The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1880-11-03
Captain Ead's Start In Life.

: Last December, on the steamship Germs
ME, played chess with the great civil eng
neer. Captain Eads, stimulated by til
thought that to beat him was to defeat tn
: man who had twice conquered the Missis
sippi. But didn't defeat him.
James B. Eads vas born in Indiana il
1920. He is slender in form, neat in dress
genial, courteous, and nearly sixty years o
age. In 1888 his father started down thu
Ohio river with his family, proposing Il
settle in Wisconsin. The boat caught fire
and his scanty furniture and clothing were
| burned. Young Eads barely escaped ashore
with his pantaloons, shirt and cap. Taking
passage on another boat this boy OF thirteen
landed at St. Louis with his parents, his
little bare feet first touching the rocky
shore OF the city on the very spot where be
| afterward located and built the largest steel
bridge in the world, over the Mississippi
one of the most difficult feats of engineering
ever performed in America.
At the age of nine young Eads made a
short trip on the Ohio, when the engineer of
the steamboat explained TO him so clearly
the construction of the steam engine that,
before he was a year older, he built a little
working model of it, so perfect in its parts
and movements that his schoolmates would
frequently go home with him after school TO
see it work A locomotive engine, driven
by concealed rat, was one of next juvenile
feats III mechanical engineering. From
eight to thireeen he attended school, after
which, from necessity, he was placed as
clerk in dry goods store.
Over the store in St. Louis where he was
engaged his employer lived. He was an old
bachelor, and having observed the tastes of
his clerk, gave him his first book on engi-
neering. The old gentleman's library rur-
nished evening companions for him during
the five years he was thus employed. Final
ly, his health failing, at the age of nineteen,
he went on a Mississippi river steamer,
from which time to the present day that
great river has been to him an allabsorbing
study.
Soon afterward he formed a partnership
with friend and built a small boat to raise
cargoes of vessels sunken in the Mississip
pi. While this boat was building he made
first venture in submarine engineering, on
the lower rapids of the river, by the
recovery of several hundred tons of lead.
He hired a scow or fiat boat and anchored
it over the wreck. An experienced diver,
clad in armor, who had been hired at con-
expense in Buffalo, was lowered
into the water but the rapids were so
swift that the diver, though encased in the
strong armor, feared to be sunk to the bot |
tom. Young Eads, determined to succeed, |
and finding it impracticable to use the |
armor, went ashore, purchased whisky |
air pump hose to it, fastened several heavy |
weihgts to the open end of the barrel-then |
swinging it on derrick he had practical |
diving bell the best use | ever heard made |
of whisky barrel.
Neither the diver nor any of the crew
would go down into this contrivance, 50 the |
dauntless young engineer, having full con-
fdence in what he had read in books, was /
lowered within the barrel down to the bot
tom, the lower end of the barrel being open. I
The water was sixteen feet deep and very
swift. Finding the wreck, he remained by
it full hour, hitching ropes to pig lead till /
a ton or more was safely hoisted into his
own boat Then making a signal by
small line attached to the barrel, he was
lifted on deck and in command again. The
iunken cargo was soon successfully raised
md was sold, and netted a handsome profit,
which, increased by other successes, en-
lbled energetic Eads to build larger boats,
With powerful pumps and machinery on
hem for lifting entire vessels.-Wide
Awake.