The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1895-02-03

a~tmospheres. Working four hours on a
stretch in a caisson under forty-hve
pounds of air takes grit, young man,
clear grit: but when it comes to stay
ing below wenty hours on a stretch,
as me and Tom there did in Hudson
river tunnel once, it takes the backbone
plum out of you for a week after. /
heard of five fellows in Sweden some
where who stood sixty-five pounds, and
four Of them dropped dead five minutes
after they came out of the air lock.
OF course you get used to 1t, but the
getting used to 1T kills many good men.
] nave never been down in a divers
suit, but Scully. the diver in Chicago.
who was almost sucked into the water
works inlet once while breaking anchor
ice. told me that air lock work and his
work were pretty much the same thing.
But those divers don't stay down as
long as we used to. Two hours is long
enough for one turn for them.
When you first go into the air lock-"
continued the workman. your ears be-
gin singing and humming and your fore
head begins to throb, and when you
speak you feel as though you were
s~queaking through your nose. That's
when they are putting the pressure on,
for you see when you go to work in a
caissOn you first go into one room and
close the door and the engineer up above
sends air down to you until the air in
that lock is of just the same pressure
as the air in where the Boys are work
ing. The reason your ears sing and
acne Is because the pressure OUTSIDE OF
your body is greater than the pressure
inside, and this unequal pressure on the
ear drums causes pain. So we used to
hold our noses and blow hard against
the pressure. and this made the ten
sion even. and as long as We blew it
stopped the pain. After the pressure is
up, though, the pain stops, for by that
time the inside and outside pressure Of
your body are the same.
Then you begin to feel gay and think
that a good oud yell will just about ex-
press your sentiments, and if you had
two or three stiff drinks before. you
came Unjust enough to make you feel
jolly, you know-yOu become beaStly
drunk. Somehow or other a man can
do a lot of work when the air is on
about thirty to forty-five pounds to the
square inch, and If he is a careful, tenn
perate, steady young fellow and doesn't
work too long at a time and doesn't get
the bends or the 'trembles' or get para
lyzed the work will agree with him. The
bends Is the most painful thing that
ever tackled me. You see, the air some
times gets in between your bones and
the flesh, and that's the bends 1t
hurts SO that a man can drink a quart
of whisky and never feel 1t. When a
man catches the bends he just lays
off work there and then and stays off
until he is fixed up again. Sometimes
when a man has been working under
a pressure of air for some time he gets
the 'trembleS," and shivers and shakes
as though he had chills or break-bone
fever. But the worst thing that hap
pens to a caisson man is to be para
lyzed. The doctors say that the
paralysis is caused by ~stagnation of the
blood, due to the great change which
comes when a man leaves the air lock
for the open air. If it takes him in the
stomach or head he is a sick man, and
/ have seen men come out and fall down
| just ,paralyzed. A man was not built
to work under a greater pressure than
fifteen pounds to the square inch-just
what the air is on the surface-and
| when he works in air pumped down
through pipes until the very atmos-
phere he breathes is compressed in the
| caisson to ~forty-ive and fifty pounds to
the square inch he is hunting trouble.
| But horses and mules seem to like it.
/ know some mules that were kept
down below for over a year, and when
they came out at the end of the work
where the air was normal they were
plumper and sleeker han when they
had been Gagged down twelve months
before.
"One of the best jobs 1 ever had"
said the orkm was in a caisson
where we blasted out rock for the piers
of a bridge across the Harlem river at
New York. That caisson was a big
affair. 1t was ~fifty-four feet wide and
twice as long, and If it had been pulled
up out of the river and put on dry
land it would have looked like a three
roomed one-story house. over one hum
dred feet long. fifty feet wide. nearly
fifteen feet high, with a 1ve-foot square
tower rising right out Of the center.
The tower would be the shaft through
which the men entered and left the
caisson and the blasted rock was hauled
out. The roof of the caisson was six
feet thick. made of pine timbers a foot
square. The walls were three feet thick,
and the bottom of each wall which
rested on the rock and mud, vas cut
to a stub edge for a shoe The dividing
walls in the caisson were two feet thick
and the rooms opened into one another
through big openings cut in the wall.
OF course you understand this caisson
was under water, and we worked there
with air at thirty pounds pressure. be-
cause If we had no pressure the mud and
water would come in on us and we
would be drowned out. When we went
to work we went down the shat from
the level into an air lock. which was d
room with alright doors. We closed
the door through which we entered
and waited there until the pressure of
] ths cir In the cir lock was equal to the