RAISING A SUNKEN FERRY-BOAT.
WRECKING is expensive work. Over $25,000 was spent in raising the big barge Independent, which sank in New York harbor. This harbor has been the scene of innumerable wrecks, but among them none involved such tremendous labor as the salvage of the sunken ferry-boat Chicago. The value of this ferry-boat was at least $100,000, and besides hundreds of human beings, a number of horses and wagons went down with her, among them an express wagon which contained a load of silver bricks worth $30,000. Not only did the divers save these and many other articles of value, but they recovered several human bodies. The work of saving the boat then commenced. As a preliminary, the entire upper deck, the smoke-stacks, and other impeding parts were cut away. Before this was completed, the hull had finally settled in forty-three feet of mud and water. The giant wrecking derricks Monarch and Reliance were already on the scene. All the superstructure having been cut away, the next operation was to pass the chains by which the wreck was ultimately to be raised, under the hull. Through the mud a passage had to be bored beneath the boat, the divers using a strong wire for the purpose. This accomplished, a thin chain was attached to the wire, and then a still larger chain, and so on, gradually working up to a monster cable 2½in. in diameter, and weighing about eight tons. Finally, with infinite labor, ten of these cables were banded about the hull, which represented a dead weight of more than 1000 tons to be lifted. Two kinds of pontoons were employed to raise the wreck, and it was a critical moment when the great hull rose slowly through the forty feet of water and finally rested on the surface.—Pearson’s Magazine.