War on the Teredo Worm
New experimental methods are required to protect wharf pilings from Puget Sound's destructive wood-boring pests.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The coppered piles driven last year in the wharf of the C. & P. S. R. R. Co. have not turned out as well as expected. In fact, the copper with which they were clothed has proved in many cases, if not all, no protection whatever against the destructive teredo. If anything, it has appeared to have made the piles the more sweet and attractive to the little borer. To supply their places new piles are being put in by a novel process. Being impossible to get a pile driver to work in the big warehouse, a forcing device is resorted to. A chain is placed over the top of the pile, and by means of blocks and a steam engine an immense downward pressure is brought to bear, the pile being hauled, as it were, down into the mud of the bottom of the bay.
“If anything, it has appeared to have made the piles the more sweet and attractive to the little borer.”
The teredo (a wood-boring mollusk) caused millions of dollars in damage to maritime infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest for decades. This story captures the industrial ingenuity of the 1880s as Seattle scrambled to maintain its critical waterfront commerce.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.