on Churchill, William L. Wright, C. Donovan, E.
L. Corthell (who was as obliging as he was helpful), Estill McHenry and
John A. Ubsdell, Mrs. Susan F. Stevens, and especially my mother--to
whose help and encouragement this Life of her father is due.

L. H.

ROCKPORT, MASS., July 30, 1900.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. EARLY TRAINING 1

II. THE GUNBOATS 22

III. THE BRIDGE 49

IV. THE JETTIES 75

V. THE SHIP-RAILWAY 105

JAMES B. EADS

I

EARLY TRAINING

James Buchanan Eads was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, May 23, 1820.
Both the Eads family, who came from Maryland, and his mother's people,
the Buchanans, who were originally Irish, were gentlefolk; but James's
father never was very prosperous. The son, however, went to school, and
he showed early a very special love for machinery, observing with great
interest everything of that kind that he came upon. For a while the
family lived in Cincinnati; from there they removed in 1829 to
Louisville. In those days, when steamboats were the best of
conveyances, the Ohio River formed a natural highway between the two
towns. On the trip the small boy of nine hung around the engine of the
boat, considering it with so much wonder and admiration that finally
the engineer, who found him an apt pupil, explained the various parts
of the mechanism to him.

He really had understood his lesson well, for two years later, in the
little workshop that his father had fitted up for him, he made a small
engine which ran by steam. Besides he made models of sawmills,
fire-engines, steamboats, and electrotyping machines. Except such
chance instruction as that which he found on the boat, he had had no
teaching in mechanics, but worked with the ingenuity of many a bright
boy; for he is by no means the only one who ever took apart and put
together the family clock, or even a lever-watch, with no other tool
than a penknife. One of his inventions, which shows not so much his
talent as his true boyishness, was a small box-wagon, open only
underneath and with a hole in front, which, suddenly produced before
his mother and sisters, ran mysteriously across the room. The motive
power concealed within this agreeable toy was found to be a live rat.

So much is often said of the precocity of youthful geniuses, that it is