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Page 148 watches were then four hours; the watches now (1912) six hours and the watch below are never called except to get up and eat. ' ' Things have certainly changed and the change has been continous even as it is today. In the early days the depth of water in some of the connecting channels restricted the depth of vessels to ten feet. Improvement of the channels by the government was interrupted by the Civil War, and by 1866, the government had expended only three million dollars on all lake improvements. By 1912 the total expenditure had risen to nearly 150 millions dollars in improvements on the Great Lakes. Alfred Nobel, one of the most noted hydraulic engineers in the world at that time, said from year to year, the annual savings netted more in return to the people of the U.S., than the amount of all government expenditures from the beginning of the first improvements on the Lakes, and this is still true in 1967 in spite of the vast millions being poured into lake projects by the Corps of Engineers. The Livingston Channel was for about six of its twelve miles length through limestone rock and it was originally constructed three hundred feet wide and 22 feet deep. It is now widened to four hundred fifty feet. This work was completed in 1925. More recent improvements have deepened it to twenty-seven and one-tenth feet. Now provided are upbound channels separate from the downbound. The recent channel deepening project consisting of over one hundred miles of connecting waterways had made a uniform depth of 27 feet available through the St. Marys, the St. Clair and the Detroit rivers and Lake St. Clair. The total cost of this work was nearly equal to the expenditure of the U.S. on the Seaway. The development of vessels which use these channels is a story in itself, but suffice to say that this development would not have happened had not first the development of the channels been provided. And it really began in emest on an October day in 1912 when a flotilla of vessels glided downriver, the first piloted by a great man, William Livingston, whose name is memorialized in the cut that did so much for shipping. The steamer WILLIAM LIVINGSTONE opened the channel. Robert E. Lee/Dossin Museum