Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1866-01-15

Report OF Committee on the Project.
In our Saturday mornings issue we an
nounced that Mr.. Horace H. Day, Of New
York, who has been for the last year or two
occupied with d~evising a plan of ship tran
sit around Niagara Falls, adequate to the
and future demands OF commerce
between the West and the Atlantic seaboard,
had appeared here and desired to gain the
ear of the Board of Trade of this city that
that body had postponed till Saturday after
noon the hearing of his case; that a com
mittee had been appointed, meantime, to
examine his plan and report upon its merits
at the session of the Board IN Saturday, in
connection with the explanation of his sys-
tenn by Mr.. Day. At the hour set, there had
gathered a good representation Of our
business men, to hear the details of the
plan of a Marine Railway which
Mr.. Day had conceived and which
he would substitute FOR a canal with the
system of locks now in use. he remarked
that he had unfolded it to the Boards of
Trade of Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee and
Toledo, and that they had pronounced it
feasible. He proceeded to sketch the details
of his project as follows:
Locks are not used in his canal, the ends
of which are closed up SO that no water
passes. BY this plan economy is secured in
that not one-ffth the amount of water need
be stored to make good the loss by leakage,
evaporation, ETC., which must be availed of
by the system with locks. The transit OF
vessels from one elevation to another is eff
fected by the use OF double inclined planes
running from one water level to another.
Each Of these planes is furnished with a
freater or less number of tracks, according
to the size of the craft to be transferred.
For a vessel of twelve hundred tuns ten
tracks are sufficient. These are made Of
timber, and on them rollers are placed,
which remain stationary and move on their
bearings. The track is placed upon the car
OF lock, thus reversing the usual order. The
vessel may be raised from the canal in three
or four ways.
He proposes the screw dock, or more pro-
perIy the hydrostatic pump dock, because
engineers assert that it is possible to raise a
vessel Of the size contemplated in the short
space of ten minutes, sufficiently to go on
the inclined plane. When a vessel at n
end of the plane is to be raised, another
vessel at the other end can be raised at the
same time, andthus the time consumed in
passing two vessels is only the time of pass
ing enc. As one vessel is ready to descend
the plane, another is ready to ascend, and
the connecting machinery of ropes or wire
cables will be acting at the same moment
upon both planes, raising one vessel up, and
lowering the other down. Eminent engin-
GERS declare it practicable to pass two ships
in this manner in the short space of half an
hour. 1t is well known that three hundred
and twenty feet of lockage for such sized
vessels as are here contemplated will take,
through common locks, in the neighbor-
hood of from twenty to twenty-four hours
Calling it forty hours to get up and down,
we accomplish the same thing by my plan
in half an hour-certainly in one hour.
Thus we save more than one and a half
days in the round trip from lake to lake.
Merchants with whom he had conversed
say that the value ef the charter of a ship
OF this size is about $500 day. Of course a
day and a half would be 5000, and if we
allow one half of that amount for the value
of the quick passage, we obtain 1890. If we
can pass forty Vessels a day. and he con-
4--Jzl IT. ~ Is, Nooo fnrfu-airhf aoah
way, we nave the enormous sum of $4,000
saved to somebody in t%wenty-four hours
Then multiply this by two hundred and
twenty days, and We have between seven
and eight millions of dollars saved in the
season of navigation, while it may be three
or four times as much. The cost of these
locks is estimated at from seven to eight
millions of dollars.
On the conclusion of Mr.. Days explana-
ton, the President, Philo Chamberlain, call
ed Mr.. saekrider to the CHR and proceeded
to review the action taken to construct a
ship canal, and offer a criticism on the pro-
ject of Mr.. Day, stating that the committee
appointed to report on the same did not in
making their report intend to commit them
selves to the plan of Mr.. Day, but merely
to bring the matter before the Board.
He said a meeting was called in Chicago
a few years ago for the purpose of securing
the construction of a ship canal from Lake
Michigan to the Illinois river. At that time
the project of a ship canal around Niagara
Falls, free to East and West, North and
South, in which all were interested, was
originated, and finally became the main OBJ
ject with those who wished to secure the IN
interrupted navigation of the lakes, from
head to foot. Last winter a bill looking to
the construction of a ship canal around the
Falls passed the House of Representatives
by a decided majority, but was killed in the
Senate by fo;sting upon it this project of
Mr.. Days, of a Marine Railway. Buffalo
influence favored the latter as q blind, and
the introduction of it had the effect SO to
confuse the minds of the committee to
whom the bill was referred, that they post
poned the further consideration of the sub
ject until other plans should be examined.
After this review of the effort to secure a
ship canal, he said the original plan was to
construct e large canal from the Niagara
river, at a point six or seven miles below the
Falls, to the head of the cataract. 1t was
to be the ordinary canal. He thought it
preferable to the railway proposed by MI.
Day, and suggested various objections to his
plan. Vessels can move only as they are
moved by this extensive system of macbin-
ery, and are therefore subject to detentions
through the accidents to which it is liable.
Propellers lock through Welland Canal, a
distance of twenty-eight miles, in twelve
hours on an average, and sometimes sixty
and seventy crafts go through at a time.
The gain of time by the proposed plan is
problematieal. In his opinion, not one half
the number of vessels could be slid over in
clined planes per day, as could be locked
through a slip canal of twenty locks of six
teen feet lift, such as wa contemplated by
Congress. Still he expressed himself open
to conviction on any and every point of the
new project, and favored the most thorough
examination of the same.
The report of the committed, to whom
was referred the plan of Mr.. Day, is en-
braced in the following resolutions:
Resolved, That the importance of ship
transit around the Falls of Niagara, on our
own territory, cannot be over estimated, and