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Updated: May 28, 2025
Heavier, denser, more suffocating grew the crush; an ambulance broke down, a caisson smashed into a lamp-post, a cuirassier's horse slipped in the greasy depths of the filth, pitching its steel-clad rider to the pavement. Through the Place d'Alsace-Lorraine, through the Avenue du Collège and the Place d'Armes, passed the turbulent torrent of men and horses and cannon.
Then outside this circle lay another region, the realm of the unknown, whence also sounds came intermittently to his ears, so vague, so distant, that he scarcely knew whether they were not the throbbings of his own excited pulses; the indistinct trot of cavalry plashing over the low ground, the dull rumble of gun and caisson along the roads, and, still more marked, the heavy tramp of marching men; the gathering on the heights above of that black swarm, engaged in strengthening the meshes of their net, from which night itself had not served to divert them.
At this point the left of the regiment was near the right of the house, and I claim that my officers and men captured two large brass pieces, literally punching the cannoniers from their guns. Privates John Fregan and Jasper Patterson, from Company "A," rushed down the hill, captured one caisson, with a cannonier and six horses, and brought them back."
They can see the turnpike far beyond the stone bridge half-way to Centreville: they see crowds fleeing in zigzag lines over the open fields, see horses plunging wildly, laden down by two and even three men on their backs; they see vehicles overturned at the roadside, whence the horses have been cut or killed by the rebel shells; they see an army, in every sense a mob, swarming behind the deserted rebel forts; they see orderly ranks of shining black horses this side the stone bridge charging the fleeing lines of blue; they see shells whirling like huge blackbirds in the sky, suddenly falling among the skurrying thousands; they see a shell finally burst on the bridge, shiver a caisson to fragments, and then all sign of organized flight comes to an end.
The effect on the pier was to crush the fender piles and cause a settlement of one of the caissons at the pier head on the west end. The caisson was knocked slightly out of alignment, and a settlement toward the west was observable.
The Emperor consequently gave orders that the horses should be impressed, for he estimated the loss of a single cannon or caisson as irreparable. The artillery was confided to the care of a corps composed entirely of officers, and numbering about five hundred men.
The men, two or three at a time, entered a small round chamber built of steel which was fitted with two air-tight doors at the top and bottom; when they were inside the air-lock, the upper door was closed and clamped tight, just as the gates leading from the lower level of a canal are closed after the boat is in the lock; then very gradually the air in the compartment is compressed by an air-compressor until the pressure in the air-lock is the same as that in the caisson chamber, when the lower door opened and allowed the men to enter the great dim room.
"There is no need for me to say anything about caisson disease to you, gentlemen, or to you, Miss Taylor," began Kennedy. "I think you all know how it is caused and a good deal about it already.
Taking the road to the left, we soon emerged from the woods into a wheat-field, the grain standing in shocks. While seated on a caisson, driving down this road at a trot, I was suddenly seized with a presentiment that I was to be killed in this battle, the only time such a feeling came over me during the war.
The modern torpedoes need only to come in contact with a surface like the torpedo net or the armor plate of a battleship to discharge a shell which will burst through a two-inch armor caisson, rupture the hull of a battleship, and sink it in a few minutes. The torpedo submarines of the modern type have a submerged speed of from eight to ten knots an hour.
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