Los Angeles herald., 1908-11-09
LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE MAY
NOT BE FAVORABLE
MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP WILL BE
IN JEOPARDY
Expert Engineer Shows That Arau-
ments Commonly Used Against
Southern Port Are Those
That Recommend It


are arousing considerable local discus
sion among the business men who are
interested in the question. This has
been stimulated by the declaration of
Captain Fries, in his address before the
! Friday Morning club, that he believes
a state harbor board for San Pedro is
| ill-advised.
"The audience at the sessions will be
of greater interest to me than the ac-
| ton that may be taken by the COM
mittee," said a leading member of the
Municipal Waterways association. 1--WE
know pretty we'll what the legislators
will do, but is there in reality any
! announcement for the advocates OF
free, municipality owned harbor to be
present? 1 cannot say what the oft1-
GERS of the Municipal Waterways as
sociation will do, or whetht the har-
Dor commission will be -'-ose1t or not,
for 1 do not know, but 1t appears to
me as being a good deal like lending
| sanction to their own funeral.
| when the harbor committee was
| down here before 1t offered no encour-
agement toward anything that viii
do us any good. Since then we have
had their open declaration that there
is no place at San Pedro on which to
spend any money, and that we are in
any event entitled to no more, IL as
much, as is decided on for San Diego
My forecast is that the whole meeting
will resolve itself into the first steps
| toward saddling on us state harbor
| board.
1.-THE committee says, in effect, to US:
| Gentlemen, you have now reached
point where you are about to have
harbor, and it is proper that we should
| take it away from you. We will come
down and hold a meeting with you,
| and between us 1t can be decided just
how we are to take the harbor away
from you Now, why should any
friend of a municipal harbor. attend
| in order to aid in giving up his causeY"
AS the time for the legislative COM
mittee meetings approaches the state
ment is being made more frequently
that there never can be much of a
harbor at San Pedro, and that the COM
mittee's estimate of $1,500,000, as
against $10,0O0OOO for San Francisco,
ture Importance.
Speaks for San Pedro
"Well, what is a harbor?" was the
return made by Captain Fries in an
swer to the query about San Pedro's
exact position. ut is place where
| ships may come In safety, discharge
their cargoes conveniently and in safe
ty, take on new cargoes with speed
and safety, and depart in safety. Yes,
a harbor must first be safe Then 1t
must be large enough and of such
shape that cargOes can be handled
quickly. For safety we must have an
anchorage ground accessible at all
times, especially during storms, and
secure and large enough to accommo-
date all vessels that may possibly want
to use it at one time.
Naturally, San Pedro was sadly
lacking in safe anchorage room. So
was many another harbor now famous
Alexandria. in Egypt; Cherbourg, in
France; Genoa, in Italy; Chicago, Buff
falo, Cleveland, on the Great Lakes;
Plymouth, in England, and many 9TH
ers. Each was made safe by break
water, and so is San Pedro.
"San Pedro harbor is easy of access
at all times. The entrance is 1000 feet
wide, and with depth shoaling grad
ually from fifty feet at low tide at the
breakwater to thirty feet at the inner
line. A vessel needs only to round
the breakwater, even during severe
storms, and all is calm. There is no
narrow, rock-lined channel to pass
through, where any minute the ship
may be ground to destruction, nor is
there a seething breaking bar to cross,
where water is scarce at best and
where the captain of the ship Is in
mortal terror that a swell may let his
vessel on the bottom and break her
in two.
"San Pedro is an artificial harbor.
You hear this said in tomas that are
both apologetic and derogatory. But
why? Every harbor. so far as its
ability to carry on commerce under
modern conditions is concerned, is ar
tificial, and the more completely arti-
fetal it is the better suited 1t is to
modern business, providing, of course,
that it is in a good locality and the
cost of making it is not too great.
Because it is artificial the inner har-
Dor of San Pedro will have enough,
and no more than enough, water for
wharfage purposes and for basins in
which boats may turn Too great an
expanse of water is a real detriment to
a harbor, for It allows storms to raise
a considerable sea in the harbor itself,
resulting often In considerable loss.
Limited Size Is Merit
Indeed, San Pedro seems to be un-
usually fortunate in that respect. 1t
is hard to conceive an o7ean harbor
that will cost less to maintain. The
two causes of deterioration of a har-
Dor are silt carried down by rivers in
to the harbor, and the sand piled up
at the entrance by cross-currents and
wave action. The Los Angeles river
is the only one whose waters now
reach the harbor during the rainy sea-
son. When any silt at all reaches the
sea 1t will pass through the Long
Beach entrance and never reach San
Pedro at all. 1t was roted before the
breakwater was begun hat the en-
trance to the inner harbor kept its
depth remarkably well. Now t-at the
breaIxwater shuts off all wave action
and. practically, all Gu 'ents, it is
very difficult to see how the harbor
can deteriorate at all.
when anchorage room must be pro-
vided inside a breakwater the fiatter
the ocean bottom is, or in other words,
the more slowly the depth increases
as you go out from the shore, the bet
ter off Long Beach tl.is condition is
remarkably good, better, in fact, than
at any other place in this locality. So
fiat is the bottom there that 1t is two
miles between the fve-fathom and
eight-fathom curves-that is, between
the thirty and forty-eight feet depths.
Inside the present breakwater the dis
tance between these depths is only
half a mile. In other words off Long
Beach every foot Of breakwater will
shelter nearly four times as rauch deep
water anchorage as inside the present
breakwater.
/ Better Than Long Beach
(, .'Nevertheless, the present breakwa-
ter is properly located because it shell
ters the entrance to the inner harbor
and because the breakwater in front Of
Long Beach alone would not give a