The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans Part 2

One dredge was sent around Lake Pontchartrain to commence 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 ca.n.a.l 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 pa.s.sage 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 drainage system, which emptied into Bayou Bienvenu, and by the railway lines that crossed the site of the Ca.n.a.l.

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 pa.s.sing under the Ca.n.a.l, a river under a river, so to speak. In the meantime, however, the drainage ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l by January, 1920.

Ca.n.a.l PLANS EXPANDED.

Work in the meantime had begun on the commodity warehouse and wharf, another facility planned by the Dock Board to relieve the growing pains. Built on the Ca.n.a.l, but opening on the river, it was to perform the same service for general commodities as the Public Cotton Warehouse and the Public Grain Elevator did for those products. Though not a part of the ca.n.a.l 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 Orleans in building the Industrial Ca.n.a.l 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 shipbuilding contract that had been given the South. The Industrial Ca.n.a.l rendered it possible.

The firm of Doullut & Williams had been engaged for fifteen years or so in the civil engineering and contracting business 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 Company was organized April 25, 1918, with the following officers: M.

P. Doullut, president; Paul Doullut, vice-president; W. Horace Williams, secretary-treasurer and general manager; L. H. Guerin, chief engineer; and James P. Ewin, a.s.sistant 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 our 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 deposited 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 Ca.n.a.l, 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 Pontchartrain, 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 Orleans, emphasized the belief of those directing the work of the Industrial Ca.n.a.l that the plan on which they were working was too small. An 18-foot ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l, George M. Wells estimated, would be $6,000,000, or $2,500,000 more than the estimate for the original ca.n.a.l. 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 97-1/2, 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 because 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 permission. This was given in due time, though there was considerable opposition.

The opposition, said President Thompson, at the Dock Board meeting of February 26, 1919, reviewing the development of the ca.n.a.l plans, "was inspired by vicious and spectacular attacks of certain private interests hostile to the ca.n.a.l project and to the port of New Orleans."

Railroads, whose right of way crossed the Ca.n.a.l, were the princ.i.p.al 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 ca.n.a.l 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 completed--and the tendency of the times is towards larger ships. Why not make a capacity facility while they were about it?

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOCK SITE Driving Sheet Piling]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOCK SITE Dredges Entering]

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 ca.n.a.l 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 estimated 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l had cost New Orleans millions of dollars in development.

DIGGING THE DITCH.

No rock-problem was encountered in dredging the ca.n.a.l. 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, Ill., now is. Washings from the land, during the slow-moving centuries, pushed the sh.o.r.eline ever outward; the humus of decaying vegetation 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 t.i.tanothere; 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 gra.s.s 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 remains of these forests are found today, the wood perfectly preserved by the dampness. And through this tangled ma.s.s 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.

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 Ca.n.a.l, 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 130-3/4 hours. During the thirty days immediately succeeding installation the total of delays for the same reason was cut down to 71-1/2 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.

George M. Wells, consulting engineer, in his report of December 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%; blacksmiths, 40%; foremen and monthly, 15 to 40%--an average increase 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 ca.n.a.l 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 quicksand conditions in the various excavations; requirements of railroads 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 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 & Williams plant. The former went to sea through Bayou Bienvenu and the latter through Lake Pontchartrain. The Doullut & Williams yard is a large one.