THE BACKGROUND OF HARBOR
OF SHELTER
DELAWARE BREAKWATER 1822
- 1869
The Philadelphia
Inquirer of Saturday, 8 October, 1955 reports the Philadelphia
district office of U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers supplied the background on the
Delaware Breakwater which
ended years of tragic shipwrecks in the Delaware Bay
and Cape Henlopen area.
Congress appropriated
$22,700 to survey Delaware Bay near Cape Henlopen to
find a site for a harbor
of shelter in 1822. Six years later in 1828 work began with
the
appropriation of $
250,000 under plans of a board of commissioners appointed by
Congress, just inside the
bay off Cape Henlopen . Two massive walls of “ riprap “ ,
large heavy stone set loosely in the waters to form a
foundation, the breakwater, which would
afford a safe anchorage
during gale winds from the north and east. The lesser pile of
stone,
called the ice breaker,
to protect ships from northwest gales and ice flows in winter.
Completed in 1869 at
$2,193,103.70, 892, 530 gross tons of stone was used, stones
from ¼ ton to 7 tons, the smaller being the bulk of the mass,
larger one on the outside.
The breakwater is 2558
feet long, the icebreaker 1350 feet long. The width of the
base 160 feet and top 26 feet, and are 14 feet above mean low
sea water.
The 'gap' between the
breakwater and ice breaker was closed in an 1882 project.
Abstract: The
Philadelphia Inquirer , Saturday, 8 October 1955.
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