Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/338

324 the requisite skill cast cannon and mortars, and the iron ammunition for the same, for that army which controlled them for the time being. One of the most notable events connected with the manufacture of iron during these years was the making of the great iron chain which in 1778 was stretched across the Hudson River at West Point to prevent the passage of British vessels. Lossing, in his Field Book of the Revolution, gives a very interesting account of this work, of which we can quote only the leading facts. "The iron of which this chain was constructed was wrought from ore of equal parts from the Sterling and Long mines in Orange County. The chain was manufactured by Peter Tuwnsend, of Chester, at the Sterling Iron Works in the same county, which were situated about twenty-five miles back of West Point. The chain was completed about the middle of April, 1778, and on the 1st of May it was stretched across the river and secured. It was fixed to huge blocks on each shore, and under cover of batteries on both sides of the river." "It is buoyed up," says Dr. Thacher, writing in 1780, "by very large logs of about sixteen feet long, pointed at the ends, to lessen their opposition to the force of the current at flood and ebb tide. The logs are placed at short distances from each other, the chain carried over them, and made fast to each by staples. There are also a number of anchors dropped at proper distances, with cables made fast to the chain to give it greater stability." The total weight of this chain was one hundred and eighty tons. Mr. Lossing visited West Point in 1848, and saw a portion of this famous chain, and he tells us that "there are twelve links, two clevises, and a portion of a link remaining. The links are made of iron bars, two and a half inches square, and average in length a little over two feet, and weigh about one hundred pounds each."

The manufacture of nails was one of the household industries of New England during a large part of the eighteenth century. James M. Swank, in Iron in All Ages, quotes from Nehemiah Bennet's description of the Town of Middleborough, Plymouth County, Massachusetts (1793): "Nailing, or the business of making nails, is carried on largely in the winters, by farmers and young men, who have little other business at that season of the year." Speaking of the early attempts to manufacture tacks, the same authority gives the following from the Furniture and Trade Journal: "In the queer-shaped, homely farm-houses, or the little contracted shops of certain New England villages, the industrious and frugal descendants of the Pilgrims toiled providently through the long winter months at beating into shape the little nails which play so useful a part in modern industry. A small anvil served to beat the wire or strip of iron into shape and point it; a vise worked by the foot clutched it