Soon afterwards he formed a partnership with a friend, and built a small boat to raise cargoes of vessels sunken in the Mississippi. While this boat was building, he made his first venture in submarine engineering, on the lower rapids of the river, by the recovery of several hundred tons of lead. He hired a scow or flat-boat, and anchored it over the wreck. An experienced diver, clad in armor, who had been hired at considerable expense in Buffalo, was lowered into the water; but the rapids were so swift that the diver, though incased in the strong armor, feared to be sunk to the bottom. Young Eads determined to succeed, and, finding it impracticable to use the armor, went ashore, purchased a whiskey-barrel, knocked out the head, attached the air-pump hose to it, fastened several heavy weights to the open end of the barrel; then, swinging it on a derrick, he had a practical diving-bell--the best use I ever heard made of a whiskey-barrel. Neither the diver, nor any of the crew, would go down in this contrivance: so the dauntless young engineer, having full confidence in what he had read in books, was lowered within the barrel down to the bottom; the lower end of the barrel being open. The water was sixteen feet deep, and very swift. Finding the wreck, he remained by it a full hour, hitching ropes to pig-lead till a ton or more was safely hoisted into his own boat. Then, making a signal by a small line attached to the barrel, he was lifted on deck, and in command again. The sunken cargo was soon successfully raised, and was sold, and netted a handsome profit, which, increased by other successes, enabled energetic Eads to build larger boats, with powerful pumps, and machinery on them for lifting entire vessels. He surprised all his friends in floating even immense sunken steamers--boats which had long been given up as lost. When the Rebellion came, it was soon evident that a strong fleet must be put upon Western rivers to assist our armies. Word came from the government to Captain Eads to report in Washington. His thorough knowledge of the "Father of Waters" and its tributaries, and his practical suggestions, secured an order to build seven gunboats, and soon after an order for the eighth was given. In forty-eight hours after receiving this authority, his agents and assistants were at work; and suitable ship-timber was felled in half a dozen Western States for their hulls. Contracts were awarded to large engine and iron works in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati; and within one hundred days, eight powerful ironclad gunboats, carrying over one hundred large cannon, and costing a million dollars, were achieving victories no less important for the Mississippi valley than those which Ericsson's famous "Cheese-box Monitor" afterwards won on the James River.