canal, but opening on tne
river, it was to perform the same service for general commodi-
ties as the Public Cotton Warehouse and the Public Grain Eleva-
tor did for those products. Though not a part of the canal plan,
the construction of the warehouse at this point was part of the
general scheme to concentrate industrial development on that
waterway.
Later, the Federal Government took over this work and
gave New Orleans a $13,000,000 terminal, through which it
handled army supplies. It is still using the three warehouses
for storage purposes, but has leased the half-mile double-deck
wharf to the Dock Board, which is devoting it to the general
commerce of the port. In time, the Dock Board hopes to get
at least one of the buildings.
There can be no doubt but that the enterprise of New Or-
leans in building the Industrial Canal had a great deal to do
with the government's determination to establish a depot at
New Orleans.
On May 30, the news came out of Washington that the
Doullut & Williams Shipbuilding Company had been awarded
a $15,000,000 contract by the Emergency Fleet Corporation to
build eight ships of 9,600 tons each. This was the largest ship-
building contract that had been given the South. The Indus-
trial Canal rendered it possible.
The firm of Doullut & Williams had been engaged for
fifteen years or so in the civil engineering and contracting busi-
ness in New Orleans. Captain M. P. Doullut had built launches
with his own hands when a young man, and dreamed of the
time when he would have a yard capable of turning out ocean-
going vessels. The Doullut & Williams Shipbuilding Com-
pany was organized April 25, 1918, with the following officers :
-22—
M. P. Doullut, president; Paul Doullut, vice-president; W. Hor-
ace Willianis, secretary-treasurer and general manager; L. H.
Guerin, chief engineer; and James P. Ewin, assistant chief
engineer.
"I feel that New Orleans is on the eve of a very remarkable
development" said Senator Ransdell of Louisiana in a telegram
of congratulation, "and earnestly hope oar people will continue
to work together with energy and hearty accord until we have
gone way over the top in shipbuilding and many other lines."
The expression "over the top" had not become the pest that
it and other war-time weeds of rhetoric have subsequently
proven. That was a time when one could still refer to a "drive"
without causing a gnashing of teeth.
Picking the site at the Lake Pontchartrain end of the
canal, Doullut & Williams Shipbuilding Company began to erect
its shipyard. The plant buildings were erected upon tall piling.
As the dredges excavated the material from the cut, they de-
posited it on the site of the shipyard and raised the elevation
several feet, so the buildings were only the usual height above
the ground. Both sides of the Canal, it should be added, have
been similarly raised by excavation material.
It was planned that the ships from the Doullut & Williams
yard should be sent out into the world through Lake Pontchar-
train, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico- There was ample
water in the lake, without dredging, to accommodate unloaded
ships of this size.
But the fact that ships 400 or so feet long and drawing,
when loaded to capacity, 27 feet, were to be built at New Or-
leans, emphasized the belief of those directing the work of the
Industrial Canal that the plan on which they were working was
too smalL An 18-foot canal would not meet the growing needs
of New Orleans. Accordingly the Dock Board instructed the
engineering department to expand the plans.
By June 11, 1918, the plans had been revised to give a 25-
foot channel. This would accommodate all but the largest ships
that come to New Orleans. The cost of such a lock and canal,
George M. Wells estimated, would be $6,000,000, or $2,500,000
more than the estimate for the original canal. The Levee Board
promptly raised its ante to $250,000 to guarantee the interest.
When the Dock Board floated the first bond issue of
$3,500,000 in February, at 95, it reserved the option to issue
another $1,000,000 of bonds within thirty days, at the same rate.
For $1,500,000 of the new issue, the same syndicate of banks
offered 97V2» or two and a half points higher than for the first;
but for the other million, they held the board to the original rate
of 95. President Thompson reported to the Dock Board June
11 that he considered these "very satisfactory terms." He added:
"We were able to secure these better prices and conditions be-
cause the bond market is in a somewhat better condition now
than it was when we made the original contract."
The contract was accepted on that date, and application
made to the Capital Issues Committee for the necessary permis-
sion. This was given in due time, though there was consider-
able opposition.
The opposition, said President Thompson, at the Dock
Board meeting of February 26, 1919, reviewing the development
of the canal plans, "was inspired by vicious and spectacular at-
tacks of certain private interests hostile to the canal project
and to the port of New Orleans." Railroads, whose right of
way crossed the Canal, were the principal propagandists. They
realized that the Dock Board could not be required to build their
bridges over the waterway, and although the Thompson board
financed the work at the time, they knew that sooner or later
would come a day of reckoning. The Hudson Board has since
then taken steps to collect several million dollars from these
roads.
But why build a canal almost large enough, only? Why
build a 25-foot lock when ships drawing 30-feet of water come
to New Orleans? A lock cannot be enlarged, once it is com-
—24—
LOCK SITE
Driving Sheet Piling
LOCK SITE
Dredges Entering
—25—
pleted — and the tendency of the times is towards larger ships.
Why not make a capacity facility while they were about it?
These were questions the Dock Board asked itself, and on
June 29, 1918, it decided to build the lock with a 30-foot depth
over the sill at extreme low water, and make the canal 300 feet
wide at the top, and 150 feet wide at the bottom.
To do this, would cost about $1,000,000 more, it was esti-
mated by George M. Wells of the Goethals company — a sum
which the Dock Board thought would be realized from the rental-
revenues of Doullut & Williams and the Foundation Company,
without increasing the second bond issue.
This is the Canal that was finally built — nearly 70 per cent
larger than the one that was begun and about 100 per cent
larger than the one originally planned, when the newspapers
and forward-looking told the people that the lack of such a canal
had cost New Orleans millions of dollars in development.
—26—
DIGGING THE DITCH.
No rock-problem was encountered in dredging the canal.
The cost was below what the engineers estimated it would be —
less than thirty cents a cubic yard. But a novel situation did
develop ; a condition that would have sent the cost sky-rocketing
if an Orleanian had not met the difficulty.
Louisiana is what geologists call a region of subsidence.
The gulf of Mexico formerly reached to where Cairo, 111., now
is. Washings from the land, during the slow-moving centuries,
pushed the shoreline ever outward ; the humus of decaying vege-
tation raised the ground surface still higher. This section of
Louisiana, built by the silt of the Mississippi, was of course the
most recent formation.
Twenty thousand years ago, say the geologists, there were
great forests where Louisiana now is. Among these mighty
trees roamed the glyptodont ; the 16-foot armadillo with a tail like
the morning-star of the old crusaders, monstrously magnified;
the giraffe camel ; the titanothere ; the Columbian elephant, about
the size of a trolley car and with 15-foot tusks; the giant sloth
which could look into a second-story window; here the saber-
toothed tiger fought with the megatherium ; mighty rhinoceroses
sloshed their clumsy way, and huge and grotesque birds filled the
air with their flappings.
As the subsoil packed more solidly, this wilderness in time
sunk beneath the waters. The Mississippi built up its sandbars
again, storms shaped them above the waves, marsh grass raised
the surface with its humus, and another forest grew. This, in
turn, sunk. And so the process was repeated, time after time.
At different depths below the surface of the ground the re-
mains of these forests are found today, the wood perfectly pre-
served by the dampness. And through this tangled mass the
dredges had to fight their way.
It was a task too great for the ordinary type of 20 or 22-inch
suction dredge, even with the strength of 1,000 horses behind it.
When they met these giant stumps and trunks they just stopped.
—27—
A. B. Wood, of the sewerage and water department, had
already designed and patented a centrifugal pump impeller
adapted to the handling of sewerage containing trash. Learning
of this, W. J. White, superintendent of dredging on the Canal,
asked him to design a special impeller, along similar lines, for
the dredge Texas.
Results from the invention were remarkable. During the
thirty days immediately preceding the installation the dredge
had suffered delays from clogged suction which totalled 130%
hours. During the thirty days immediately succeeding installa-
tion the total of delays for the same reason was cut down to 71%
hours. The average yardage was, for the earlier period, 152 an
hour, of actual excavation ; and for the later period, 445 an hour
— an increase of almost 200 per cent. The situation had been
met.
This was the period when the cost of labor and material
began to jump. Employers were bidding against each other for
men, and the government's work practically fixed the price of
supplies.
Geroge M. Wells, consulting engineer, in his report of De-
cember 9, 1918, to the Dock Board, summarized labor increases
over the scale when the work was begun, as follows : Unskilled
labor, 54% ; pile driver men, 40% ; machinists, 40% ; black-
smiths, 40% ; foremen and monthly, 15 to 40% — an average in-
crease of 40%. Materials had advanced, he went on to show, as
follows: Gravel, 72%; sand, 25%; cement, 10%; lumber
(form), 70%; timber, 40%; piles, untreated, 40% ; piles,
treated, 25%. These increases, together with the expansion of
the plans requiring a canal of maximum depth, instead of the
pilot cut of fifteen feet, as originally planned ; the insistence of
the Levee Board that levees in the back areas must be raised to
elevation 30 ; development of unforeseen and unforeseeable quick-
sand conditions in the various excavations ; requirements of rail-
roads for bridges of greater capacity and strength than needed ;
building of a power line to the Foundation Company's plant — not
a Dock Board job, but one that the conditions required it should
—28—
finance then; and other expenses, besides delaying the work,
made another bond issue necessary to finish the job.
At its meeting of February 26, 1919, President Thompson
laid the matter before the board. It decided to issue $6,000,000
of bonds, for which the same syndicate of bankers that had taken
the other two offered 96. Liberty bonds were then selling at a
big discount, and this seemed the best terms on which the money
could be secured.
This gave a total issue of $12,000,000 to date, the interest
on which amounted to $600,000 a year. The Levee Board raised
its share of the "rental" to $550,000, to guarantee the interest;
the Public Belt Railroad's $50,000 made the total complete.
In the meantime ships were beginning to bulk large on the
ways of the Foundation and the Doullut & Williams yards. The
Foundation company launched its first, the Gauchy — a 4,200-ton
non-sinkable steel ship, built for the French government — in
September, 1919 ; and the Doullut & Williams company launched
its first, the New Orleans, a steel vessel of 9,600 tons, the largest
turned out south of Newport News, built for the Shipping Board,
in January, 1920. These were followed by four sister vessels
from the Foundation yard and seven from the Doullut & Wil-
liams plant. The former went to sea through Bayou Bienvenu-
and the latter through Lake Pontchartrain. The Doullut & Wil-
liams yard is a large one. Originally planning a mere assem-
bling yard, the Foundation Company had subsequently devel-
oped the greatest steel fabricating plant in the South — so con-
fident it was that New Orleans would carry through the project.
And, too, the New Orleans Army Supply Base that Uncle
Sam was building on the river end of the Industrial Canal was
rapidly rising — the facility that was to double the port storage
capacity of New Orleans when it was finally completed in June,
1919.
The canal is 5 1/3 miles long. Between river and lock the
canal prism will be 125 feet wide at the bottom and 275 feet at
the top ; between the lock and the lake, 150 feet wide at the bot-
tom and 300 feet wide at the top. It is an excavation job of
—29—
10,000,000 cubic yards. Five hundred thousand flat cars would
be required to carry that dirt — a train more than 4,000 miles
long.
By September, 1919, the canal had been entirely dredged,
except for the 2,000-foot channel between the lock and river,
which must be left until the last, to a width of about 150 feet and
a depth of 26 feet. Since then, the labor has been concentrated
upon the lock. But twenty-six feet will float a vessel carrying
6,000 bales of cotton. Full dimensions, however, will be devel-
oped, and the Canal, with a system of laterals and basins such as
are found in Europe, will be an Inner Harbor capable of indefi-
nite expansion.
—30—
OVERWHELMING ENDORSEMENT BY NEW ORLEANS.
When the Canal was about half finished it received the most
tremendous endorsement by every interest of New Orleans in its
history. The question was put squarely before the people: "Do
you think it is a good thing, and you are willing to be taxed to
put it across, and, if so, how much?" And the answer came with-
out hesitation : "It is absolutely necessary to the industrial prog-
gress of the city. We must have the Canal at all costs, and are
willing to be taxed any amount for it."
On September 24, 1919, George M. Wells, consulting en-
gineer, made a report to the Dock Board, showing that the last
bond issue of $6,000,000 had been exhausted, and about $5,000,-
000 more was needed to finish the Canal.
This was in the last days of the Thompson Board, and it
took no action. The Hudson board entered upon its duties Octo-
ber 2. It comprised William 0. Hudson, president; William A.
Kernaghan, Rene F- Clerc, Albert Mackie, Thomas H. Roberts.
Later, Mr. Roberts resigned and Hugh McCloskey took his place.
All are sound business men, with the interests of the port at
heart.
They found, in the bank, only $2,067,845.37 to the Industrial
Canal Account. After deducting the obligations already made
there was left only $112,064.43 to continue the work. Without a
public expression from New Orleans they were unwilling to
incur the responsibility of issuing $5,000,000 more bonds.
President Hudson called a series of meetings of the repre-
sentative interests of the city to decide what was to be done. As
the people of New Orleans had decided to begin the Canal in the
first place, it was only right that they should determine whether
the undertaking, costing five times as much as the original plan,
should be carried through.
The governor, the mayor, presidents of banks, committees
of commercial exchanges, the president of the Public Belt Rail-
road, the president of the Levee Board, newspaper publishers,
labor leaders and prominent business men were invited. Like-
-31—
wise, a general call was made to the community at large to
express an opinion as to finishing the Canal.
At the meeting of October 17 the city made its answer.
President Hudson outlined the attitude of the Dock Board
as follows :
"The board has no feeling of prejudice against the comple-
tion of the Canal. We are in favor of it. We are anxious to com-
plete it. It was fostered by the citizens of New Orleans.
"The floating of the bond issue is a simple matter, if you
men think we ought to do it; but where is the money for meeting
the interest to come from? The $600,000 interest on bonds now
outstanding is being paid, $550,000 by the Levee Board, and
$50,000 by the Public Belt Railroad. The Public Belt's share is
paid from its earnings; but the Levee Board's share is being
paid by direct taxation on the citizens of New Orleans. Must
we increase that tax? I personally won't object to any taxation
as a citizen to pay my part towards financing the Canal."
"I want to see the canal completed," said Governor Pleasant.
"But it is up to the people of New Orleans to say whether they
are willing to assume the added obligation."
R. S. Hecht, president of the Hibernia Bank, and a recog-
nized financial leader in New Orleans, then arose.
"I feel," he said, "that all who have the future of New Or-
leans at heart must agree that we are here to discuss not
whether the Canal is to be finished, but how.
"Finished it must be, or our commercial future will be
doomed for many years. If the Dock Board were to stop the
work, it would forever kill its credit for any other bond issue
that might be proposed for wharf development, new warehouses,
or anything else.
"The cost of the canal is a surprise to everybody. I was
present when the cost was originally estimated at $3,500,000
with a leeway of $1,000,000. I said then, and I repeat now, that
the canal could be financed if the people of New Orleans stood
squarely behind it.
—32—
"The cotton warehouse and the grain elevator cost a great
deal more than the original estimates. So the Industrial Canal,
though it is costing more than anticipated, because of the in-
creased cost of material and labor and the increased size in the
Canal, will, I feel sure, be justified by the development of the
future.
"Are we to be taxed for fifty years for our investment of
$12,000,000 and get no return, or are we willing to pay a little
bit more and get something worth while ?"
That expressed the sentiment of the meeting.
"The people of New Orleans/' said Hugh McCloskey, finan-
cier and dean of all Dock Board presidents, "have never failed to
meet a crisis. It is the duty of the Dock Board to finish the
Canal, no matter what the doubting Thomases may say."
Similar expressions were made by Thomas Killeen, presi-
dent of the Levee Board; Thomas Cunningham, of the Public
Belt Railroad; D. D. Moore, editor of the Times-Picayune;
James M. Thompson, publisher of the Item; B. C. Casanas,
president of the Association of Commerce ; L. M. Pool, president
of the Marine Bank; J. E. Bouden, president of the Whitney-
Central Bank; Bernard McCloskey, attorney; Frank B. Hayne,
of the Cotton Exchange; Jefferson D. Hardin, of the Board of
Trade; William V. Seeber, representative of the Ninth Ward;
Marshall Ballard, editor of The Item. Others present, assenting
by their silence, included John F. Clark, president, and E. S.
Butler, member of the Cotton Exchange ; W. Horace Williams, of
Doullut & Williams Shipbuilding Company; E. M. Stafford, state
senator; C. G. Rives of the Interstate Bank; S. T. DeMilt, presi-
dent of the New Orleans Steamship Association ; R. W. Dietrich
of the Bienville Warehouse Corporation ; Edgar B. Stern, Milton
Boylan, W. H. Byrnes, J. C. Hamilton, and about thirty other
representative business and professional men. Mayor Behrman,
John T. Banville, president of the Brewery Workers' Union, and
George W. Moore, president of the Building Trades Council, at
a subsequent meeting, gave their indorsement.
With only one dissenting voice, these meetings were unani-
mous that the Industrial Canal must be completed at all costs;
that without it, the growth of the city would be seriously inter-
rupted. The one protest was by the Southern Realty and Securi-
ties Company. It was made October 23 against the Levee
Board's underwriting the interest on the new bond issue.
On that date the Levee Board unanimously voted to guaran-
tee these interest charges, amounting to $375,000 a year. This
brings the total being paid by that body out of direct taxation to
$925,000.00 a year. The other $50,000 is paid by the Public Belt
Railroad.
To provide a leeway against the engineer's estimates, the
Dock Board made provision for a bond issue of $7,500,000, but
actually issued only $5,000,000 worth. This was taken by the
same syndicate of bankers that had taken the previous issues,
but this time they paid par. That was a point on which Presi-
dent Hudson had insisted. The contract was accepted December
10, 1919.
And the work went on, with every effort concentrated on
economical construction.
SIPHON AND BRIDGES.
As an incident in the work of building the Industrial Canal,
it was necessary to create a disappearing river.
This is the famous siphon — the quadruple passage of con-
crete that will carry the city's drainage underneath the shipway.
It is one of the largest structures of its kind in the country.
A word about New Orleans' drainage problem. The city is
the bowl of a dish, of which the levees against river and lake are
the rim. There is no natural drainage. The rainfall is nearly
five feet a year, concentrated at times, upon the thousand miles
of streets, into cloudbursts of four inches an hour and ten inches
in a day. In the boyhood of men now in their early thirties it
was a regular thing for the city to be flooded after a heavy rain.
To meet the situation, New Orleans has constructed the
greatest drainage system in the world. There are six pumping
stations on the east side of the river, connected with each other
by canals, and with a discharge capacity of more than 10,000
cubic feet a second. The seven billion gallons of water that these
pumps' can move a day would fill a lake one mile square and
thirty-five feet deep.
Three of the canals empty into Lake Pontchartrain, the
fourth, the Florida Walk Canal, into Bayou Bienvenu, which
leads into Lake Borgne, an arm of Pontchartrain.
Because of this drainage contamination, the lake shore front
of New Orleans has been held back in its development. Yet it is
an ideal site for a suburb — on a beautiful body of water, and
just half a dozen miles from the business district.
So the Sewerage and Water Board has been planning ulti-
mately to turn the city's entire drainage into Bayou Bienvenu, a
stream with swamps on both sides, running into a lake sur-
rounded by marsh.
The Industrial Canal crosses the Florida Walk drainage
canal. This made it necessary to build the inverted siphon.
A siphon, in the ordinary sense, is a bent tube, one section
of which is longer than the other, through which a liquid flows
—36—
by its own weight over an elevation to a lower level. But siphon
here is an engineering term to describe a channel that goes under
an obstruction — the canal — and returns the water to its former
level.
Like the famous rivers that drop into the earth and appear
again miles further on, the Florida drainage canal approaches
to within a hundred or so feet of the Industrial Canal, then dives
forty feet underground, passes beneath the shipway, and comes
to the surface on the other side, in front of the pumping station,
vvhich lifts it into Bayou Bienvenu.
At first it was planned to build a comparatively small siphon,
but while the plans were being drawn, New Orleans entered
upon its tremendous development. The engineers threw away
their blueprints and began over again. They designed one that
is capable of handling the entire drainage of the city. And in
April, 1920, it was finished — a work of steel and concrete and
machinery, costing nearly three-quarters of a million dollars,
and with a capacity of 2,000 cubic feet of water a second, 7,200,-
000 an hour, 172,800,000 a day.
It was a work that presented many difficulties. First the
Florida Walk canal had to be closed by two cofferdams. The
space between was pumped out, the excavation was made, and
the driving of foundation piling begun. Quicksands gave much
trouble. They flowed into the cut, until they were stopped with
sheet piling. The piles were from 30 to 60 feet in length and
from three to five feet apart on centers.
Forty-six feet below the ground surface ( — 26 Cairo datum)
was laid the concrete floor of the siphon.
The siphon is divided into four compartments. There are
two storm chambers, measuring 10 by 13 feet each, one normal
weather chamber measuring 4 by 10 feet, and one public utilities
duct, measuring 6 by 10 feet. These are inside dimensions. The
floor of the siphon is two feet thick ; the roof, one foot nine inches
The whole structure is a solid piece of concrete and capable of
standing a pressure of more than 2,000 pounds to the square foot.
—37—
Its total length is 378 feet; the shipway passing over it is 105
feet wide and 30 feet deep.
In the public utilities duct are carried the city's water pipes,
cables, telephone and telegraph wires, and gas mains.
The storm chambers will handle the rainfall of cloudbursts.
In ordinary weather the water will be concentrated through the
smaller chamber, in order to produce a strong flow and reduce
the settlement of sediment to a minimum.
Eight sluice gates, each 6 by JO feet, open or close the water
chambers. They are operated by hydraulic cylinders of the most
approved type.
For sending workmen inside the siphon to make repairs or
clearing away an obstruction there are eight manholes. Four
measure 6 by 13 feet, two 6 by 6 feet, and two 6 by 4 feet.
As soon as the Florida Walk canal can be deepened and a
few link-ups in the drainage system can be made, the entire
drainage of New Orleans, in normal weather and during light
storms, will, according to announcement by the Sewerage and
Water Board, be sent through this outlet. During the occasional
cloudbursts it will be necessary to send some of the drainage into
the lake, but this will be rapidly flowing water and will sweep
offshore. It means a great deal to the suburban development of
the city.
A year and a half the siphon was in the making. Prepara-
tions forthe structure cost more than $250,000— excavation
foundation, etc. The concrete alone cost $170,000. Machinery
and the work of housing and installing it cost $60,000 more.
Four bascule steel bridges now cross the Industrial Canal-
They are the largest in the city. Three of them — at Florida
Walk, for the Southern and Public Belt Railways ; Gentilly, for
the Louisville & Nashville ; and on the lake front, for the South-
ern, weigh 1,600,000 pounds each — superstructure only. The
fourth— at the lock— weighs 1,000,000 pounds. They are bal-
anced by 800-ton concrete blocks and concrete adjustment blocks.
Their extreme length is 160 feet; the moving leaf has a span of
117 feet.
-38—
With a 30-foot right of way for railroad tracks, 11 feet for
vehicles and trolley cars and four feet for pedestrians, they are
designed to meet traffic conditions of a great and growing city.
They will support 50-ton street cars or 15-ton road rollers — New
Orleans has nothing as heavy as that now — and trains a great
deal heavier than are now coming to the city. No bridge in the
South will support as heavy loads.
The tensile strength of the steel of which the bridges are
constructed is from 55,000 to 85,000 pounds to the square inch,
and they will bear a wind load of 20 pounds to the square inch of
exposed surface.
They are operated by two 75-horse power electric motors,
440 volts, 60-cycle, 3-phase current, which is stepped down from
2,200 volts by means of transformers. In addition, there is a
36-horse power gasoline engine, to be used if the electrical equip-
ment is out of order. To open or close the bridges will require a
minute and a half.
—39—
THE REMARKABLE LOCK.
Not only is the lock of the Industrial Canal one of the largest
in the United States, but its construction solved a soil problem
that was thought impossible. That of the Panama Canal is sim-
ple in comparison. The design is unique in many respects. The
lock is a monument to the power of Man over the forces of
Nature, and to the progress of a community that will not say die.
Because of the great variation in the level of the river at
low and high water — a matter of twenty feet — it was necessary
to make the excavation, for building the lock, about fifty feet
deep. In solid soil this would be a simple matter. But this
ground has been made by the gradual deposit of Mississippi
River silt upon what was originally the sandy bed of the ocean,
and through these deposits run strata of water-bearing sand, or
quicksand. This flows into a cut and causes the banks to cave
and slide into the excavation. Underneath there is a pressure of
marsh gas, which, with the pressure of the collapsing banks,
squeezes the deeper layers of quicksand upwards, creating boils
and blowing up the bottom.
New Orleans has had plenty of experiences with these flow-
ing sands in its shallow sewerage excavations. How, then, ex-
pect to make an excavation fifty feet deep? asked the doubting
Thomases. It couldn't be done. The quicksands would flow in
too fast. The dredges would drain the surrounding subsoil, but
that wouldn't get beyond a certain depth. Furthermore, what
assurance was there that the soil that far down would supply
sufficient friction to hold the piles necessary to sustain the enor-
mouse weight of the lock and the ships passing through it ?
Undaunted by these croakings, the engineers, from test
borings, calculated the sliding and flowing character of the soil,
and estimated the various pressures that would have to be coun-
teracted, balanced this with the holding power of pine and steel
and concrete, evolved a plan, and began an excavation of a hole
350 feet wide by 1,500 feet long, gradually sloping the cut (1 to
-40—
4 ratio) to a center where the lock, 1,020 by 150 feet, outside
dimensions, was to be built.
The gentle slope of the cut was to prevent slides.
It had been ascertained that the first stratum of quicksand
began twenty-eight feet below the ground surface ( — 3 Cairo
datum) and was three feet thick; the second stratum, forty-eight
feet below the surface ( — 23 Cairo datum) and ten feet thick.
Coarser sand extended eleven feet below this, from — 33 Cairo
datum. The second stratum of flowing sand began just below
where the lock floor had to be laid. The third layer was 80 feet
below the surface ( — 55 Cairo datum) ; the tips of the piling
would just miss it.
Excavation began in November, 1918. While the dredges
were at work a wooden sheet piling cofferdam was driven com-
pletely around the lock, and about 125 feet from the edge of the
bank, to cut off the first quicksand stratum. About 150 feet
further in, when the excavation was well advanced, a second ring
of sheet piling was driven, to cut off the second stratum, which
carried a static pressure of 55 feet and was just a foot or so
below where the floor of the lock would be. It was not thought
necessary to cut off the third stratum.
The excavation was made in the wet. When it was finished
the dredges moved back into the Canal, the entrance closed, and
the work of unwatering the lock site begun. This was in April,.
1919.
There had never been such a deep cut made in this section.
Consequently, the character of the soil, while it could be esti-
mated, could not be known absolutely. And the exact pressure
of the gas could not be known.
The sands proved to be more liquid and the gas pressure
stronger than anticipated. Quicksands ran through the sheet
piling as through a sieve. The walls of the excavation began to
slough and cave. The gas pressure became alarming when the
weight of earth and water was taken off; sand boils began to
develop at the bottom ; the floor of the cut was blowing up.
The fate of the Industrial Canal hung in the scale.
To meet the situation the engineers pumped a great volume
—42—
of water into the excavation. Its weight counterbalanced the
earth pressure of the side and the gas pressure of the bottom.
Then another ring of sheet piling was driven inside the
other two. This one was of steel, and the walls were braced
apart by wooden beams ten inches square and fifteen feet apart
in both directions. This is one of the largest cofferdams of steel
ever driven. As an added precaution against the danger of a
blowout by the third stratum of quicksand, which h&d a static
head of 75 feet, 130 ten-inch artesian wells were driven inside
the steel cofferdam. Fifty-six similar wells were driven between
the steel and the wooden cofferdams to dry out the second
stratum of quicksand, as much as possible, and lessen its flowing
character.
In November, 1919, the work of unwatering the lock site
again began. Only one foot every other day was taken off. En-
gineers watched every timber. It was not until January 4, 1920,
that the unwatering was complete. The plan had worked. Only
in one place had there been any movement — a section of the
wooden sheet piling about 300 feet long bulged forward a maxi-
mum distance of three inches, when the bracing caught and
stopped it.
Then began the work of driving the 24,000 piles on which
the lock was to be floated. They are 60 feet long and their tips
are 100 feet below the surface of the ground.
In March, 1920, the work of laying the concrete began. The
work was done in 15-foot sections, for only a few of the braces
could be moved at one time. When it was finished in April,
1921, the lock was in one piece, a solid mass of steel and stone,
1,020 feet long, 150 feet wide, and 68 feet high, weighing, with
its gates and machinery, 225,000 tons, and filled with water,
350,000 tons.
The concrete floor of the lock is 9 to 12 feet thick, the walls
13 feet wide at the bottom, decreasing to a two foot width at the
top. Six thousand tons of reinforcing steel were used in the
construction, and 125,000 barrels of cement There are 90,000
cubic yards of concrete in the structure. Two and a half million
feet o± lumber were use-d in building the forms.
Usable dimensions of the lock are 640 feet long, 75 feet wide,
and 30 feet (at minimum low water of the river) deep.
The top of the lock is 20 feet above the natural ground sur-
face and 6 feet above the highest stage of the Mississippi River
on record. To the top the ground will be sloped on a 150-foot
series of terraces. This will brace the walls against the pressure
of water within the monolith. It will be developed to a beautiful
park. Heavy anchor-columns of concrete will hold the walls
against the pressure of these artificial hills when the lock is
empty.
Traffic crosses the canal here by a steel bascule bridge 65
feet wide, with two railroad and two street car tracks, two ve-
hicle roadways, and two ways for pedestrians. Concrete viaducts
lead to the bridge.
Gas and water mains, sewer pipes and telephone, telegraph
and electric wires pass under the lock in conduits cast in the
living concrete.
Water is admitted into and -drained from the lock by cul-
verts cast in the base. These are 8 by 10 feet, narrowing at the
opening to 8 by 8 feet, and closed by 8 sluice gates, each oper-
ated by a 52 horsepower electric motor. It will be possible to fill
or empty the lock in ten minutes.
There are five sets of gates to the lock. They are built of
steel plates and rolled shapes, four and a half feet thick and
weighing 200 tons each- And there is an emergency dam weigh-
ing 720 tons, which in case of necessity can be used as a gate.
Four pairs of the gates are of 55-foot size ; one of 42-foot.
Each gate is operated by a 52-horsepower electric motor. When
open, the gates fit flush into the walls of the locks.
In the emergency -dam is the refinement of precaution — de-
signed as it was to save the city from overflow in the remote
event of the lock gates failing to work during high water, and
to insure the uninterrupted operation of the lock in normal
—44—
times, if the gates should be sprung by a ship, or otherwise put
out of commission.
This dam consists of eight girders or sections, 80 feet long,
3 feet wide and 6 feet high. They weigh 90 tons each. They
are kept on a platform near the river end of the lock. Nearby
is the crane with a 300-horsepower motor, that picks up these
girders and drops them into the slots in the walls of the lock.
To set this emergency dam is the work of an hour.
A ship passing through the lock will not proceed under her
own power. There are six capstans, two at each end of the lock
and two at the middle, each operated by a 52-horsepower elec-
tric motor, and capable of developing a pull of 35,000 pounds,
which will work the vessels through.
The lock complete, counting the bridge and approaches, cost
$7,500,000. One and a half million of this is for machinery, and
$56,000 for the approaches.
Henry Goldmark, the New York engineer who designed the
gates of the Panama Canal and the New Orleans Industrial Canal,
in a letter of March 24, ,1921, to the engineering department of
the Dock Board, comments as follows on the remarkable lock:
"I was much impressed by the uniformly high grade of con-
struction of the lock, the systematic and energetic way in which
the work was being carried on, and especially by the admirable
spirit of team work, shown by the employees of the Dock Board,
of different grades, as well as the contractors, superintendents
and foremen.
"The desire to get the best possible results in all the details,
at the least cost, was manifest throughout.
"The unique method used for carrying on the very difficult
and risky work of excavation has attracted much professional
attention in all parts of the country. Its successful completion
is very creditable to all concerned, in the inception and carrying
out of the method used.
"The concrete work gives the impression of lightness, as
well as strength, as though every yard of concrete was doing its
special share of the work without overstraining, which is, of
course, the characteristic of well-designed reinforced masonry.
"The outer surfaces are particularly smooth and well fin-
ished, more so than in any work I have recently seen.
"The erection of the gates, valves, operating machinery and
the protective dam, has kept up closely with the concrete work,
.so that no delays need be apprehended at the close of the con-
struction period.
"The shop and field work in the lock gates is excellent. The
rivet holes match well and the rivet heads appear to be tight
and well formed. The gate leaves seem very straight and true."
The lock was designed by George M. Wells of the George
W. Goethals Company, assisted by R. 0. Comer, designing en-
gineer of the Dock Board, and approved by General Goethals.
"The methods employed to unwater the lock were devised by Mr.
Wells- J. Devereux O'Reilly, chief engineer of the Dock Board,
to November, 1919, had charge of the details of installing the
unwatering and safety devices. He was succeeded by General
Arsene Perrilliat, who supervised the final unwatering process-
Upon his death in October, 1920, he was succeeded by J. F. Cole-
man & Company, in charge of the engineering department, and
H. M. Gallagher, chief engineer, under whom work is being
brought to a conclusion.
From first to last, Tiley S. McChesney, assistant secretary
and treasurer of the Dock Board, rendered intelligent and in-
valuable service, gathering together and holding the threads of
the enterprise, and attending promptly to the multitude of de-
tails connected with the prosecution of the work.
The lock was formally dedicated May 2, 1921— a ceremony
that was the feature of the Mississippi Valley Association's con-
vention in New Orleans.
With the dredging of the channel between the river and
the lock, a work that should be finished before January, 1922,
ships will be able to pass from the Mississippi into Lake Pont-
•chartrain. Then New Orleans can plan its next great develop-
ment.
NEW CHANNEL TO THE GULF
George M. Wells, George R. Goethals, son of the General,
Colonel E. J. Dent, U. S. district engineer at New Orleans, and
other engineers who have studied the problem, say that the
dredging of a channel from the Industrial Canal to the gulf
through Lake Pontchartrain, or the marshes, is feasible, com-
paratively cheap, and maintenance would be simple. This would
shorten the distance from New Orleans to the sea by about 50
miles, and would be a vast saving for ships. It is one of the
objects towards which the Hudson Dock Board is working.
It is Uncle Sam's recognized duty to develop and maintain
harbors and channels to the sea. Distance is obviously an im-
portant factor; furthermore, the proposed new outlet would be
an importane link in the Intracoastal Canal, connecting with the
Warrior River section of Alabama, which the government is
developing between the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. A bill was
introduced in the Senate in 1920 by Senator Ransdell of Louis-
iana, providing for the development of the proposed channel ;
it was1 not pressed because the canal was far from completed.
However, every effort will be made by the Dock Board from now
on to have Uncle Sam take hold.
Colonel Dent has for a number of months been studying
the feasible routes. He, by the way, is thoroughly convinced of
the value of the Industrial Canal to the development of New Or-
leans, and the commerce of the nation, and has so expressed
himself in public.
The Pontchartrain route has been laid off, by engineers,
beginning at the Canal, paralleling the south shore of the Lake
Pontchartrain to the south draw of the Southern Railway
bridge, thence to the Rigolets to Cat Island Pass, from there
to Cat Island Channel and so to the deep water of the Gulf, a
total distance of 75 miles.
Soundings and surface probings have been taken at fre-
—48-
quent intervals over the entire route. These have shown the
engineers the following:
Three-quarters of a mile from the south shore of the lake,
and as far as the railroad drawbridge, a hard bottom is found.
The material is principally packed sand, rather fine, with a small
amount of clay, and occasionally some broken shells. Beyond
this distance from the shore, the bottom is softer, consisting of
mud mixed with sand. From the bridge over the remainder of
the route, the bottom, with the exception of a few sand pockets,
is Soft — a blue mud with a large percentage of sand. This soft
material has so much tenacity, however, that current and wave
wash, which tend to fill up artificially dredged channels, would
affect only the surface-
The government is conducting large dredging operations in
Mobile Bay, Gulfport Channel, Atchafalaya Bay and the Hous-
ton Ship Channel. An outline of the results there will show
how feasible the dredging of the Pontchartram Channel would
be, and how much cheaper in comparison.
The channel connecting Mobile Bay with the Gulf of Mexico
has a bottom very soft for the most part, and with a small per-
centage of sand. Towards the outer end, the material is black
mud, about equal in consistency to the softest material found
in the Pontchartrain route. A sounding pole with a 4-inch disc
on the end can be easily p ashed three or four feet into the mud
and pulled out again. Wave and current action cause the chan-
nel to shoal at the rate of 78,000 to 132,000 cubic yards per mile
per year, depending on the softness of the bottom and the depth.
Where the highest rate obtains, the surrounding material con-
sists of soft mud, without a trace of sand. Experience shows
that where there is a fair percentage of sand in the material
adjacent to the channel bed, the shoaling is lessened. In gen-
eral, the material along the Pontchartrain route contains a
greater percentage of sand and is far more tenacious than that
along the Mobile Bay Channel. Furthermore, the Pontchartrain
route is not exposed to such strong cross currents.
-49—
The Gulfport Channel is dredged through very soft ma-
terial, a grayish-blue mud of oozy consistency, into which the
sounding pole penetrates six feet with very little exertion. On
top, a small amount of sand is found, but practically none in the
lower stratum. The material is considerably softer than any
encountered on the Pontchartrain route, except for one small
stretch. Yet the shoaling is not great. Where the shoaling is
heaviest, between the end of the pier and Beacon 10, only about
700,000 cubic yards a mile has to be dredged out every year to
maintain the channel. From Beacon 10 out, the average annual
maintenance is less than 200,000 cubic yards a mile- Except for
the four-mile stretch west of the inner entrance to the Cat Is-
land Channel, the bottom, on the Pontchartrain route, is harder
than that of the Gulfport Channel. Therefore, it is reasonable
to conclude that the maintenance of the Pontchartrain Channel
would not average as high as the outer portion of the Gulfport
Channel.
The Atchafalaya Bay Ship Channel, extending from the
mouth of the Atchafalaya River across the shoal waters of
Atchafalaya Bay, to about the 20-foot contour of the Gulf, a
distance of fifteen miles, is through a material of slushy mud,
with occasional thin pockets of sand. The shoaling runs from
540,000 to 1,680,000 cubic yards a mile a year. The highest
rate is obtained in shallow water. Except in the stretch men-
tioned, the material on the Pontchartrain route is not as soft
as on the Atchafalaya, nor are the depths as shoal, nor is there
the exposure to cross currents.
In the Houston Ship Channel, the material is composed of
soft mud with a small amount of sand. A two-mile stretch
through Red Fish Reef is practically self -maintaining. For the
remainder of the channel, during the six years from 1915 to
1920, a total excavation of 13,574,000 cubic yards was necessary
to maintain the depth. This is equivalent to 100,000 cubic yards
a mile a year.
—50—
In summary, then:
1. The Lake Pontchartrain route is practically unexposed
to cross currents, as is the case with the Mobile Bay, Gulfport,
Atchafalaya, and, to a certain extent, the outer portion of the
Houston Ship Channels.
2. The material along and on the sides of the Pontchar-
train route is, with the exception of a small stretch, more tena-
cious, and contains, in general, a greater proportion of sand
than in the case of the neighboring channels mentioned.
The channel could therefore be more easily maintained.
Engineers estimate that a channel with a 300-foot bottom
would be needed. On the south shore of the lake, the side slopes
should be on the 1 to 3 ratio, with provision for a 1 to 5 ratio
at the end of five years. Dumped on shore, the material would
reclaim considerable frontage, and eliminate the re-deposit of
this material in the channel.
Through the remainder of the route, the original excava-
tion should be made with side slopes on the 1 to 5 ratio, with
provision made for a 1 to 10 ratio in five years.
The dredging of the 75 miles of the Pontchartrain Channel
would amount to 97,200,000 cubic yards, it is estimated by en-
gineers. The cost would be around $10,000,000. The annual
maintenance, during the first five years, would amount to 8,880,-
000 cubic yards — an estimate based on a comparison with the
other channels into the Gulf, and the character of the material to
be excavated. This estimate is considered large — but even at
that, it is only 118,400 cubic yards a mile a year, and the cost
would be about $750,000, according to Colonel Dent. After five
years, it would be less.
Another proposed route, investigated by Colonel Dent, is
through Lake Borgne. A canal some miles in length, through
the marsh, would connect the lake with the Industrial Canal.
This route has considerable maintenance advantages over the
—51—
Pontchartrain route. The character of the bottom in Borgne
is more or less the same as in Pontchartrain.
Sooner or later, one of these channels will be built by the
government. That it has not already been begun is due to the
fact that the Canal has not yet been completed, and the expected
development has not taken place- But there is no doubt that it
will.
—52—
TYPICAL BRIDGE ON CANAL
EMERGENCY DAM CRANE
WHY GOVERNMENT SHOULD OPERATE CANAL
It is the function of the state to provide port facilities in
the form of docks, piers, warehouses, grain elevators, mechanical
equipment, etc. But it is the duty of the national government
to improve harbors, dredge streams, dig canals for navigation
and irrigation, erect levees to protect the back country, and build
locks and dams when needed.
These are the premises from which the Hudson Dock Board
reasons that the cost of construction and maintenance of the
New Orleans Navigation Canal and Inner Harbor should be as-
sumed by Uncle Sam. It will leave no stone unturned to have
him assume the obligation.
The Navigation Canal is essentially a harbor improvement.
It enables practically unlimited industrial development and com-
mercial interchange. It is an important link in the Intracoastal
Canal system which the government is developing to provide an
inland waterway from Boston, Mass, to Brownsville, Tex., and,
with the dredging of a channel through Lake Pontchartrain to
the Gulf, a problem which U. S. engineers have been studying
for some time and an undertaking which they have foand feas-
ible, it will put the nation's second port about fifty miles closer
to the sea. It has considerable military value. Its purpose is,
therefore, national; the local interests are secondary.
It is no new principle, this obligation of the government.
That duty has been recognized by Congress since the United
States was".
Any rivers and harbors bill will show great and useful ex-
penditure for waterways improvement.
The Panama Canal, built by the government, is the greatest
example.
Coming closer home, there is south pass at the mouth of the
Mississippi. A bar, with a nine-foot depth of water, blocked
the commerce of New Orleans. Under the rivers and harbors
act of 1875, Captain James P. Eads was paid $8,000,000 for
—54—
building the famous jetties to provide a 26-foot channel. Since
then, the channel has been deepened to 33 feet.
In more recent years, the government began to improve
southwest pass, the westernmost mouth of the Mississippi. A
nine-foot bar was there, too. To increase the depth to 35 feet,
the government spent, up to 1919, about $15,000,000, and is still
spending.
"Just as the purpose of the improvements of these channels
was to bridge the distance from deep water to deep water" says
Arthur McGuirk, special counsel of the Dock Board, in a report
of February 23, 1921, to the Board, "so is the purpose of the
Navigation Canal to bridge the distance from the deep water
of the river to the proposed deep water channel of the lake."
In the annual report of the chief of engineers, U. S. A., for
the fiscal year ending June 30, 1919, are listed the following
waterways improvements and canal developments being made
by the Government :
"Operating and care of canals, $3,596,566.20.
"Cape Cod canal, purchase authorized, river and harbors
act, August 8, 1917, cost not exceeding $10,000,000, and enlarge-
ment $5,000,000.
"Jamaica Bay channel, 500 feet width, 10 feet depth, to be
further increased to 1,500 feet width entrance channel and
1,000 feet interior channel, maximum depth of 30 feet, length of
channel 12 miles. Approved estimate of cost to United States
not to exceed $7,430,000. River and harbors act of June 25,
1910. House document No. 1488, 60th congress.
"Ambrose channel, New York harbor, appropriation new
work and maintenance, $4,924,530.88, year ending June 30, 1919.
"Bay Ridge and Red Hook channels, $4,471,100.
"Locks and dams on Coosa River, Alabama-Georgia, $1,700,-
918.21.
"Channel connecting Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound,
act of June 13, 1902, original project, for construction and main-
tenance total cost $7,809,812.42.
"Black Warrior river, 17 locks, Mobile to Sanders' Ferry,
443 miles. Total to date, $10,101,295.54. Indefinite appropri-
ation.
"Sabine Pass, act of June 19, 1906 and prior, channels, turn-
ing basins and jetties, March 2, 1907, and previously, total ap-
propriations, $1,875,506.78.
"Trinity River, Galveston, north, 37 miles locks and dams.
Act of June 13, 1902, house document 409, 56th congress. Esti-
mate cost complete canalization of river, revised 1916, in addi-
tion to amounts expended prior to rivers and harbors act of July,
1916, in round numbers $13,500,000. Estimated annual cost of
maintenance, $280,000.
"Houston to Galveston ship canal, act of July 25, 1912, and
July 27, 1916. Cost, $3,850,000. Annual maintenance, $325,000.
"Rock Island Rapids (111.) and LeClaire canal, rock exca-
vations, etc., act of March 2, 1907, dams, 3 locks, etc., to June 30,
$31,180,085.62 and $130,158.03 for 1 year maintenance.
"Keokuk, Iowa (formerly Des Moines Rapids canal), old
project (act of June 23, 1866), $4,574,950.00.
"Muscle Shoals Canal (Tennessee River), 36.6 miles, depth
5 feet, $4,743,484.50. Exclusive of cost of nitrate plant.
"Locks and dams on Ohio River, act of March 3, 1879, to act
of March 2, 1907, including purchase of Louisville and Portland
canal, $17,657,273.78.
"Estimated cost of new work, widening Louisville and Port-
land canal and changes in dams, $63,731,488. Annual mainte-
nance covering only lock forces and cost of repairs and renewals,
§810,000. Act of June 25, 1920, house document 492, 65th con-
gress, first session. Also act of March 4, 1915, house document
1695, 64th congress, second session.
"Ship channel connecting waters of great lakes, including
St. Mary's river (Sault Sainte Marie locks), St. Clair and De-
troit rivers, locks and dams, total appropriations to June 30,
1919, $26,020,369.68. Estimate new work, $24,085.
"St. Clair river, connecting Lakes St. Clair and Erie, shoal-
—56—
est part was 12% to 15 feet. Improved at expense of $13,252,-
254.00. Estimated cost of completion, $2,720,000.
"Niagara river, $15,785,713.07.
"Los Angeles and Long Beach harbor, $4,492,809.80.
"Seattle, Lake Washington ship canal, in city of Seattle,
from Puget Sound to lake; original project, act of August 18,
1894. Double lock and fixed dam. Length about 8 miles. Total
appropriation to date, $3,345,500.00."
These are only some of the larger projects. Of course there
are a great number of such works, all over the country, con-
structed and maintained by the United States, sometimes alone,
and again by co-operation with local authorities.
New Orleans was founded because of the strategic value of
the location, both from a commercial and a military standpoint.
The power that holds New Orleans commands the Mississippi
Valley — a fact which the British recognized in 1812 when they
tried to capture it. Likewise, when Farragut captured New
Orleans, he broke the backbone of the Confederacy.
Mr. McGuirk, in the report to which reference has already
been made, discusses the military importance of the Industrial
Canal as follows :
"A ship canal, connecting the river and the lake at New
Orleans will be a Panama or a Kiel canal, in miniature, and
double in effectiveness the naval forces defending the valley, as
they may be moved to and fro in the canal from the river to the
lake. On this line of defense heavy artillery on mobile mounts
can be utilized, in addition to heavy ships of the line.' That is to
say, just as light-draft monitors, and even floats carrying high-
powered rifles were used effectively on the Belgian coast ; on the
Piave river in Italy, and on the Tigris in Mesopotamia, so may
they be used in the defense of the valley, on any canal connecting
the Mississippi river and Lake Pontchartrain. Changes are con-
stantly occurring in the details of work of defense due to devel-
opment of armament, munitions and transport. The never-end-
ing development of range and caliber has assumed vast import-
ance, particularly with reference to the effect on the protection
-57—
of cities from bombardment. Naval guns are now capable of
hurling projectiles to distances of over 50,000 yards, 28 to 30
miles. For the protection of the valley we should have at New
Orleans armament mounted on floating platforms which will
hold the enemy beyond the point where his shells may not reach
their objective, and in this operation the canal, affording means
of rapid transport, will render invaluable and essential service."
A country's ports are its watergates. Their local import-
ance is comparatively small. They are important or not accord-
ing to whether they are on trade routes, and easily accessible.
An infinitesimal part of the trade that flows through New Or-
leans originates or terminates there. The back country gets the
bulk of the business. The development of the harbor is for the
service of the interior. It is essentially national.
From every point of view, therefore, it is the duty of the
national government to take over the Navigation Canal and re-
lease the monies of the state so they may be devoted to the im-
provement of the waterway with wharves and other works in aid
of the nation's commerce.
—58—
S. S. NEW ORLEANS
First Ship Launched by Doullut & Williams Shipbuilding Co.
S. S. GAUCHY
First Ship Launched on Canal
—59—
ECONOMIC ASPECT OF CANAL
Tied to the Mississippi Valley by nearly 14,000 miles of
navigable waterways, and the largest port on the gulf coast and
the most centrally situated with respect to the Latin-American
and Oriental trade, New Orleans is naturally a market of de-
posit. The development of the river service, in which the gov-
ernment set the pace in 1918, is restoring the north and south
flow of commerce, after a generation of forced haul east and
west, along the lines of greatest resistance ; and New Orleans has
become the nation's second port. Its import and export busi-
ness in 1920 amounted to a billion dollars.
Ninety per cent of the nation's wealth is produced in the
Valley, of which New Orleans is the maritime capital. It is the
source of supply of wheat, corn, sugar, lumber, meat, iron, coal,
cotton oil, agricultural implements, and many other products. It
is a market for the products of Latin-American and the Orient.
With the co-ordination of river, rail and maritime facilities,
and sufficient space for development, it is inevitable that New
Orleans should become a mighty manufacturing district. Such
enterprises as coke ovens, coal by-product plants, flour mills, iron
furnaces, industrial chemical works, iron and steel rolling mills,
shipbuilding and repair plants, automobile factories and assem-
bling plants, soap works, packing plants, lumber yards, building
material plants and yards, warehouses of all kinds, etc., would
be encouraged to establish here if given the proper facilities, and
the Industrial Canal is the answer to this need, for under the
laws of Louisiana private industries can not acquire or lease
property on the river front. Even before the completion of the
Canal, the dream has been partly realized — with the establish-
ment of two large shipyards on the Canal, which otherwise would
have gone somewhere else, and the building of the army supply
base on the same waterway, largely due to the enterprise of the
port.
As Colonel E. J. Dent, U. S. district engineer, said before
the members' council of the Association of Commerce, February
-60—
17, 1921, the Industrial Canal will be the means of removing the
handicaps on New Orleans' foreign trade. "I hold no brief for
the Industrial Canal," he continued, "but speaking as one who
has no interest in it but who has studied the question deeply, I
will say that five years from now, if you develop the Industrial
Canal as it should be developed, you will be wondering how on
earth you ever got along without it."
Before the constitutional convention of Louisiana, on April
4, 1921, he elaborated this thought as follows:
"The Industrial Canal will furnish to New Orleans her
greatest need. It should be possible to build docks there where
the entire cargo for a ship may be assembled. Under present
conditions in the river it is often necessary for a ship to go to
three or four docks to get a complete cargo.
"Last year there passed through the port of New Orleans
11,000,000 tons of freight valued at $1,100,000,000. This re-
quired 1,000 loaded freight cars a day passing over the docks,
fifteen solid trainloads of freight each day. The inbound freight
was about 5,000,000 tons and the outbound about 6,000,000. This
is extraordinarily well balanced for any port in the United
States. This would mean about 5,000 steamers of an average
capacity of 2,000 tons.
"The proper place to assemble a cargo is on the docks. Last
year the Dock Board allowed but seven days for assembling the
cargo for a ship — only seven days for assembling 250 carloads
of stuff. Then last year the Dock Board would not assign a ship
a berth until it was within the jetties. These are some of the
difficulties.
"What New Orleans needs is 50 to 100 per cent more facili-
ties for her port. Last summer the port of New Orleans was con-
gested, but she held her own because other ports were congested.
But that may not occur again. If you want to hold your own you
must improve your facilities."
Wharves can be built a great deal cheaper on the fixed-level
canal, with its stable banks. And that is the only place special-
ized industries can secure water frontage.
—61—
Sooner or later the government will adopt the free port sys-
tem, by which other countries have pushed their foreign trade to
such heights. Free ports have nothing to do with the tariff
question. They are simply zones established in which imports
may be stored, re-packed, manufactured and then exported with-
out the payment of duties in the first place, duties for the refund
of which the present law makes provision, but only after vexa-
tious delays and expensive red tape. Precautions are taken to
prevent smuggling. In the preliminary investigations and
recommendations made by the Department of Commerce, New
York, San Francisco and New Orleans have been designated as
the first free ports that should be established. With the ample
space it offers for expansion, the Industrial Canal is the logical
location for the free zone.
Counting the $15,000,000 contract of the Doullut & Williams
Shipyard, the $5,000,000 contract of the Foundation Company
Shipyard, the $13,000,000 army supply base, the Industrial
Canal has already brought $33,000,000 of development to New
Orleans, 60 per cent more than the cost of the undertaking.
More than half of this was for wages and material purchased in
New Orleans.' The state has gained hundreds of thousands of
dollars in taxes. About half the money spent on the Industrial
Canal was wages; and helped to increase the population, force
business to a new height, raise the value of real estate, and make
New Orleans the financial stronghold of the South.
What indirect bearing on bringing scores of other industries
to New Orleans, which did not require a location on the water-
way, the building of the Industrial Canal has had, there is no
way of ascertaining.
Since the work was begun the Dock Board has received in-
quiries from a hundred or so large enterprises regarding the
cost of a site on the canal. That they have not established there
is due to the fact that the Canal has not yet been completed, and
the Dock Board has announced no policy.
It is now working on that question with representatives of
the Association of Commerce, Joint Traffic Bureau, Clearing
—62-
House Association, Cotton Exchange, Board of Trade, and
Steamship Association.
There is no use trying to guess at what the policy will be.
It is too big a problem, and must be worked out very carefully,
with reference to a confusing tangle of cross-interests.
Two principles have already been categorically laid down
by President Hudson and endorsed by the Dock Board at an open
meeting of April 5, 1921, with the commercial and industrial
interests of the city, planning for the policy of the Canal :
First, that the development of the Canal shall not be at the
expense of the river. Wharf development will be pushed on the
river to meet the legitimate commercial demands of the port.
No one is to be forced on the Canal. That would hurt the port.
It is not thought that such forced development would be neces-
sary, and the Canal will be kept open for the specialized indus-
tries that can best use the co-ordination of the river, rail and
maritime facilities.
Second, that the control of the property along the Canal,
owned by the Dock Board, will not go out of the hands of the
Board. There will be long-term leases — up to ninety-nine years,
but no outright sale. Furthermore, the private land on the
other side of the Dock Board's property will not be allowed to
be developed at the expense of the state's interests. So the front-
age on the Canal will be developed before there is any extensive
construction of lateral basins and slips.
What will be the rate charged for a site? Will it be based
on the actual cost of the Canal and its maintenance ? Or will the
state consider it a business investment like a road or street, and
charge the property owners thereon less than the cost of con-
struction, collecting the difference in the general progress?
That, too, is a question which calls for considerable study before
it can be answered.
With the Industrial Canal open, sites available on long
leases to business enterprise, and with our tax laws relating to
the processes of industry and commerce revised and made more
favorable, New Orleans will enter a period of expansion and
-63—
development on a scale hardly yet dreamed of by her most far-
visioned citizens, with enlarged profit and opportunity for all
her people.
New taxable wealth will be created rapidly. New needs for
taxable property will arise. The tax burden on all will be dis-
tributed more widely and when contrasted with the earning
power of such property will become less and less of a burden.
This will be so because the water frontage through which
the Canal is being created for the attraction of many enterprises
which cannot locate. on the river front, is all within the limits of
the city of New Orleans.
With this Canal in operation, New Orleans will possess to
the fullest degree the three great systems of port operation:
Public ownership and operation of the river harbor facilities;
public ownership of the land and private operation of facilities
on the Industrial Canal ; and private ownership of the land and
private operation of the facilities on the new channel to the sea.
No other port in the country has the capacity for this trinity
of port systems.
No other port possesses such a hinterland as is embraced
within the Mississippi Valley, nor so extensive and so complete
a system of easy-grade railroads and navigable waterways pene-
trating its hinterland.
No other port holds so strategic a position in the path of
the new trade routes connecting the region of greatest produc-
tivity with the new markets of greatest promise in Latin-Amer-
ica and the Orient.
—64—
LOCK GATE
There are Ten Like This
—65—
CONSTRUCTION COSTS AND CONTRACTORS
Everything is relative. Looking at the total, some may
think that the cost of the Industrial Canal is large. So it is —
compared with the cost of an irrigation ditch through a 20-acre
farm. But comparing the cost with the wealth it is invested to
produce — has already begun to produce — it dwindles to a mere
percentage. And a comparison of construction costs on the
Industrial Canal with similar work done elsewhere during the
same time is very much in favor of the former.
Witness the following figures shown in the books of the
engineering department of the Dock Board :
Dredging, including the canal prism and the excavation of
the sites of the bridge foundations, siphon and lock, averaged
.2784 cents a cubic yard. The highest cost was in the lock sec-
tion, from 'which 609,302 cubic yards were excavated at an aver-
age cost of .3796 cents a cubic yard. On the siphon and Florida
Walk bridge section, including two other deep cuts, the 814,919
cubic yards excavated cost an average of .2607 cents a cubic
yard. On the Louisville & Nashville bridge section, the 1,023;-
466 cubic yards excavated cost an average of .2363 cents a cubic
yard. From there to the lake, 1,673,787 cubic yards, the average
cost was .2411 cents. Dredging costs were below the original
estimates when labor and supplies were 50 per cent cheaper.
The 90,000 cubic yards of concrete in the lock cost an aver-
age of $22.50 a cubic yard. This includes cost of material, mix-
ing, building forms, pouring and stripping forms. Mixing and
pouring, from the time the material was handled from the store-
house or pile, averaged $1.20 a cubic yard. It would be hard to
find cheaper concrete on a work of similar magnitude anywhere,
say the engineers.
On the siphon the concrete work cost more, because it was
a subterranean job, with elaborate shaping. The price there was
$35 a cubic yard, in place, including material and form work. •
To drive the 17,000 bearing piles and 7,000 traveling piles
-66-
on which the lock is floated, cost an average of 15 cents a run-
ning foot. This does not include the cost of the piling.
Construction steel cost ,12 cents a pound, and erection
around 4 cents. These were standard prices.
The lock gates, weighing 5,285,000 pounds, cost $845,600, in
place. This does not include opening and closing machinery.
Three of the bascule bridges crossing the Canal, weighing
1,600,000 pounds each, cost $250,000 each, erected. The fourth
bridge, near the lock, weighing 1,000,000 pounds, cost $200,000,
erected. This is for superstructure only — it does not include the
foundation.
The emergency dam bridge, weighing 350,373 pounds, and
its 108,256 pounds of turning machinery, cost $96,728, in place.
Hoisting machinery cost $40,000 more.
The eight girders of the emergency dam, weighing 90 tons
each, at $240 a ton, cost $172,800.
Machinery for working the ten lock gates, the eight filling
gates, and the six capstans — twenty-four 52-horse power electric
motors — cost $21,479, f. o. b. New Orleans.
The plant for unwatering the lock, consisting of one pump
with a capacity of 15,000 gallons a minute, and two with a ca-
pacity of 250 gallons each, cost, erected, $11,000.
Total mechanical equipment used on the Industrial Canal
weighs 14,500 tons. Its cost, including power-house, electrical
connections, etc., is $1,516,000.
Plant and equipment for building the Canal, including loco-
motives, cranes, piledrivers, dredges, tools, etc., cost $781,232.
Depreciation, up to February, 1921, is set at $266,874, leaving
a balance of $514,358, carried as assets. Much of this has al-
ready been sold, and more will be disposed of.
Following are the firms that executed contracts on the In-
dustrial Canal:
OUTSIDE NEW ORLEANS.
Lock gates and emergency dam girders: McClintic-Mar-
shall Construction Company, Pittsburg, Pa.; designed by Gold-
mark & Harris Company, New York.
-67-
Filling gates: Coffin Valve Company, Indian Orchard,.
Mass.
Miscellaneous valve equipment: Ludlow Valve Compnay,
Troy, N. Y.
Capstans: American Engineering Company, Philadel-
phia, Pa.
Mooring posts: Shipbuilding1 Products Company, New
York, N. Y.
Miter gate moving machines: Fawcus Machine Works,
Pittsburg, Pa.
Motors, control boards and miscellaneous electrical equip-
ment: General Electric Company, Schenectady, N. Y.
Bridge crane and bascule bridges: Bethlehem Steel Cor-
poration, Steelton, Pa. Former designed by Goldmark & Harris
Company, New York, N. Y. ; latter, by Strauss Bascule Bridge
Company, Chicago, 111.
Steel sheet piling: Lackawanna Steel Company, Buffalo,
New York.
Hoists and cranes: Orton & Steinbrenner, Huntington,
Ind. ; American Hoist and Derrick Company, St. Paul, Minn.
Conveyor equipment: Webster Company, Tiffany, Ohio;
Barker-Greene Company, Aurora, 111.
Woodworking machinery: Fay & Egan Company, Cincin-
nati, Ohio.
Pipe: U. S. Cast Iron Pipe Company, Birmingham, Ala-
Lumber and piling: Hammond Lumber Company, Ham-
mond, La. ; Great Southern Lumber Company, Bogalusa, La.
Dredges: Bowers Southern Dredging Company, Galveston^
Tex. ; Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific Company, Mobile, Ala.
IN NEW ORLEANS.
Cinder and earth fill : Thomas M. Johnson.
Levee work: Hercules Construction Company; Hampton
Reynolds.
Sand and gravel: Jahncke Service, Inc.; D. V. Johnston
Company.
—68—
Cement: Atlas Portland Cement Company, the Michel
Lumber and Brick Company being local agents.
Lumber and piling: Salmen Brick and Lumber Company;
W. W. Carre Company, Ltd.
Coal: Kirkpatrick Coal Company; Tennessee Coal, Iron
and R. R. Company.
Reinforcing steel and supplies : Tennessee Coal, Iron and
R. R. Company ; Ole K. Olsen.
Rail and track accessories : A. Marx & Sons.
Concrete mixers: Fairbanks Company.
Repairs and castings : Dibert, Bancroft & Ross ; Joubert &
Goslin Machinery and Foundry Company; Stern Foundry and
Machinery Company.
—69—
OTHER PORT FACILITIES
"New Orleans," says Dr. Roy S. MacElwee in his book on
Port and Terminal Facilities, a subject on which he is considered
an authority, "is the most advanced port in America in respect to
scientific policy." The Shipping Board echoed the compliment
in its report of its port and harbor facilities commission of
April, 1919, when it said: "New Orleans ranks high among the
ports of the United States for volume of business, and presents
a very successful example of the public ownership and operation
of port facilities. It is one of the best equipped and co-ordinated
ports of the country."
New Orleans is the principal fresh water-ocean harbor in
the United States. Landlocked and protected from storms, it is
the safest harbor on the Gulf Coast. Almost unlimited is the
number of vessels that can be accommodated at anchor. Along-
side the wharves the water is from thirty to seventy feet deep.
The government maintains a 33-foot channel at the mouth of the
river.
The "port of New Orleans" takes in about 21 miles of this
harbor on both sides of the river. This gives a river frontage
of 41.4 miles, which is under the jurisdiction of the Dock Board,
an agency of the state. The Board has, to date, improved seven
miles of the east bank of the river with wharves, steel sheds,
cotton warehouses, a grain elevator and a coal-handling plant of
most modern type, together with other facilities for loading and
unloading. Authority has been granted to issue $6,500,000 in
Tbonds for increasing these facilities.
Wharves, elevators and warehouses built by railroads and
Industrial plants on both sides of the river bring up the total im-
proved portion of the port to 45,000 linear feet, capable of berth-
ing ninety vessels 500 feet long. These facilities are co-ordin-
ated by the only municipally owned and operated belt railroad in
the United States, which saves the shipper much money. More
than sixty steamship lines connect the port with the world mar-
kets; the government barge line, a number of steamboat lines,
—70—
&
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g
31
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2
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and twelve railroad lines connect it with the producing and con-
suming sections of the United States.
Now nearing completion is the Public Coal Handling Plant.
Built by the Dock Board to develop the business in cargo coal, it
is costing more than $1,000,000.00, and will have a capacity of
25,000 tons. It is of the belt-conveyor type. The plant will be
able to :
1. Unload coal from railway cars into a storage pile;
2. Unload coal from cars into steamers or barges;
3. Load coal from storage pile into steamers or barges;
4. Unload coal from barges into steamers and storage pile ;
5. Load coal from barges or storage pile into cars.
At the 750-foot wharf the plant can take care of three ships
at one time, with a maximum loading capacity of 800 to 1,000
tons an hour.
Other coaling facilities at the port are furnished by :
Illinois Central Railroad : Tipple with capacity of 300 tons
an hour;
New Orleans Coal Company: Two tipples, capacity 150
and 350 tons an hour; floating collier to coal ships while freight
is being taken aboard at the wharf, capacity 175 tons an hour;
collier, capacity 150 tons an hour.
Alabama and New Orleans Transportation Company : Stor-
age plant with loading towers on Lake Borgne canal, just below
the city;
American Sugar Refining Company: Coal plant, capacity,
70 tons an hour, for receiving coal from barges and delivering
it to boiler house ;
Monongahela River Coal and Coke Company : Floating col-
lier.
Fuel oil facilities for bunkering purposes are furnished by :
Gulf Refining Company : Storage capacity, 100,000 barrels ;
bunkering capacity, 800 barrels an hour ;
Texas Oil Company: Storage capacity, 150,000 barrels;
bunkering capacity, 1,500 barrels an hour;
—72—
Mexican Petroleum Corporation: Bunkering capacity,
1,500 barrels an hour;
Sinclair Refining Company: Storage capacity, 250,000
barrels; bunkering capacity, 2,500 barrels an hour;
Standard Oil Company: Storage capacity, 110,336 bar-
rels; bunkering capacity, 1,000 barrels an hour.
In the Jahncke Dry Dock and Ship Repair Company, New
Orleans has the largest ship repair plant south of Newport
News. The plant is on the Mississippi river, adjacent to the In-
dustrial Canal. It has a 1,500-foot wharf and three dry docks,
of 6,000, 8,000 and 10,000 tons capacity, respectively. These can
be joined for lifting the very large ships. It is equipped with
the latest and most powerful machinery, and has been a strong
factor in developing the port.
The Johnson Irqn Works and Shipbuilding Company like-
wise has facilities for wood repairing, caulking, painting and
scraping of vessels, as well as iron work. It has three docks:
one 234 feet long, one 334 feet long, and a small one for lifting
barges and small river tugs.
At the United States Naval Yard is a dock of 15,000 tons
capacity. This is placed at the service of commercial vessels
when private docks are not available.
The Public Cotton Warehouse and Public Grain Elevator
are among the most modern facilities in the country.
Both plants are of reinforced concrete throughout, insuring
a low insurance rate.
The cotton warehouse comprises five units, with a total stor-
age capacity at one time of 320,000 bales, and an annual handling
capacity of 2,000,000. High density presses compress this cot-
ton to 34 pounds per cubic foot, saving the exporter 20 per cent
on steamship freight rates. The insurance rate on storage cot-
ton is 24 cents per $100 a year. Cotton is handled by Dock
Board employees licensed by the New Orleans Cotton Exchange
under rules and regulations laid down by the department of agri-
culture. Warehouse receipts may be discounted at the banks.
—73—
Cotton can be handled cheaper here than at any other warehouse
in the country.
Storage capacity of the Public Grain Elevator is 2,622,000
bushels. This is about 25 per cent of the grain elevator storage
capacity of the port, but the Public Elevator handles 60 per
cent of the business — proving its efficiency. Its unloading ca-
pacity is 60,000 bushels a day from barges or ships, and 200,000
bushels from cars. Loading capacity into ships is 100,000 bush-
els an hour — to one or four vessels, simultaneously. Fireproof
and equipped with a modern dust-collecting system, this facility
is considered one of the best in the country.
Other grain elevators at New Orleans are operated by:
Southern Railway: capacity, 375,000 bushels;
Illinois Central Railroad two elevators, capacity, 2,500,000
bushels ; f
Trans-Mississippi Terminal Railroad Company: two ele-
vators, capacity, 1,350,000 bushels.
Wharves owned and controlled by the Dock Board measure
28,872 linear feet in length, with an area of 4,230,894 square
feet. Twenty of these thirty-foar wharves are covered with
steel sheds.
Wharves operated by the railroads on both sides of the
river increase the port facilities as follows:
Southern Railway: Two concrete and steel covered docks,
one a two-story structure; one is 150 by 1,300 feet, with a floor
space of 195,000 square feet; one is 150 by 1,680 feet on the
lower floor, and 120 by 1,680 on the upper, with a combined
area of 453,000 square feet floor space.
Illinois Central Railroad : covered wharf, 130-150 by 4,739
feet.
Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railroad and Steamship
Company: wharf space, 112,000 square feet; covered space,
117,200 square feet.
Trans-Mississippi Terminal Railroad Company: Wharf
No. 1, three berths, 281,904 square feet; No. 2, one berth, 94,350
—74-
square feet; No. 3, one berth, 100,725 square feet — most of it
covered; oil wharf, 15,000 square feet.
The New Orleans Army Supply Base has a two-story wharf
2,000 feet long by 140 feet wide. The lower floor of the wharf
is leased by the Dock Board. Back of it are the three ware-
houses, each 140 by 600 feet, and six stories in height.
Seven industrial plants have loading and unloading facili-
ties on the river- The Dock Board does not lease or part with
the control of these, and controls the following charges : harbor
fees, dockage, sheddage wharfage, etc.
Open storage on river front contiguous to wharves totals
1,169,900 square feet. There is a great deal of potential open
storage space away from the wharves and along railroad tracks,
which could be reached by switches.
For the storage of coffee, alcohol, sisal, sugar and general
commodities, private warehouses offer a floor space of 2,000,000
square feet.
Railroads serving New Orleans are: The Public Belt, Illi-
nois Central, Yazoo & Mississippi Valley, Gulf Coast Lines,
Louisiana Railway & Navigation Company, Louisville & Nash-
ville, Louisiana Southern, Missouri-Pacific, Texas & Pacific,
New Orleans & Lower Coast, Morgan's Louisiana & Texas Rail-
road and Steamship Company, (Southern Pacific) Southern
Railway and New Orleans & Great Northern.
Storage track capacity of New Orleans for export traffic
totals 15,156 cars. Track facilities alongside the wharves will
accommodate 600 cars. New Orleans can handle, at the grain
elevators and wharves, 3,000 cars a day.
Wharves are served exclusively by the Public Belt Rail-
road. The Industrial Canal will be similarly served. The Pub-
lic Belt Railroad assumes the obligations of a common carrier,
operating under appropriate traffic rules and regulations. The
switching charge is $7.00 a car, regardless of the distance. On
uncompressed cotton and linters, the charge is $4.50.
—75—
The government barge line connects New Orleans with the
Warrior River section of Alabama and the Upper Mississippi
Valley, including a great deal of inland territory to which river
and rail differential rates apply, as far as St. Louis. It is oper-
ating a fleet of 2,000-ton steel covered barges and 1,800 horse-
power towboats. There is a weekly service. Rates are 20 per
cent cheaper than rail rates.
The port is supplied with some of the most modern freight
handling machinery. Harbor dues and other expenses are low.
The water supply, for drinking purposes and boilers, meets the
strongest tests.
How advantageously situated is New Orleans will be seen
from the following comparison of distances :
— 76-
SHIP LOCK
INNEK HARBOR NAVIGATION CANAL
PORT OF NEW ORLEANS
THE LOCK COMPLETED
COMPARISON OF DISTANCES BY AND BETWEEN NEW
ORLEANS AND NEW YORK AND PRINCIPAL CITIES.
(Distances in statute miles, furnished by War Department.)
Atlanta
Baltimore
Birmingham
Boston
Buffalo
Charleston
Chattanooga
Chicago
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Dallas
Denver
Detroit
Duluth
El Paso
Galveston
Indianapolis
Kansas City
Little Rock
Louisville
Memphis
Minneapolis
Mobile
Norfolk
Oklahoma City
Omaha
Pittsburgh
Philadelphia
Port Townsend
Portland, Oregon
Salt Lake City
San Antonio
San Francisco
Savannah
Seattle
St. Louis
Toledo „
Washington, D.C
—78—
New York
846
188
1,043
235
442
739
846
912
781
584
1,642
1,932
693
1,390
2,310
1,782
827
1,335
1,290
867
1,156
1,332
1,231
347
1,643
1,402
444
91
3,199
3,204
2,442
1,943
3,191
845
3,151
1,058
705
228
New Orleans
COMPARISON OF DISTANCES BY WATER ROUTES BE-
TWEEN NEW ORLEANS AND NEW YORK TO
PRINCIPAL PORTS OF THE WORLD.
(Distances in nautical miles, supplied by Hydrographic
Office, Navy Department; land routes in statute miles supplied
by War Department.)
Antwerp 3,325
Bombay —
Via Suez 8,120
Via Cape of Good Hope 11,250
Buenos Ayres 5,868
Callao—
Via Panama 3,392
Via Tehauntepec 4,246
Cape Town 6,851
Colon (eastern end of Panama Canal) __ 1,981
Havana 1,227
Hong Kong —
Via Panama 11,431
(a) Via rail to San Francisco 9,277
Honolulu —
Via Panama 6,686
Via rail to San Francisco 5,288
Liverpool 3,053
London 3,233
Manila —
Via Panama 11,546
(a) Yokohama and San Francisco. 9,480
(a) Yokohama and Port Townsend 9,192
Melbourne —
(a) Via San Francisco 10,231
Via Panama 10,028
Via Tehauntepec 9,852
Via Suez Canal 12,981
Mexico City —
By land and water 2,399
By land 2,898
New York
New Orleans
4,853
9,536
11,848
6,318
2,764
2,991
7,374
1,380
597
10,830
8,568
6,085
4,579
4,553
4,507
10,993
8,771
8,972
9 ,522
9,424
8,604
14,303
1,172
1,526
—79—
New Orleans —
Land 1,372
Water 1,741
Nome, Alaska —
(a) Via San Francisco 5,896
(a) Via Port Townsend 5,555
Via Panama 8,010
Panama (western end Canal) —
Via Canal and Colon 2,028
Pernambuco, Brazil 3,696
Rio de Janeiro 4,778
San Juan, P. R 1,428
Singapore —
Via Yokohama and Panama 13,1 04
Via Suez 10,170
San Francisco 3,191
Via Tehauntepec 4,415
Via Panama 5,305
Tehauntepec —
Eastern end of railroad 2,036
Valparaiso —
Via Panama 4,637
Yokohama —
Via Honolulu and Tehauntepec 9,243
Via Honolulu and Panama 10,093
Via Panama 9,869
New York
New Orleans
5,187
5,335
7,410
1,427
3,969
5,218
1,539
12,503
11,560
2,482
3,191
4,704
812
4,035
7,995
9,492
9,268
(a) by land and water.
(b) By land.
—80—
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW
AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS
WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN
THIS BOOK ON -THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY
WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH
DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY
OVERDUE.
OCT
OCT 221943
REC'D LD
OCT 28 1959
KECD Lu
4 i960
DET ;79
B
9)
LD 21-50m-8,'32
Makers
Syracuse, N. Y.
PAT. JAN 21,1908
50;
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