James
B. Eads was a prominent 19th
Century civil engineer
who was based in St.
Louis most of his long career. The mark of his work can still be found on
the Mississippi
River more than a century after his death in 1887. Florence
Dorsey’s 1947
biography,
Road to the Sea, recounts his life
and accomplishments.
Eads came to St. Louis with his family in 1833 at the age of
13. They were coming by river from Louisville,
Kentucky, to set up shop in greener pastures ahead of his father, Col.
Thomas Clark Eads, who moved westward from one failed venture to the next.
The ship that carried them caught fire just as they arrived in St. Louis and
all their possessions burned up with it.
The family needed the support of the enterprising boy, so he had no
opportunity to go to school. He read voraciously, though, borrowing books from
an employer, Barret
Williams, whose collection included many books on scientific
and mechanical
subjects.
Eads decided to stay in St. Louis when his family
moved upriver to Iowa.
He was on his own at age 17, but maturing into a man who would have success as
an engineer, businessman
and builder.
Eads career began to flourish when, at age 22, he designed and had
built a boat with a diving bell. He eventually launched a fleet of bell boats
that supported his salvage business. He salvaged wrecks and cargo from the
Mississippi and its tributaries. He spent a lot of time in the river and began
to know it very well.
By the time the Civil War
broke out he had retired from salvaging and enjoying his wealth, but he risked
his own fortune to secure the Mississippi River for the Union. He built
ironclad gunboats to guard the river and attack Confederate fortifications.
America’s military leaders weren’t sure what to make of them at first, but as
the war progressed his ships were in great demand.
Eads found it frustrating to deal with Washington
politicking
and bureaucracy, especially in the U.S. Army. In
his post-war endeavors he regularly had opposition from the Army Corps
of Engineers and its chief, Andrew A.
Humphreys.
These ventures were daring feats of engineering that were aimed at
improving the commerce of the Mississippi valley. He built the world’s first
steel arch bridge at St. Louis that would connect the city to the east by railroad (and
got soaked by his contractor, Andrew
Carnegie, while he was at it). He opened a route through the mud at the
mouth of the Mississippi River that gave passage from the middle of the country
to the ocean and helped make New Orleans
a major port. In both these efforts he faced opposition and meddling from the
Corp of Engineers.
In his last days he proposed to build a railroad across Mexico’s
Tehuantepec isthmus to permit shorter passage from the Atlantic (i.e.,
the Mississippi) to the Pacific Ocean.
His proposal was a serious alternative to Ferdinand
de Lesseps’ Panama Canal.
Though others took up the cause, Eads’ ship railroad proposal practically died
with him. The Panama Canal didn’t fare much better at the time; the United
States didn’t take over the project until 1904 and it didn’t
open until 1914,
de Lesseps’ plan for a tide-level canal with no locks having been abandoned.
As an engineer and Missourian, I’m
fascinated by Eads and his extraordinary career. I would recommend Dorsey’s book to anyone
looking for an interesting and little-known bit of history.
If you’re interested in this book, you also be interested in
Dorsey, Florence. Road to the
Sea: The Story of James B. Eads and the Mississippi River. New York: Rinehart &
Company, 1947.
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