The Anaconda Goes Into Elliott Bay to Eat the Flats

The repairs on the big dredger Anaconda, which is to do excavation work for the south canal, have been nearly completed, and this evening at high tide, between 5 and 6 o'clock, the huge, ungainly vessel will be launched. Yesterday the workmen at Moran's foundry were putting on the finishing touches. The outside was being painted a whitish-gray, the boilers were being set in order, and the immense spud rack at the stern was being made ready for active operations.

After being launched the Anaconda will receive considerable more attention as to minor details, and then she will be in first-class trim to pump up sand from the flats. The dredger will be ship-shape several days before the pipe line will have been laid.

A. L. Horner, manager of the Bowers Dredging Company, which has the contract for filling in the flats and excavating for the canal, was keeping a close eye on proceedings yesterday. He says that the company will tomorrow start to drive piles for the pipe line, and that the pipe will arrive before many days. After the work has progressed and a bank has been raised above the water, the pipe will be laid along that; but until then a line of piles will be a necessity.

The heaviest piece of machinery yet to be put into the dredger is an immense pump, which will weigh about fifteen tons. It will arrive from Portland Monday or Tuesday of next week. In form it looks much like a large turbine set upright, and it devours sand as an ordinary pump takes in water. The pumps soon yield to the continued friction of sand and water, and the one used on the Swinomish, now lying on a dock near the foundry, although of solid iron two inches thick, is honeycombed as if it had been attacked by adamantine teredoes and scored as if by glacial action. The sands of the Swinomish are coarse and contain a great deal of quartz, and in five weeks the grind of the little particles had told so badly on the pump that it was cased up. The sands of Elliott bay contain comparatively little silica, and it is thought the pumps will last much longer here than on the Swinomish.

After the Anaconda is in trim she will take a position to the southwest of Moran Bros., near the site of an old dock belonging to the Puget Sound Alaska Steamship Company. The location is fairly on the edge of the east waterway. The big dredger will from that point slowly work along the line of the waterway toward the Duwamish.

Before the Anaconda has been busy very long the Python, the dredger now being boxed up at Astoria, will be here to assist in operations. The Python is half again as large as the Anaconda. It is thought she will cross the Columbia bar July 8, as settled weather is expected at that time, and immediately on her arrival she will be put on the dry dock for a thorough overhauling.

Although neither of the dredgers is yet active, a great deal of work has been done on the flats. Day before yesterday the boom of 800 piles arrived from Hood canal, and yesterday Howard & Eagan began driving piles on the bulkhead line beginning just south of Jennings' stone yard. A triple row of piles was started, and before dark last evening had been extended quite a distance to the south. When the fill begins a great quantity of fir and cedar brush will be needed, and it will be obtained by the waterway company as fast as required.

For some time past Engineer Savage of the waterway company has been taking soundings of the parts of the bay to be filled, in order to find out the exact fill to be required, and he has up to date gone over about 100 acres. The soundings are taken every ten feet, and now the planking over a portion of the flats contains hundreds of augur holes where measurements have been made. Mr. Savage is accompanied by W. N. Chase, who has been appointed by the commissioner of public lands to verify the soundings. The question of the soundings is important, as on it depends the amount of money to be assessed by the waterway company against the reclaimed lands.

While this has been going on the cross-sectioning work of the surveying party under Deputy County Surveyor A. G. Mosier has been nearing completion, and it is thought that surveying on contract No. 3 will be finished up toward the end of this week. The tide lands bordering on Commercial street south of the bunkers are now divided up into twenty-foot squares. The line of the east waterway and of the bulkhead is marked out by numerous red flags. Much of the surveying has been extremely unpleasant and difficult, particularly of the flats under the buildings and planking just south of the bunkers. Mr. Mosier says that under the roadway there are hundreds of logs piled upon each other in a confusing mass, and they are as slippery as a greased pole. The surveyors wore shoes with heavy nails in the soles, and got along in the wilderness of logs as best they could. Operations have been retarded to some extent by the tides, and the last of the work will be done during low water at the end of this week. The surveyors will then be prepared to take up the other contracts.