CANNON, BELL AND BONES BROUGHT UP FROM THE WRECK OF THE HUSSAR.
SALVAGE OF RUSSIAN SHIPS SUNK AT SEBASTOPOL.
A very important use to which the submarine armor is often put, is that of enabling the diver to clean the bottom of a vessel, below water, while she is moving. This is a great convenience, as it saves the delay and expense of being obliged to place her in a dry dock. A rope ladder, with rungs of wood or iron, is stretched under the ship, passing down one side and up the other. It is thus drawn tight, and the diver descends. A bar, tied at each end with a rope, ending in a hook is hung by the hooks to the rungs, and gives him a seat, leaving his hands free. He may also fill his air-tight suit with air, and thus be partially sustained against the side of the ship. The sailors of the U.S. ship Colorado repaired, at Cherbourg, the injuries suffered by the monitor Miantonomoh, in five days, though the weather was rough. The French iron-plated ram, Taureau, had her bottom scraped and entirely cleaned of sea-weed and shells in 109 hours of labor, with a great increase of her speed.
CAULKING A VESSEL.
In Mobile Bay some of the most successful diving operations have been carried on. About a sunken vessel there, it became necessary to sink a row of piles, into the bed of quicksand which had gathered round her. On trial the ordinary pile-driving machine was found incompetent to do this. Under the strokes of the falling weight the elastic sand rebounded, and the pile was thrown out. This unexpected difficulty was met in a simple, but most effective way. A suction-pump was rigged up, and the hose tied to the end of a pile; when the pile touched the bottom the pump was set to work, and the suction bored a hole in the sand, into which the pile fell with a rapidity that was startling. When the pile had been sufficiently sunk, the hose was withdrawn, and the sand settling round the pile, held it as fast as though it had been cemented in.
During the late civil war the monitor Milwaukee was struck by a concealed torpedo in Mobile harbor and sunk. During the war these torpedos sunk three of the monitors in this harbor, besides several dispatch boats, which met the same fate. The Milwaukee was sunk nearly due east from the city, and during the continuance of hostilities an effort was made to rescue her armament and her machinery. Her guns cost the Government $30,000 each. A party of divers were engaged, who were chiefly mechanics and engineers, who were exempt from military service in the Confederacy, but who sympathised fully with its cause. The duty was one of singular danger, since it had not only those peculiar to submarine diving, but as she lay within range, and hostilities still continued, the divers while below, though safe there from being hit, were yet in danger of even a worse death, from the injury which might be done to the air-pump above, upon which their supply of air depended, and which was of necessity exposed.