of the plates are 4 inches wide, and riveted with 3/4 inch rivets, spaced 2-1/4 inch apart center to center.  The keel and stem are both in one piece, as shown, and to this the garboard strake is to be fastened.  The bilge pieces are riveted on to the bilge, and made of 9 inches by 4-1/2 inches by 9/16 inch T-iron.  A wooden fender, 4 inches by 4 inches wood, is fitted on both sides of hull, running from stern to stern, by 3 inches by 3-1/2 inches by 7/16 inch L-iron top and bottom with the sheer as shown.  The hull from water line falls in as shown, so as to describe at midships an arc of 4 feet 6 inches, and a circular deck of 1/8 inch plate is riveted on the hull.  There are two man-holes, each 16 inches diameter in the clear, placed in end plates of the circular deck as shown, and provided with covers 3/8 inch thick, secured by twenty screws 3/4 inch diameter.  The edge of each manhole is stiffened by a welded iron ring.  The surface of the mooring link that comes in contact with the shackle and mooring chain is steeled.  The gas holder rests upon a plate bent up on each side, and riveted to the keelson, and is prevented from rolling by four gusset plates, with two short pieces of angle iron riveted thereto at the ends and coming in contact with the holder, and at the ends by angular plates, and angle iron riveted on each side and riveted to the keelson.  The superstructure consists of four legs of angle iron 2-1/2 inches by 2-1/2 inches by 5/16 inch, the upper ends of the legs being attached to a square flanged plate for supporting the lighting apparatus.  Four wooden battens of pitch pine, 4 inches by 1-1/2 inches, and bolted on to each cant of the angle iron superstructure, with 7/8 inch galvanized iron bolts and nuts.

[Illustration:  GAS LIGHT BUOY.]

* * * * *

PROJECT FOR A ROADSTEAD AT HAVRE.

The present port of Havre is absolutely insufficient to answer the ever increasing requirements of commerce.  Its entrance, which is too narrow and not deep enough, does not permit steamers to go in, come out, and perform their evolutions with the rapidity required by our epoch.  So they are gradually abandoning our port, and going to load and unload at Anvers and elsewhere.  A large number of wise heads, who are anxious about the future of this port and our national interests, have devoted themselves to finding a means of enlarging it, not by dredging new basins, which would prove ruinous to the budget and useless in twenty years, but by installing a true roadstead at the entrance to the present basins.

[Illustration:  FIG 1.—­PLAN OF THE PROJECTED ROADSTEAD AT HAVRE.]

Upon the maps of the hydrographic service may be seen, under the name of the Little Roadstead, a vast extent of sea nearly two kilometers wide by three to four in length, bounded upon one side by the heights of Heve and St. Adresse, and upon the other by the rocky line of Eclat and of the heights of the roadstead (Fig. 1).  This Little Roadstead, so called, in order to become a genuine one, would have to be protected against the great waves of the open sea.  To thus protect it, to close it as quickly and as cheaply as possible—­that is the problem.