The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1898-02-07
A DREDCER man
L. B. Young Who Knows odd
Prosperity" Well.
is IN HONOLULU AGAIN
Did a Great Work Here-FirSt Off
Shore Pumping - With Three
Other PiantS-In Guatemala.

The man who dredged out the har-
Dor channel is in town again. In the
commercial past, present and future
of the country, and more particularly
of Honolulu, he is an important figure.
The gentleman does not unduly pride
himself on the part he has played Ill
the development of the local trade. Tc
date he has not been bv the public
assigned any station of honor or C1s-
tinction. That will come with dis obi
tuary perhaps L. B. Young will live
a long time yet He is a tall man Of
rather spare construction and has
dark or brownish beard with a hole
shaved out of the middle of it. He
speaks slowly modeSty and on MS
tongue there is an intimation that as
boy he was at home in either Norway
or Sweden. Mr.. Young Of late years
has been a builder and operator of
the famous and valuable type of dredg-
ing plants represented fairly by the
machine now under command OF Cap
tain Paul Smith here. For long
time he was with the San Francisco
Bridge Company, but is at present dis
engaged. At present he hopes to be-
come identified with a local corpora
ton in some work of considerable mag
nitude.
L. B. Young is in the Islands for the
third time. In 1882, he was with E. G.
Hitchcock on a plantation of Hawaii
and for a period after that with
city painter. Then he went back to
the States and returning in 1892 work
ed on the dredger and gave it the trial
runs. He was the manager during all
the work of deepening the channel so
that deep ships might come inside in
stead of being lightered from the road
stead. which had been the slow and
costly custom for many, many years.
Mr.. Young is more proud of the work
| he did here than Of any contract or
undertaking with which he has been
connected. 1t is a good deal, he thinks,
| for a man in the business to be able
| to say he has been identified with
probably the most successful piece of
off-shore dredging ever attempted.
| The dredger here, named by Lorrin
| A. Thurston Prosperity" is the first
of four installed by Mr.. Young. He
says that of course a number of i'm
provements have been added since the
| first model was made, but that in all
| the principal points Old prosperity"
| is the equal of any of them and has
| worn astonishingly well. Mr.. Young
! does say that the dredged was made
| to handle sand and mud and that her
continuous use on rock will have its
serious effect in time. He adds that
| Captain Smith has done eXcellently
with the dredger.
| Another dredger like Prosperity
| has done twenty miles of deepening
on the ST. Johns river, Florida and
| is now doing harbor work in Texas.
It has made great records and has
piled up fortunes for it's owners. A
| third was built at Boston and works
in that vicinity earning enormous div
| idends for a big syndicate
The fourth and to now the last
dredger of the type of the local stand
by is owned by the Government Of
Guatemala and thereby suspends the
narrative of the chief troubles of Mr..
Young. For taking charge of the
/ WOTh Oh anu II lol AlS "S~S
given, besides a handsome salary, an
interest in the proceeds of the enter
prise In the best time on record there
was finished perfect as ingenuity, Sc
lected material and careful skilled
labor could produce. The intention
was to have a plant that would run
night and day Indefinitely and remove
more earth per minute than had ever
before been handled. Mr.. Young says
the machine is in every respect a
beauty and a bonanza. The first con-
tract was to be for in the neighborhood
of a million dollars worth of work
Operations beyond that, to perfect q
system of channels and basins would
make the work in sight aggregate the
figure of at least ten millions of dol
lars. likely much more Small won
der the material was the very best and
that parts liable to breakage were pro
vided in the duplicate and triplicate
The dredger was given trial runs fol
a month and Mr. Young says that fol
the various bottoms she sucked ou
streams of almost solid mud or sand
Even the shrewd and clever Ameri
cans down there were surprised an(
the Government officials were 81
amazed that some of them forgot tt
place on file their applications for per
quisites usual to the penalties of con
tracing in that country. Mr.. Youns