Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 2, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1858 — Steamboats over the Rapids of the St. Lawrence. [ARTICLE]

Steamboats over the Rapids of the St. Lawrence.

Thei fine steamers Canada and America j have been brought safely down the rapids ■ of the St. Lawrence to the ocean. They cost half a million of dollars, and were found i to be worth nothing above the rapids. In passing down these, they made some leaps' seven or eight feet deep. For vessels three I hundred feet long and six or eight feet deep, this was regarded as a neck-or-nothing experiment. The first rapids, the Long South, are seven miles long, and extremely rough, the boiling water heaving up from eight to twelve feet high, and dashing about the rocks like the ocean in a violent storm, the passage was made in fifteen minutes. The rapids of Split Rock were next in the way. Here it was necessary to make a curve almost at right angles, within a space only two thirds the length of the same. The skillful pilot, John Rankin, in the Long Sault Rapids, with the dexterity of a skillful i player at billiards making his carom, let the bow of the boat strike the rock forcibly on . her . starboard side, thereby throwing her' stern into the center of the channel by the ! only practicable method and permitting her to pass through in safety. Next “the Cedar Rapids were reached. They were passed at the same rate, the boat striking alike aft and forward, but no mate*; rial injury was sustained. The Lachine Rapids, near Montreal, were j the next. Here the Canada again struck. | The rocks here are exceedingly bold, and present a rough and ragged surface, but were passed in safety, and in a short space of time j the vessel and her bold mariners glided plac- i idly and exultingly through the abutments i of the Victoria Bridge.