Mr. Thuillard-Froideville, completely renouncing masonry dikes as being
too costly and taking too long to construct, proposes to inclose the Havre
roadstead by means of floating breakwaters. As we have already seen, the
use of these between Cape Heve and the Eclat shoals had already been
proposed in 1845. As the project was abandoned, the models of these
breakwaters are rare.
In Bouniceau's "Marine Constructions" we find a curious figure, a sort of
open framework of clumsy form anchored in a singular manner, and
surmounted by rooms for watchmen, semaphores, posts for the shipwrecked,
etc. It is, indeed, the most complicated and most impracticable type that
could be imagined.
Mr. Lewis' model, which was exhibited last year at the International
Fisheries Exhibition, was, on the contrary, one of the simplest. It
consisted of a strong piece of wood of nearly triangular section, the
sharpest angle of which, being turned oceanward, was designed to cut the
waves and cause them to break over it (Fig. 2). If, by favor of divine
Providence, this breakwater, which presents absolutely plane surfaces to
the shock and pressure of the waves, is not broken to fragments in the
first tempest, it will certainly acquit itself of the _role_ for which the
inventor destined it.
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