Raising the Warhawk from the Depths
A complex maritime engineering feat underway at Port Discovery to salvage a sunken vessel.
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The wrecking steamer Whitelaw has been for several weeks trying to raise the sunken Warhawk at Port Discovery. That heavy vessel of 1600 or 2000 tons burden had been stranded in 30 feet of water. The gearing with which the Whitelaw works proved to be too light, so they left her for a time and sent on to San Francisco for heavier apparatus. They raised the Warhawk easily enough with the 'camels' half full of water, but they could not haul her ahead. These 'camels' are huge, air-tight tanks, which are filled with water and sunk at low tide and then lashed to the object. As the tide raises they pump the water out of the tanks and thus create a temporary vacuum, and this raises with enormous force. It will be about three or four weeks before the ancient blockade runner will be elevated into daylight.
“These 'camels' are huge, air-tight tanks, which are filled with water and sunk at low tide and then lashed to the object.”
Maritime salvage was a major industrial industry in the 19th-century Puget Sound, often involving sophisticated, improvised engineering. The 'camels' method described here illustrates the sheer scale of the struggle between human technology and the deep waters of the Sound—a struggle that defined the era's port development.
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