Calvin Brown Letter 23 May 1859
Civil Engineer’s Office
Navy Yard Gosport
May 23 1859
Sir,
I have to make in reference to the revision of the specifications for the Landing and Piers at Fort Norfolk, required by the Bureau letter, that it will be necessary to make some further examination at the proposed side before some of the specified particulars can be estimated. I shall forthwith direct the necessary observations to be made.
The matters thus involved are the dredging and piling, and the reason of their not being specified in more detail, is in my opinion, steadily familiar by the experience acquired in the similar work of the Quay Wall at the Yard. The character of the bottom has been found so variable and so impossible to be determined before it is got at by actual operations upon it, except by the expensive preliminary of boring, that we have always judged of the necessary quantity or rather depth of dredging by the tenacity of the material as shown in the executions that is, where it was required below the point I joined for the floating of us vessels, and in the trenches required for the piling. In very soft places we have dredged upwards of 12 feet, and in harder spots not more than 6 feet below where the
Second page missing until it can be copied again from the National Archives.
Very Respectfully,
your obedient servant,
Calvin Brown
Civil Engineer
Captain Charles H Bell
Navy Yard Gosport
Fort Norfolk Documents
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Source of Information
National Archives, Record Group 71 Bureau of Yards and Docks
Letters Recieved from Commandants of Navy Yards -- Norfolk
April 4 1858 - June 26 1860
Box No. 159B, Entry 5