The 75-Year-Old Whistling-Buoy Inventor Comes to Fit the Navy's 600-Ton Gate

James Bigler, the inventor of the whistling buoy in use all over the world, the builder of the mammoth steel caissons in every government dry dock in the United States, and the contractor for the caisson in the dock at Port Orchard, is in the city, a guest at the Griffith House. Mr. Bigler, though 75 years old, is still very active in mind and has a remarkably accurate memory.

This is his first visit to Puget Sound, but he is no stranger here, for every whistling buoy on the Pacific coast was made by him and the government has paid him more than $1,000,000 for materials needed at the Mare Island navy yard, San Francisco.

Mr. Bigler, accompanied by his wife, arrived in the city last Tuesday from their home at Newberg, N. Y., on the Hudson, where he has lived and been in business for the past fifty-two years. He is a snowy-bearded man of distinguished bearing, and when seen by a Post-Intelligencer reporter last evening talked readily concerning his connection with the Port Orchard dry dock. Said he:

"I came out here to see how the work was getting along and also brought ten experienced iron workers from Newberg with me to attend to the more important work. I was afraid that I couldn't find good iron workers here. Of course we will need a good many more men to complete the work, but those we will employ here. My two sons are directly in charge of the work. The caisson is now here, having arrived from around the Horn, and men are putting it together at Port Orchard and will have it finished in about three months. Do you know what a caisson looks like? Well, I'll tell you. The one at Port Orchard was built at Newberg entire, and finished, except being riveted. Then each piece was marked and the whole taken to pieces, loaded in a ship and sent to the Sound around the Horn. It looks like a ship — a big three-decker — and is 140 feet long, 24 feet beam and 36 feet deep. It is provided with rubber facing, and sets in an immense groove. Its purpose is as a gate, and it holds the water out of the dock like a bulkhead. It can be reversed and taken out entirely.

The whole weighs 600 tons, and of steel alone there are 250,000 pounds. It is provided with an engine, a boiler and a pump, which will throw 2,500 gallons of water a minute. It is provided with sixteen twenty-inch valves, through which the dock can gradually be filled with water. The keel of the caisson was laid today, and a week hence the frame will be up. It will be an immense thing, there being in timber 131,000 feet of oak for bilge blocks, keel blocks, etc."

Mr. Bigler has built the caissons for the government docks at Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Portsmouth, Va., Port Royal, S. C., and also furnished the caisson for C. P. Huntington's dock at Newport News, near Old Point Comfort. He built the dock at the Brooklyn navy yard forty-five years ago, and used in that piece of work the first stone blocks ever put in a dry dock. In 1863-54 he furnished material for the Mare Island dry dock, shipping four or five cargoes of live oak and as many more ship loads of white oak. During the civil war he built 700 gun carriages for the government, and many of them were used by Commodore Foote when he took Fort Donelson. The gun carriages used by Gen. Gilmore, who shelled Charleston, were also turned out by Mr. Bigler.

Probably the most single successful achievement of his life was the invention of the whistling buoy, which is in use in every harbor and off every coast in the world where any attempt has been made to aid navigation. Concerning this matter Mr. Bigler said:

"I brought out and secured the patent for the buoy in 1871, and the first whistling buoys on the Pacific coast, eight in number, were sent out from my shops in 1878 to San Francisco. They were sent in sections, and I had them finished in San Francisco. Since that time, however, a good many more have been put in use out here. The patent on it has now expired and I have invented a new whistling buoy which is a great improvement on the old one. I have one of the new ones on trial off Sandy Hook and another in the English channel, between Jersey and the French coast."

Mr. Bigler will leave for the East some time during the week, but intends to come to Seattle again next fall, at which time the caisson at the dry dock will be completed.