Pontoon bridge innovation, in 1708 a Swedish army used a leather pontoon bridge to cross a river before the Battle of Holowczyn French general Jean Lannes's troops built a pontoon bridge to cross the Po river prior to the Battle of Montebello (1800). Napoleon's Grande Armée made extensive use of pontoon bridges at the battles of Aspern-Essling and Wagram under the supervision of General Henri Gatien Bertrand. General Jean Baptiste Eblé's engineers erected four pontoon bridges in a single night across the Dnieper during the Battle of Smolensk (1812). Working in cold water, Eblé's Dutch engineers constructed a 100-meter-long pontoon bridge during
Pontoon effect side than the center of buoyancy can go. At this point, the righting force will disappear, replaced by a turning moment in the opposite direction. This can capsize the vessel at the point at which one pontoon is completely submerged. When using twin lateral pontoons, each pontoon should have enough buoyancy to bear the load of the entire vessel on its own. If the vessel is so heavy that either pontoon is mostly submerged when no lateral force is applied, it will be vulnerable to the pontoon effect. If sufficient lateral force arises (such as wind or shifting load), the