WHERE THE LIGHTSHIP GUIDES THE MARINER

Often when the wind blows it is necessary to keep a full head of steam at work to keep the anchors from giving way.

The jetties at the mouth of the Columbia have cost millions and the work of subduing river and ocean is not yet

STARTING OUT TO SEA WITH A LOAD OF ROCK

The Columbia is ten miles wide at this point and the engineers are trying to confine it to a narrower channel.

of United States army engineers was appointed to investigate-to submit war plans for the defense of the shipping channel across the Columbia River bar. They disagreed, submitted a minority and a majority report late in 1882, the two defensive plans differing radically. Congress dallied until July, 1884, when the majority report was adopted.

In those days, a generation ago, everybody minimized Man's task in the subjection of Nature at the mouth of the Columbia. "Yes, it will be a short, decisive war," it was generally agreed. "A million dollars and a year or two of time will do it," was the slogan, for had not the experts studied the problem, and had they not so pronounced? True, the experts had vitally disagreed as to plans, and each faction had its

influences opposed it, so succeeding appropriations were sporadic. The work stretched on for ten years, the initial short south jetty being completed in 1895 at a total cost of about two million dollars. By this time everybody was happy, including the majority engineers, whose war plans had been followed. And why not? For four years after the construction of the south jetty had begun, the river and the ocean had made a stubborn fight against the deepening of the channel across the bar, no effect of the jetty being visible. Then it came-a gradual increase of depth year by year during the remaining six years until the jetty was completed. During these six years the low-water depth increased from nineteen feet to thirtyone feet.

against Nature! The depth must increase still more! The war was ended! The army was disbanded!

But the victory shouts of 1895 had been premature. Next year Nature came back. The accumulated sand in the mouth of the river had not been washed out to sea. It had only shifted. Peacock Spit, opposite the south jetty and hovering against the north bank of the river mouth, had grown much higher and had been crowded three miles farther out to sea, in effect becoming a jetty on its own account, and even aiding in gaining the scouring result which had deepened the channel across the bar. But victory was not yet, for Peacock Spit proved a traitor. The next year following the completion of the initial south jetty, the waves and the ebb tide and the prevailing littoral currents of the ocean began to batter Peacock Spit. Peacock Spit shifted its alliance, began to crowd northward, to spread out, to shallow the bar channel. By 1899, four years after the completion of the initial jetty, the low-water depth had decreased three feet, to twenty-eight feet.

The warfare was on again. Again Congress was laggard. But in June, 1900, $250,000 was appropriated for repairs on the south jetty, preliminary to another reconnaissance and revised war plans from the firing line. This time, the engineers were not so confident. They found, in 1902, that the former channel of thirty-one feet had decreased to twenty-one feet-almost as shallow as it was seventeen years before, regardless of the long hard fight and the millions of dollars expended, regardless of the south jetty. The chief results of the south jetty, as their new surveys showed, had been to build up and then to tear down the detached sand island known as Peacock Spit. First, the channel had deepened as it crowded northward; then it had shallowed as it returned southward. Now, the channel had

and almost its original discouraging shallowness.

But why grieve? Man had merely lost a hard-fought campaign; the war must be waged more stubbornly. This time the war generals, after their inspection at the front, "recommended" a channel of forty feet across the bar. And to secure this they proposed that Congress authorize the War Department to expend an estimated $2,260,000 in extending the south jetty two and one-half miles. Also, $1,205,000 in the construction of a parallel north jetty, which would narrow the ten-milewide mouth of the river to about two miles. Also, a quarter of a million for the operation of a dredge out on the bar. This final recommendation of the dredging operation was a decided concession to the prowess of the forces of Nature at the mouth of the Columbia. Always before, the plan had been to compel the "river discharge" to do all the work of deepening, to scour out its own channel. Now, it was conceded by the war generals that Man himself must be willing to do a part of this work, if Nature would only keep her hands off otherwise.

The jetty work was resumed. Dredging was begun. Congress belatedly handed out the millions from time to time. Work was intermittent, which gave the sea the best of chances to tear down sections of the jetty and the pilings. The teredos aided by eating away the pilings. The necessary war levies grew and grew. The originally guessed sum of a million dollars necessary for the south jetty was revised and re-revised until it had totally approximated ten million dollars at the time of its completion in 1913. Two years of preliminary work was necessary in preparing for the construction. of the north jetty, which included the dredging of a rock barge channel through Baker's Bay. through Baker's Bay. The old army transport Grant was remodeled into the sea-going dredger Chinook. The

POWER

By

LEWIS R. FREEMAN