# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Jetty

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​JETTY. The term jetty, derived from Fr. jetée, and therefore signifying something “thrown out,” is applied to a variety of structures employed in river, dock and maritime works, which are generally carried out in pairs from river banks, or in continuation of river channels at their outlets into deep water; or out into docks, and outside their entrances; or for forming basins along the sea-coast for ports in tideless seas. The forms and construction of these jetties are as varied as their uses; for though they invariably extend out into water, and serve either for directing a current or for accommodating vessels, they are sometimes formed of high open timber-work, sometimes of low solid projections, and occasionally only differ from breakwaters in their object.
Jetties for regulating Rivers.—Formerly jetties of timber-work were very commonly extended out, opposite one another, from each bank of a river, at intervals, to contract a wide channel, and by concentration of the current to produce a deepening of the central channel; or sometimes mounds of rubble stone, stretching down the foreshore from each bank, served the same purpose. As, however, this system occasioned a greater scour between the ends of the jetties than in the intervening channels, and consequently produced an irregular depth, it has to a great extent been superseded by longitudinal training works, or by dipping cross dikes pointing somewhat upstream (see River Engineering).
* Fig 1.—Timber Jetty across Dock Slope.
Jetties at Docks.—Where docks are given sloping sides, openwork timber jetties are generally carried across the slope, at the ends of which vessels can lie in deep water (fig. 1); or more solid structures are erected over the slope for supporting coal-tips. Pilework jetties are also constructed in the water outside the entrances to docks on each side, so as to form an enlarging trumpet-shaped channel between the entrance, lock or tidal basin and the approach channel, in order to guide vessels in entering or leaving the docks. Solid jetties, moreover, lined with quay walls, are sometimes carried out into a wide dock, at right angles to the line of quays at the side, to enlarge the accommodation; and they also serve, when extended on a large scale from the coast of a tideless sea under shelter of an outlying breakwater, to form the basins in which vessels lie when discharging and taking in cargoes in such a port as Marseilles (see Dock).
Jetties at Entrances to Jetty Harbours.—The approach channel to some ports situated on sandy coasts is guided and protected across the beach by parallel jetties, made solid up to a little above low water of neap tides, on which open timber-work is erected, provided with a planked platform at the top raised above the highest tides. The channel between the jetties was originally maintained by tidal scour from low-lying areas close to the coast, and subsequently by the current from sluicing basins; but it is now often considerably deepened by sand-pump dredging. It is protected to some extent by the solid portion of the jetties from the inroad of sand from the adjacent beach, and from the levelling action of the waves; whilst the upper open portion serves to indicate the channel, and to guide the vessels if necessary (see Harbour). The bottom part of the older jetties, in such long-established jetty ports as Calais, Dunkirk and Ostend, was composed of clay or rubble stone, covered on the top by fascine-work or pitching; but the deepening of the jetty channel by dredging, and the need which arose for its enlargement, led to the reconstruction of the jetties at these ports. The new jetties at Dunkirk were founded in the sandy beach, by the aid of compressed air, at a depth of 223/4 ft. below low water of spring tides; and their solid masonry portion, on a concrete foundation, was raised 53/5 ft. above low water of neap tides (fig. 2).
* Fig. 2.—Dunkirk East Jetty.
Jetties at Lagoon Outlets.—A small tidal rise spreading tidal water over a large expanse of lagoon or inland back-water causes the influx and efflux of the tide to maintain a deep channel through a narrow outlet; but the issuing current on emerging from the outlet, being ​no longer confined by a bank on each side, becomes dispersed, and owing to the reduction of its scouring force, is no longer able at a moderate distance from the shore effectually to resist the action of the waves and littoral currents tending to form a continuous beach in front of the outlet. Hence a bar is produced which diminishes the available depth in the approach channel. By carrying out a solid jetty over the bar, however, on each side of the outlet, the tidal currents are concentrated in the channel across the bar, and lower it by scour. Thus the available depth of the approach channels to Venice through the Malamocco and Lido outlets from the Venetian lagoon have been deepened several feet over their bars by jetties of rubble stone surmounted by a small superstructure (fig. 3), carried out across the foreshore into deep water on both sides of the channel. Other examples are provided by the long jetties extended into the sea in front of the entrance to Charleston harbour, formerly constructed of fascines, weighted with stone and logs, but subsequently of rubble stone, and by the two converging rubble jetties carried out from each shore of Dublin bay for deepening the approach to Dublin harbour.
* Fig. 3.—Lido Outlet Jetty, Venice.
* Fig. 4.—Mississippi South Pass Outlet Jetty.
Jetties at the Outlet of Tideless Rivers.—Jetties have been constructed on each side of the outlet of some of the rivers flowing into the Baltic, with the objects of prolonging the scour of the river and protecting the channel from being shoaled by the littoral drift along the shore. The most interesting application of parallel jetties is in lowering the bar in front of one of the mouths of a deltaic river flowing into a tideless sea, by extending the scour of the river out to the bar by a virtual prolongation of its banks. Jetties prolonging the Sulina branch of the Danube into the Black Sea, and the south pass of the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico (fig. 4), formed of rubble stone and concrete blocks, and fascine mattresses weighted with stone and surmounted with large concrete blocks respectively, have enabled the discharge of these rivers to scour away the bars obstructing the access to them; and they have also carried the sediment-bearing waters sufficiently far out to come under the influence of littoral currents, which, by conveying away some of the sediment, postpone the eventual formation of a fresh bar farther out (see River Engineering).
* Fig. 5.—River Maas Outlet, North Jetty.
* Fig. 6.—River Nervion Outlet, Western Jetty.
Jetties at the Mouth of Tidal Rivers.—Where a river is narrow near its mouth, and its discharge is generally feeble, the sea is liable on an exposed coast, when the tidal range is small, to block up its outlet during severe storms. The river is thus forced to seek another exit at a weak spot of the beach, which along a low coast may be at some distance off; and this new outlet in its turn may be blocked up, so that the river from time to time shifts the position of its mouth. This inconvenient cycle of changes may be stopped by fixing the outlet of the river at a suitable site, by carrying a jetty on each side of this outlet across the beach, thereby concentrating its discharge in a definite channel and protecting the mouth from being blocked up by littoral drift. This system was long ago applied to the shifting outlet of the river Yare to the south of Yarmouth, and has also been successfully employed for fixing the wandering mouth of the Adur near Shoreham, and of the Adour flowing into the Bay of Biscay below Bayonne. When a new channel was cut across the Hook of Holland to provide a straighter and deeper outlet channel for the river Maas, forming the approach channel to Rotterdam, low, broad, parallel jetties, composed of fascine mattresses weighted with stone (fig. 5), were carried across the foreshore into the sea on either side of the new mouth of the river, to protect the jetty channel from littoral drift, and cause the discharge of the river to maintain it out to deep water (see River Engineering). The channel, also, beyond the outlet of the river Nervion into the Bay of Biscay has been regulated by jetties; and by extending the south-west jetty out for nearly half a mile with a curve concave towards the channel the outlet has not only been protected to some extent from the easterly drift, but the bar in front has been lowered by the scour produced by the discharge of the river following the concave bend of the south-west jetty. As the outer portion of this jetty was exposed to westerly storms from the Bay of Biscay before the outer harbour was constructed, it has been given the form and strength of a breakwater situated in shallow water (fig. 6). (L. F. V.-H.)