TIMARU BREAKWATER ECLIPSED.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2441, 14 January 1881, Page 4

TIMARU BREAKWATER ECLIPSED.

The following from an English exchange describes an engineering work, besides which the Timaru Breakwater, colossal as we think it, is very small potatoes:— “Somewhere about 3,000 workmen, GOO or 700 waggons, seventeen or eighteen locomotive engines, three steam ‘ navvies,’ and a great quantity of minor machinery of various kinds, have been engaged since 1875 at the southeast end of London in a work compared with which the building of the Pyramids, with modern appliances, would have been no very signal fact. Hitherto the one entrance to the \ ictoria Docks from the Thames had been at Blackwell’s Point, but now there is a dock capable of receiving all vessels, no matter what they might be. Three and a-half miles of walls have been built, enclosing ninety acres water. These ‘walls’ are 40ft high, oft thick at the top, and 18ft tliick at the bottom, the whole of this enormous mass being composed of solid concrete, for which 80,000 tons of Portland cement have been used. Some 4,000,000 cubic feet of earth have been dug out. It may assist the imagination somewhat to state that if it were filled into carts, the vehicles would form an unbroken line. 7,000,000 miles long. The excavations have gone through submerged forests ; and among other curiosities dug out have been a reindeer’s horn, a Roman vase, and what is supposed to be an ancient British canoe carved out of solid oak. The latter is now in the British Museum, The new entrance below Woolwich will save about three and ahalf miles of river navigation, which, in the case of vessels of heavy draughty is of course a matter of very great importance.”