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Dock Management Progress Section How Successful Dock Operators Have Met Problems of Giving Best Service to Ships MEMPNIS Al At Left—Location of the Port of Beaumont, Texas. At Right—Turning Basin, Beaumont Harbor. Beaumont Plans for Further Improvements as Ocean Port mont, Texas, spent a long time to persuade their fellow townsmen that Beaumont could be made a real deep water port. There were those who said: “Well, it might be done, but we’ve got to be shown.” And they have been shown, for today Beaumont has a thirty-foot channel to the sea, and her 1926 traffic of 6,473,864 tons is something to be justly proud of for one so young, Beaumont as a port being hardly ten years old. About eighteen or twenty years ago two events of marine nature occurred which interested Beaumonters. One was the capturing of an unfortunate whale at Port Arthur, twenty-two miles away. The whale died and was put on exhibition, and almost every- body in Beaumont went to see it. They could smell it anyhow on a windy day, so they figured that they might as well go and take a look av it: The author, Ben Sykes Woodhead, is pub- licity director of the chamber of commerce, Beaumont, Texas. A FEW farsighted citizens of Beau- 32 By Ben Sykes Woodhead “The other marine event was the landing of the S. S. Nicargua at Beaumont, this vessel being the first steamship ever to visit the Southeast Texas city. At the time she came to Beaumont, where she lifted a cargo of lumber, she was drawing less than ten feet of water, and she could not have been much more than 200 feet in length. Of course, the whole town turned out to gaze upon this monarch of the deep, but many were somewhat disappointed, having heard that steamships in some places, were 500 feet long. In: fact; it. is’; ‘doubtful = if. - the NICARAGUA made as profound an im- pression upon the general populace as did the Port Arthur whale. But whatever the general populace might have’ thought, nevertheless the com- ing of the NICARAGUA lifted the veil of the future for a few men of vision in Beaumont, and their efforts to secure deep water for Beaumont rapidly as- sumed definite shape. When the other residents of Beaumont saw that these port pioneers meant business they be- MARINE REVIEW—October, 1927 gan to do a little serious thinking themselves, and before long the whole community was pretty well of one mind that the Neches river possessed wonderful possibilities as an inland harbor. Federal aid was sought. First the government virtually told Beaumont to attend to its oil refining and rice crops, and that such a thing as port development was too remote and im- probable to be wasting time thinking about. But the leaders of the Beau- mont element conceived the idea of a navigation district, and voted bonds for ‘harbor improvement and agreed to match the federal government dollar for dollar in the matter of deepening the channel and in otherwise provid- ing port facilities. Bonds were voted in the exact amount ,of engineers’ estimates, something over $498,000 and are said to have been the first bonds in the United States voted for navigation purposes except those is- sued by the State of New York for the Erie canal. Beaumont’s harbor today is fresh-