GIGANTIC RAFTS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 27, 15 January 1912, Page 7

GIGANTIC RAFTS.

The practice which obtains on the Pacific coast of the United States of dispatching enormous rafts of logs from Puget Sound and the Columbia. River to ports on the Californian coast is regarded with anything but favour by shipowners and shipmasters, not only on the score of danger to which the derelict rafts expose shipping, but for the no less potent reason that every one of these rafts represents so much loss in freight. It is, indeed, with the object of reducing the cost of shipment that the companies engaged in the transportation of lumber have adopted the raft system. These rafts are of gigantic dimensions. In shape they closely resemble a huge cigar, tapering to a point at both ends and attaining their greatest diameter at . the centre. The smallest of them usually contain at least 5000 pieces of timber, ranging from 80ft to 110 ft in length, and from Sin to nearly 2ft in diameter at the butt; while the biggest rival in point of overall dimensions is a large liner measuring as much as 650 ft from end to end, and the height above the water level being seldom more than about 10ft. To fasten such a raft so that it will withstand the force of the sens to which it is exposed in the trip down the coast calls for no little engineering skill. In order to pile the timber a huge skeleton or shipway is constructed. This is practically a cradle, which is moored in the water adjacent to the boom where the raft timber is confined. By means of a boom derrick the poles are lifted from the boom singly and placed in the proper position in the cradle, being so adjusted as to overlap each other. Sometimes the woric of; filling the cradle occupies several months. After completion the raft is 'wrapped in iron chains, lashed around it at intervals ranging from 12ft to 20ft apart. "Wire rope is also stretched around the raft between the chain sections, so that when the wrapping is completed the mass of logs is bound securely together. The cradle in which the raft has been . formed consists of two sections, held together at the bottom by bolts, to each of which is attached a rope. When all is ready for the launch it is only necessary to pull on these ropes, when the bolts slip back in their sockets and the sections of the cradle fall apart and are towed away. Two powerful steamers are usually employed to pilot the raffs down the coast. One of the largest of these strange craft contained no less than 800,000 linear feet of lumber.