The fate that befell Webb could not discourage others to venture the perilous trip, and, probably, the pioneer of them was C. D. Graham, an English cooper of Philadelphia, who conceived the idea that, though no regular boat could live in the rush of the waters below the Falls of Niagara, it would perhaps be possible for a novel kind of boat, a cask shaped like a buoy, with a man in it, to get down to Lewiston in safety. He therefore made a series of such casks at an expenditure of a great deal of time and labour; and, at last finding a shape to his mind, filled two or three in succession with bags of sand equal to his own weight, and set them afloat at Niagara. They arrived safely in smooth water, threading the Rapids and the Whirlpool after a journey of some five miles; the inventor thereupon resolved to keep one side uppermost, in which was left an air-hole, and fastened in the cask a long canvas bag, made like a suit of clothes, and waterproof. Getting into this bag on July 11, 1886, he grasped two iron handles fixed to the staves on the inner side of the cask; a movable cover being fastened on, the odd craft was shoved into the rushing waters. The cask, of course, turned over and over; and though water got into the air-hole, it did not get into the canvas bag; the surging waters handled the cask so roughly that Graham straightway fell sick, but clung to his iron staples, and in a space of time exceeding thirty minutes--accounts differ here--reached smooth water at Lewiston, five miles away, and was safely taken out, able to boast that he had performed a feat hitherto deemed impossible. His record trip in a cask was made on August 19, 1886. On this occasion he announced that he would make the trip with his head protruding from the top of the barrel. This was actually done; he went as far as the Whirlpool, but it left him very little hearing, for a big wave gave him a furious slap on the side of the head. Graham made other trips in 1887 and 1889, and his last, probably, in 1901. This nearly ended his life, as he was caught in an eddy where he was held for over twenty minutes; when he finally reached the Whirlpool and was taken out he was nearly suffocated. Graham's performances, possibly, were also of some practical value. It was proven to the observant that a particular shape of cask might, under certain conditions, be used to draw feeble or sickly passengers from a wrecked ship in bad weather, for a woman or a child could have lived in Graham's machine as well as the cooper himself; however, the circumstances are few under which it would be useful, and Graham, by his own account, had no idea of applying his contrivance in any such way.