The hard, monotonous labour of working the dredges began once more.
The water leaked steadily into the little craft, but Tom Edwards dashed it out by hat-fulls, as he had never worked in all his life--not even at the dredges under the eye of Jim Adams.
His hands were roughened and scarred from hard work, with the broadening and flattening at the finger tips acquired through handling the heavy irondredges and through knotting ropes.
Into the channel thus dug the dredges were floated.
The dredges were afterwards set aside for the ordinary beam-trawls used in shallow water around our own coasts.
When it was necessary to remove some surface soil before there was water enough for the dredges to float, it was done by the natives of Lake Menzaleh, a hardy and peculiar race, quite at home in digging canals or building embankments.
Larger dredges were subsequently made for use from yawls or cutters.
The dimensions of the first dredges were as follows: Frame about 12 in.
Off to the right across a mud flat one of the dredges apparently had done just that: a swarm of men and natives were hard at work dragging it up again.
Intensive placering is now the order of things and the marvelous increase in the use of dredges attests the success which these "gold ships" have attained.
When it was finished the dredges moved back into the Canal, the entrance closed, and the work of unwatering the lock site began.
As the dredges excavated the material from the cut, they deposited it on the site of the shipyard and raised the elevation several feet, so the buildings were only the usual height above the ground.
And through this tangled mass the dredges had to fight their way.
The dredges would drain the surrounding subsoil, but that wouldn't get beyond a certain depth.
So through Bayou Bienvenu a small excavator was sent to cut a passage into the turning basin, to allow the mighty 22-inch dredges to get in and work outwards towards the lake and the lock site.
While the dredges were at work a wooden sheet piling cofferdam was driven completely around the lock, and about 125 feet from the edge of the bank, to cut off the first quicksand stratum.
Even before the piledrivers and dredges were on the job, the millions were being counted for investment in the city whose remarkable enterprise had won the admiration of the country.
You can't work your old dredges in the winter, anyhow, why don't you wait till spring.
At these places boring was carried on means of steel rods to a depth of one hundred and forty feet, while the dredges were busy exploring the vicinity of the sand bank.
The contrast between this twentieth century syndicate with its steam dredges and electric lights, and that primitive age when the MacLeans were harassing Captain Adolpho Smith from their fort beside the bay, is fairly astonishing.
A good-sized boat can work two dredges at one time, one from each quarter.
A dredging company is now constructing, at Seattle, two dredges of the suction type to operate upon the Yukon river.
It is well to remember that these forms of dredges are, in many positions, economical of operation.
The dredges vary in size and capacity, but are now built of large size and great strength.
This latter is said to have notably proved the case with the dredges tried upon the Frazer and Ouesenelle rivers.
Dredges should be built of determined capacities, and should be designed to suit the conditions under which they are to operate.
These objections would not obtain under certain conditions, and it would seem quite possible that conditions might be found existing where the suction dredges might be arranged to do good work.
During the last few years, a number of dredges have been operated in California, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana and Colorado, but with poor success.
In the evolution of the dredge into the elevator or chain-bucket machine, now the popular form, the various kinds of dredges were given trials.
The contents of all thedredges is said to be the result or catch of the "drift.
Two kinds of dredges are used, the "scraper" for scalloping in the eel grass and the "slider" for clean surface.
In some dredges the blade is rigid, but in the majority the blade hangs loose.
Each catch is culled out while the dredges are being pulled along on the back "drift," and the board is again clear for the next catch.
The dredges are similar to those used at Edgartown.
Each of these dredges is said by the scallopers using them to be the best; but for all-round work the "scraper" seems the most popular.
Fourteen men go in 8 boats, using from six to eight dredges per boat.
These dredges have the blade set downward firmly, and have a chain bottom of iron rings.
The dredges used at Dennisport are similar to the Chatham dredge.
With sail, culling can be done whendredges are overboard.
Evidently this form was never especially successful, possibly because these dredges could not be dragged by sail boats.
Two men are usually required to tend from 6 to 8 dredges in a large cat boat, but often one man alone does all the work.
Each power boat uses six to eight, which are held out by "spreaders," poles extending from the sides of the boat, in order that the dredges may cover more ground and not trail behind one another.
Both dredges and "pushers" are employed in the scallop fishery of the town.
The Government has twelve large dredgesat work all the time, keeping the navigation channel open.
Dredges were put to work immediately widening the channel at Cucaracha slide in Gaillard Cut, so that within a short time the canal was ready for use throughout its entire length.
The depth of water at which the Bucket Ladder dredges is regulated by the Hoisting Shears and Chain Barrel D D, driven by shafting E E from the Engines.
Dredges are employed to deepen the channel, but those thus far used are small, and not much has been accomplished.
Having completed the walls, dredges were set to work, and the area has been deepened enough to enable the largest vessels navigating the Mediterranean to find safe anchorage.
Some dredges have a capacity under favourable conditions of over 2000 cub.
The dredgesused in California are almost exclusively of the endless-chain bucket or steam-shovel pattern.
In working auriferous river-beds, dredges have been used with considerable success in certain parts of New Zealand and on the Pacific slope in America.
The dredges had only a few hundred bushels at hand; in less than forty-eight hours the engines must shut down, unless he could get the fuel to camp.
But this year our dredges have torn up this whole section and have made the creek banks so miry and disagreeable that no picnic parties will come this way till the contract is finished and the turf has had time to grow again.
Then add up his memoranda of time made by the big dredge; and also the daily record of the two little dredges up at the laterals.
On the other hand, if we bring the dredges down here and start in full tilt to deepen the channel, we may wreck our machines--and we may not.
As soon as he finishes all the lateral excavation, he will bring the dredges down to the main ditch and start in to deepen the channel to its final depth.
The dredges have big search-lights, and puff along by night, regardless.
The dredgesbegin by digging a series of canals; one enormous one, called the main ditch, which runs the length of the district and empties into some large body of water; in this case, the Illinois River.
His coming heartened us all up; all of us; even to the dredges themselves.
Our dredges are all anchored, right yonder, trim as a gimlet.
Where stretches of water are sandy and muddy, compressed air dredges a channel by stirring up deposits at the bottom.
To-day powerful hydraulic dredges discharge through piping with flexible joints such as Watt devised; in one instance this piping is 5700 feet in length.
It gives equally good service as the pins and bushings ofdredges of the bucket-ladder type, lifting gold-bearing gravels and sands.
For at least that length of time the two steam dredges have been handling absolutely barren gravel, and the men in charge of them have had orders to go on dredging and say nothing.
It was even whispered about that the two huge gold dredges recently installed were not paying the expenses of operating them.
Continuous dredges are of four types--the ladder, the hydraulic, the stirring, and the pneumatic dredges.
The stirring dredges are those employed in the excavation of soils composed of very finely divided particles; they agitate the soils and the material thus brought into suspension is carried away by the action or current of water.
The pneumatic dredges are those in which the material from the bottom is forced into the suction tube and thence into the discharging pipe, by the action of continuous jets of compressed air turned upward into the tube.
Or we may divide all dredges on the basis of whether they are self-propelling or non-propelling.
Use the method employed to explain dredges (page 170) to write a theme that shall discriminate briefly the various types of the following: 1.
The power of these huge dredges was illustrated when one of them, while using its ten-yard bucket, picked up an enormous bowlder weighing forty tons.
Two of the larger dredgeseach had a capacity of forty-five hundred cubic yards in their bins or enough to load a train about a mile long, composed of 175 cars.
Two enormous dipper dredges were built, each provided with a dipper that had a capacity of fifteen cubic yards or about twenty tons at a single lift.
In very soft swampy regions dredges have to be used.
When work on the slides of the Panama Canal had proceeded far enough to admit of using dredges in place of steam shovels material progress was made.
While the great Isthmian highway will be completed far enough ahead to be ready to handle all traffic that offers long before the official opening date, it will, on the other hand, never reach that stage where dredges will not be needed.
These big dredges were built with great bins in their holds and equipped with powerful 20-inch centrifugal pumps.
This includes the cost of operating a number of dredges which will have to be maintained in connection with the canal work.
Some of the dredges were attended by ordinary barges which were towed out to sea by tugs and dumped.
These dredges took out material more cheaply than any other kind of excavating machinery used on the Isthmus.
It will cost approximately a million dollars a year to maintain this department, of which three-fourths will be required for the operation of the dredges and other equipment for keeping the canal open.
Hundreds of acres of low, marshy land have been filled up, either with mud from the suction dredges and the hydraulic excavators, or with spoil from Culebra Cut.
Dredges and locomotives that stood in the jungle for 20 years were rebuilt by the Americans at less than 10 per cent of their first cost, and did service during the entire period of construction.
The stationary suction dredges at the two ends of the canal were used to pump up the soft material and to force it out through long pipe lines into the swamps or into the hydraulic cores of the earth dams.
And so it is that the dredges will be met by every ship that steers its course from Cristobal to Balboa, or from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
As the work neared completion, however, it was found advisable to let the water come further inland, so that the dredges could extend the field of their activities.
While some dredges and other equipment were purchased in Europe, foreign purchases were the exception rather than the rule.
The bucket ladder works through a well formed in the center of the vessel, and dredges to a depth of 33 ft.
The large number of machines that are still in the experimental stage of development would indicate that the best results attainable from this class of dredges have not yet been accomplished.
Two of these dredges are engaged on the improvement of the Potomac River at Washington, D.
Some day you'll see this whole country worked over by them big power dredges they've got down in Californy.
I almost fancied I could see the monster dredges ploughing up the valley, where now men panted at the windlass.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "dredges" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
