cruise eastbound on the canal
cruise westbound on the canal
- Lake Washington Ship Canal (Seattle) (historylink.org)
The Lake Washington Ship Canal’s opening was celebrated on July 4, 1917, exactly 63 years after Seattle pioneer Thomas Mercer (1813-1898) first proposed the idea of connecting the saltwater of Puget Sound to the freshwater of Lake Washington via Lake Union. For five decades following Mercer’s suggestion, local citizens, business leaders, government officials, military officers, and entrepreneurs discussed where to build the connection and how to pay for it. Finally, after Hiram M. Chittenden (1858-1917) took charge of the Seattle District of the Army Corps of Engineers in 1906, plans were made and federal funding obtained. The ship canal Chittenden designed consisted of two cuts, the Fremont Cut between Salmon Bay and Lake Union and the Montlake Cut between Lake Union and Lake Washington, and a set of locks at the west end of Salmon Bay. The canal’s construction lowered the water level of Lake Washington by nine feet and raised that of Salmon Bay behind the locks, changing it from a tidal inlet to a freshwater reservoir.
- Steam engine (Wikipedia)
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transformed by a connecting rod and crank into rotational force for work. The term “steam engine” is most commonly applied to reciprocating engines as just described, although some authorities have also referred to the steam turbine and devices such as Hero’s aeolipile as “steam engines”. The essential feature of steam engines is that they are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separated from the combustion products. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle. In general usage, the term steam engine can refer to either complete steam plants (including boilers etc.), such as railway steam locomotives and portable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine.
- Fremont Cut (Wikipedia)
The Fremont Cut is a canal in Seattle, Washington, United States, that connects Lake Union to the east with Salmon Bay to the west. It is part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound, and is 5,800 feet (1,800 m) long and 270 feet (82 m) wide. The center channel is 100 feet (30 m) wide and 30 feet (9.1 m) deep.
