62 REPORT OF BOARD OF CONSULTING ENGINEERS, PANAMA CANAL.


meet the requirements of the Spooner Act 'Might be and is- thought to be so unsafe f or the passage of the great seagoing vessels contemplated by that act as to be altogether beyond the limit of prudent design for safe operation and administrative efficiency.
 In the course of the proceedings of the Board it transpired that during the last nine years three accidents arising from collisions between steamers in transit and the lock gates, and resulting in each case in dangerous damage to these gates, occurred in the St. Marys Falls Canal; and also that three accidents arising from the same cause and having the same result occurred in the Manchester Ship Canal in England.
 Several of these accidents were so serious that disastrous consequences were escaped by a narrow margin only. It is practically certain that if the locks upon which these accidents took place had been of the dimensions and had controlled the great differences of level contemplated for the locks of the Panama Canal, not merely serious accidents but disasters would have followed in perhaps all these cases, throwing the whole canal out of operation for a period which can not be estimated, and also wrecking the vessels in the path of the resulting flood, while the cost required to repair the damages is not within the limits of reasonable computation.
 The three accidents at St. Marys Falls Canal occurred within a period of nine years, where there is only one lockage of about 20 feet. If six locks should be adopted in a plan for the Panama Canal, each having a lift of 30 feet or more, as has been proposed in several projects, it would not be unreasonable, with an equal number of vessels, to look for six times the number of accidents in the same period of time, which would be at the rate of two per year. If groups of locks should be arranged in flights, as has also been proposed in some projects, the imminence of disastrous accidents would be greatly enhanced, as would be the amount of damage to the structures and to the vessels involved. Indeed, it is highly probable that the grave disaster of a great ocean steamship breaking through the gates of the upper lock and plunging down through those below might be realized.
 It is the unqualified judgment of the Board that the United States Government should not construct an interoceanic waterway to acconlmnodate the commerce of the world exposed to hazards of this sort. These conditions become even more serious when it is contemplated that this canal is to be used for strategic purposes, and theref ore for the interoceanic transit of vessels of war of the United States Navy.
 Consideration of the growth in size and weight of battle ships during the last ten years-and of the fact that this growth is still progressing-leads to the inevitable conclusion that in the no4 distant future armor-clad vessels of a beam of 90 feet and with a displacement of 25,000 tons may be expected. The dimensions adopted by the Board for the canal prism and for the lock chambers would admit of the passage of these vessels.
 Argument does not seem to be required to emphasize the necessity of avoiding the process of locking these ponderous and unwieldy ironclads up or down in the Panama Canal. The difficulty of handling them in the most favorable circumstances is notorious, while in the operations required for raising them in one series of locks and for dropping them down in another series the difficulty would come so perilously near impracticability that in the opinion of the Board no scheme involving it should be accepted.
 As there is no maritime canal in the United States or about its borders it is natural to regard the navigation of the St. Marys Falls Canal as exhibiting conditions practically parallel to those which would exist in the Panama Canal, but inferences drawn upon such a basis may be greatly misleading. The lock in that canal has been SO SUCCesfully operated and its administration has exhibited such gratifying results that there is danger of f orgetting that it is located in an environment of a highly special character. It is now a marked feature of the navigation route of the Great Lakes. The masters of the vessels passing this canal and lock are therefore familiar not only with every detail of the short canal in which the lock is located and of the lock itself, bt also of every circumstance of its operation. They pass to and fro with their ships every two or three weeks during the period of navigation, so that the vessels which the lock serves are almost fixed features of a dai ly routine from which there is little or no variation. Entrance to and exit from the lock becomes by constant familiarity a routine performance in which constant repeti-


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