The Dry Dock That Would Make Puget Sound a Naval Power

PORT ORCHARD DOCK.

Squire's Speech on the Naval Appropriation.

The forcible presentation of the commercial and military importance of Puget Sound.

In the United States Senate, during consideration of the naval appropriation bill for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1897, Senator Watson C. Squire of Washington spoke on the amendment concerning the dry dock at the Puget Sound naval station. The committee proposed to strike out the words “to be made immediately available” and to reduce the amount appropriated. Senator Squire said:

“Mr. President: By the indulgence of the Senate I should like to say a few words on the subject of the committee amendment. In 1891 Congress passed a law which was approved March 2, 1891, authorizing the construction of a dry dock on Puget Sound to cost not to exceed $700,000. This was in addition to the $10,000 appropriated for the purchase of land. It was contemplated to have been a very good purchase. There ought to have been seven or eight hundred acres purchased. It might have been purchased at a very moderate price at that time. But there was nothing that the extreme Far West could do but to be thankful for what it could get, and we were very glad to get the amount which we obtained at that time.

“The new state of Washington, which came into the Union in the year 1889, had shown marvelous development and growth. As indicated by the census of 1890, it had then a population of about 700,000. It had, in a comparatively short space of time, expanded into a great state having a city, as shown by the census, of 42,000 population, and several cities with a population in that vicinity.

“Then it was taken into consideration that the state had great resources as routes to the cereal production; as to wheat, having a capacity of production of 20,000,000 bushels per annum, according to the best statistics obtainable, when this area should be properly cultivated; having great forests of merchantable timber, surpassing anything in the known world in that regard. This one state has more valuable timber than all the forests of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, and from that clear through to the eastern shore of Maine, combined.

“It has vast coal mines. It has more than 10,000 acres in superficial area of deposits of coal, and those great deposits of coal are now being developed. It has wonderful resources in the line of steel producing iron—iron ore that is capable of producing the best Bessemer steel. It has the flux, the lime, the coking coal, all those indicating a great future empire. And the Congress of the United States wisely decided, in the year I have mentioned, to establish there a great dry dock, the foundation for a great navy yard. It is now denominated in naval parlance the Puget Sound naval station.

“I may say in passing, and I think I ought to say it in justice to the people of Washington and to the men who have invested their money in great enterprises, that Puget Sound possesses the most important and most transcontinental railway connections of any part of the United States on the Pacific coast. There are four distinct transcontinental lines terminating on Puget Sound, entirely independent of each other.”

Senator Squire described the dry dock as “the greatest dry dock that has ever been constructed or commenced by the United States government.” He said it was “the greatest dry dock that exists on the continent of America,” one of the largest in the world, with a length of 600 feet, a width of 100 feet, and a depth of 30 feet. He argued that, considering its size and character, “this is the cheapest dry dock ever constructed in the world.”

He warned that if the words “to be made immediately available” were struck out, work would stop immediately and the contractors could not be paid until after June 30. He said the Secretary of the Navy had advised that suspension would probably ruin the firm doing the work. He also urged that funds be provided for dredging the entrance, an office building, clearing the station grounds, officers' quarters, wharves, superintendence and roads—improvements the Navy Department had estimated as necessary to put the dock into use.

In the course of his remarks Squire praised the climate and resources of Puget Sound, quoted Admiral Wilkes on the excellence of its harbors, and described the fisheries. “I wander along the docks in the city of Seattle,” he said, “and I see an Italian there—the Italians go everywhere in the line of fish vending—having spread out before him perhaps two or three hundred of those magnificent fish. I ask the price of them—great fish, perhaps two or three feet in length—and he tells me he will sell them to me at two for a quarter.”

The Senate rejected the amendment to strike out the words “to be made immediately available.” The appropriation was then adjusted in the committee amendment, preserving funds for the continuation of the dry dock and its necessary adjuncts.