Dr. Bindon Blood Stoney, F.R.S.

Abstract

WITHIN a few weeks of his eighty-first year, Dr. Bindon Blood Stoney, F.R.S., died at Dublin on May 5. Dr. Stoney was born at Oakley Park, Birr, in 1828, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he had a distinguished engineering course, graduating in 1850. His abilities were early perceived by the then Earl of Rosse, whom he assisted in the astronomical researches of the early ’fifties of last century. In 1852 he went to Spain, and was engaged on railway work in that country. On his return horns he was engaged in the important work of the Boyne Viaduct, which was regarded as a remarkable engineering achievement at that time. It is, however, by reason of his work as engineer to the Dublin Port and Docks Board that Dr. Stoney will be most remembered. He was appointed assistant engineer to the board in 1856, and three years later chief engineer to the port, a position which he held until 1898. During his tenure of office, Dublin was converted from a purely tidal port into one in which some of the largest vessels may be moored alongside the quays and lie constantly afloat, and the river so deepened that the cross-channel steamers may enter and leave at all states of the tide. In this work Dr. Stoney used the method of laying down the harbour walls by means of large blocks of masonry, weighing as much as 350 tons, and sunk by means of shears on a prepared foundation, the quay walls of the Alexandra Basin, the North Quay extension, and other work being laid in this manner.