From Outlet to Canal

David O'Reilly

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Dec 15, 2012
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#21
Drogo,
“Cribs are gravity walls. They aren't pile driven into the ground. You can dig and set them in and they will finish "settling" themselves. Living on Fifty Point for 35 years you can trust I have helped build my share of retaining walls. Today gabion walls do the same thing. Pre cut wire fence that you wire together and fill with stone. Sit them on the beach and wave action settles them to clay base. Their weight and length stop them from rolling over.”

Drogo,by your theory, the only part of the cribs that would have been submerged by waves, would have been at the lake. I still think the cribs were pile driven in to the sand.
 

Drogo

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Feb 8, 2005
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#22
Drogo,
“Cribs are gravity walls. They aren't pile driven into the ground. You can dig and set them in and they will finish "settling" themselves. Living on Fifty Point for 35 years you can trust I have helped build my share of retaining walls. Today gabion walls do the same thing. Pre cut wire fence that you wire together and fill with stone. Sit them on the beach and wave action settles them to clay base. Their weight and length stop them from rolling over.”

Drogo,by your theory, the only part of the cribs that would have been submerged by waves, would have been at the lake. I still think the cribs were pile driven in to the sand.
David
A crib is a box. Square or rectangle. Usually filled with stone or sand. I'm not an engineer but I don't think you can pile drive a box into the sand. It's hard enough to drive pilings which they might have done to establish a line. I think you are forgetting that as they took the sand away across the sandbar they eventually got to the point that the lake and bay were coming in from both sides. The farther down they got the more current they would be dealing with. This would be trying to fill the canal back in it they didn't establish a wall on either side. Eventually that wall had to extend into the lake and the bay to form piers. We know they were using cribs because we know they were stonehooking to get rock to fill the piers. Then they were capped off with a wooden walkway. So the cribs on dry land ended up outlining the canal itself. The lake came to them they didn't go to the lake.
 

David O'Reilly

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Dec 15, 2012
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#23
Drogo
“A crib is a box. Square or rectangle. Usually filled with stone or sand. I'm not an engineer but I don't think you can pile drive a box into the sand. It's hard enough to drive pilings which they might have done to establish a line. I think you are forgetting that as they took the sand away across the sandbar they eventually got to the point that the lake and bay were coming in from both sides. The farther down they got the more current they would be dealing with. This would be trying to fill the canal back in it they didn't establish a wall on either side. Eventually that wall had to extend into the lake and the bay to form piers. We know they were using cribs because we know they were stonehooking to get rock to fill the piers. Then they were capped off with a wooden walkway. So the cribs on dry land ended up outlining the canal itself. The lake came to them they didn't go to the lake.”

Drogo, this thread seems to indicate that at some point the sides of the canal consisted of logs.
http://hamiltonbeachcommunity.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-2240.html

So I wonder if the log walls replaced the cribs, or, if they were built on the inner side of the cribs.

And if the main logs ran horizontally, then they must have been attached to verticle logs. And the bottoms of the verticle logs must have been sunk in to the bottom of the canal.

And so if the verticle logs were first pile driven in to the bottom of the canal, how then were the horizontle logs attached to the former? Particularly below the water line?
 

scotto

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#24
Attached is a picture of a crib used to block any shipping from getting close to the base of the Garden City Skyway above the Welland Canal.
Much easier to build when the water can be removed as it is in this shot.
The crib is built with wooden beams the size of railway ties and completely filled with stone.


 

David O'Reilly

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#26
Scott
“Attached is a picture of a crib used to block any shipping from getting close to the base of the Garden City Skyway above the Welland Canal.
Much easier to build when the water can be removed as it is in this shot.
The crib is built with wooden beams the size of railway ties and completely filled with stone.”

Scott, do you know how the logs on the sides of the Burlington Canal were held in place? Or do you think that the cribs themselves were built with logs? And so the sides of the canal were made of logs right from the out set?
 

scotto

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#27
I am not an expert on how the piers were built, but by judging from old photos and post cards I would say that there were many different methods of construction. Some were built very well with some pride and craftsmanship and others looked like that they just did the best they could.
Also I would imagine that the piers would get damaged from one year to the next by ice, heavy waves and fires from passing steamboats. The pictures of the better built ones have horizontal timbers laid down with notches spread through the side walls. I would guess these would interconnect with timbers heading in the opposite direction and most likely connecting to the wall on the parallel side. Another picture has round logs driven somewhat straight into the lake bed with horizontal logs making the crib, there some big gaps between the vertical log and the pier wall.
Another picture has the single bascule with a half finished pier with no deck, this pier has square timbers all vertical and they make the of the pier.





Hamilton Public Library



Hamilton Public Library




 

Drogo

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Feb 8, 2005
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#28
Great pictures Scott. The one from the lighthouse is much more detailed than the washed out one I have. You can really see the remains of the Bay side of the outlet.
 

Drogo

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#30
No the one I have the north shore (Aldershot) is so washed out that you can't make anything out. And the outlet is even more outstanding than mine. Some of the others are mine.
 

David O'Reilly

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Dec 15, 2012
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#32
Scott

"I am not an expert on the piers were built, but by judging from old photos and post cards I would say that there were many different methods of construction. Some were built very well with some pride and craftsmanship and others looked like that they just did the best they could.
Also I would imagine that the piers would get damaged from one year to the next by ice, heavy waves and fires from passing steamboats. The pictures of the better built ones have horizontal timbers laid down with notches spread through the side walls. I would guess these would interconnect with timbers heading in the opposite direction and most likely connecting to the wall on the parallel side. Another picture has round logs driven somewhat straight into the lake bed with horizontal logs making the crib, there some big gaps between the vertical log and the pier wall."



Scott, if as you say, the logs for the piers would have become damaged or caught on fire, thereby necessitating their replacement, then the piers must have been separate from the wooden cribs.

Do you know when the wooden piers were replaced with concrete ones?
 

scotto

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#33
Scott, if as you say, the logs for the piers would have become damaged or caught on fire, thereby necessitating their replacement, then the piers must have been separate from the wooden cribs.

Do you know when the wooden piers were replaced with concrete ones?
Parts from Dorothy Turcotte's book, The Sand Strip;


By the spring of 1828, the Canal was already in need of repairs and dredging. William Johnson Kerr, the late Joseph Brant's son-in-law, was the superintendent on the job. With a crew of about 25 men, he dredged the Canal to a depth of 12 feet. Then he repaired the piers which had been washed away in places. The piers were filled in with heavy stone, then decked over with planks well spiked down
Piers, lighthouse and houses at first were all made of wood. On July 18th, 1856, sparks from the steamer Ranger set fire to the pier. Before the day was over, the lighthouse and both the ferryman's and the lighthouse keeper's homes had been destroyed.

The old, burned pier and lighthouse were demolished in 1860. Unfortunately, the new pier was once again made from wood. It was always being set on fire by sparks from steamers,
sometimes in several places at once. This kept the lighthouse keeper and the ferryman very busy indeed. Sometimes the only way they could put the fire out was to rip boards from the
pier and throw them into the Canal.


 

scotto

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#34
Do you know when the wooden piers were replaced with concrete ones?
I don't have an exact date, but in one of the pictures displayed above (and attached) there is radial car travelling over a single bascule bridge, in the that picture the wooden pier are under repairs or construction. The doubling of the bridge in 1931 would of brought in a concrete piers in the middle of the new 300 foot canal, I can only assume that the new north pier would of been made of steel piles and a concrete top and that the south pier would of been replaced at the same time. I haven't seen any articles on this assumption, so until I do it is only conjecture.


Hamilton Public Library
 

David O'Reilly

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Dec 15, 2012
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#35
Scott,

“I don't have an exact date, but in one of the pictures displayed above there is radial car travelling over a single bascule bridge, in the that picture the wooden pier are under repairs or construction. The doubling of the bridge in 1931 would of brought in a concrete pier in the middle of the new 300 foot canal, I can only assume that the new north pier would of been made of steel piles and a concrete top and that the south pier would of been replaced at the same time. I haven't seen any articles on this assumption, so until I do it is only conjecture.”

Scott, these couldn’t have been the original wooden piers. The porsion of the piers that was in contact with the water would surely have roughted over 100 years.
***************
 

David O'Reilly

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Dec 15, 2012
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#37
Drogo
11-09-2013, 02:03 PM

… “The commencement of the work was very simple; wagons and carts were used to remove the sand above the water level; then a huge scow with gearing driven by relays of four horses, scooped up the sand by means of endless chains revolving on drums, to which buckets were attached in such a way that, on rising to a certain height they cast their contents into false-bottomed scows, which, alternately were loaded and discharged their burden in deep water in the bay. When a sufficiently large opening was made, cribs of timber only twelve feet in width were (sunk) and filled with stones gathered along the shore of the lake.”
Drogo 12-15-2013, 11:26 PM
David
Cribs are gravity walls. They aren't pile driven into the ground. You can dig and set them in and they will finish "settling" themselves. Living on Fifty Point for 35 years you can trust I have helped build my share of retaining walls. Today gabion walls do the same thing. Pre cut wire fence that you wire together and fill with stone. Sit them on the beach and wave action settles them to clay base. Their weight and length stop them from rolling over.”

So if it was the actual crids that were replaced in 1894, I wonder how exactly the work was done. Were there new cribs built and placed on the outer sides of the origenal ones, and then the origenal ones removed? Once the origenal cribs were removed, the wave action would allow for the settling to take place.

And if the new cribs were the same size as the origenal ones (twelve feet in width) placing them on the inner side of the origenal ones, would have reduced the width of the canal by twenty four feet.





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David O'Reilly

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Dec 15, 2012
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#38
Sorry, the 1894 Hamilton Harbour page that I included a link for in my last post, indicates that it was only the piers on the south side of the canal that were replaced at that time. So if the new cribs were the same width as the original ones (twelve feet) and if they were placed on the inner sides, the width of the canal would only have been reduced by twelve feet, not twenty four feet.
 

David O'Reilly

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#39
I wonder if there are any 1894 news papers on microfilm at the Hamilton Public Library, that would indicate exactly how the piers were replaced.
 

scotto

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#40
I notice that on the south lakeside piers, there are still cribs present that are floor of the lake. They are still filled with stone and the more stones scattered away from the new concrete pier.

 
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