Everyone has heard the brief history of concrete. The Romans used it and after the fall of the Roman Empire, the use was “forgotten” for about1500 years. The rebirth of concrete as a building material came back in the late 1600s and but was not heavily used until the invention of Portland Cement in 1824. The terms cement and concrete are often used as replacements for one another, however, cement is an ingredient in concrete. Concrete is a mix of cement, aggregates (stone and or sand), and water. The material is then poured into some type of form until it sets. Reinforcing materials are added to strengthen the structure. The recipe used in the mixing of the cement, stone, and water can vary the strength of the concrete. The use of concrete exploded in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the methods used in the mixing, pouring, and curing, were widely studied and reported on by engineering journals. For our study of canals, we must note that the rock cutters of the Enlarged Canal were replaced by the concrete workers of the Barge Canal. So there is your primer on concrete.
When the World War broke out, the need for barges and ships increased at a time when the shortage of metal forced builders to look to other methods of construction. The Emergency Fleet Corporation “floated” the idea of concrete barges and ships, for both on the inland waterways and on the open seas. It was pointed out that a concrete boat had been in use on the Welland Canal for a number of years. The Portland Cement Association jumped at the chance to promote their product into wider use. Thus the era of the concrete barge was born.
In the spring of 1918, the Concrete Ship Section of the Emergency Fleet Corporation designed a concrete barge for use on the Barge Canal. The barge was 150 feet long, 21 feet wide and had a depth of 12 feet. The cargo carrying capacity was to be 500 tons with a draft of 10 feet. The barge was divided into three sections and designed along the lines of the old Enlarged Erie canal boats, with a forward 15 foot section for storage and crew quarters; a cargo area of 115 feet; and a rear well appointed captains quarters of 20 feet. The captain’s quarters had a galley, living room, bed room, and wardrobe.
Four yards were chosen to build the barges;
The Grayhaven Shipbuilding Company, operated by Thomas Currie of Detroit Michigan and built in Michigan. (Five barges- U.S.101 to 105);
The Holler – Flood and Davis Company of Fort Edward, NY and built in Fort Edward (eight barges – U.S. 106 to 113);
The Cummins Structural Concrete Company of Philadelphia, and built in Ithaca, NY (four barges- U.S. 114 to 117);
The Caldwell Marshall Company of Columbus, Indiana, and built in Tonawanda, NY (four barges- U.S. 118 to 121);
A total of 21 barges were built and launched throughout 1918 and 1919. All the barges were to be identical, although the methods of construction varied, with each yard adapting to the landscape and available machinery. This gave the engineers a chance to review and improve the way concrete was handled and used. These methods were widely reported on in the concrete industry newspapers.
One of the concrete boat fleet.
With the exception of the interior decoration of the living quarters, the boats were made entirely of reinforced concrete. The hull was three inches thick in the middle and four to four and a half for the bow and stern. The deck was three inches thick except where the deck hatches attached.
Wood forms were designed and built that would give the boat its shape. The outer form was constructed and then reinforcing bars were laced together that followed the shape of the forms. An inner form then created the space that was filled with the concrete. The bow and stern of the barges had some degree of curvature, so the skills of the men were tested as they bent the bars to fit into the three to four inch space available between the forms.
Once the form was set, it was coated with some type of release agent that would allow the forms to be removed without harming the concrete. The boats were to be poured in one process. One hundred and twenty yards of cement, aggregate, and water was then mixed to a point that was flowable, but not liquid. As the mix was poured into the mold, air hammers vibrated the sides of the form to help the concrete fill the voids in and around the reinforcing bars. It was a demanding process that took between forty to fifty hours. Once the concrete had set, the forms were removed and reused on the next boat.
The boats were problematic from the start. We are fortunate that Richard Garrity wrote about his memories of the concrete barges in his book, Canal Boatman. According to Garrity, the boats were not well suited to the canal and were quick to puncture. Even when empty, the boats would sit draft lower then the wood barges. This is also apparent in a review of the newspapers of the period, with many mentions of sunken concrete barges. It wasn’t that the concrete barges did not float; it was that they had no give or bounce when they bumped into dock walls and bridge abutments. Wood and steel barges had some elastic abilities that the concrete lacked. The concrete simply would puncture. Garrity writes that the Munson Company did not take the concrete barges when it purchased the government fleet, although he doesn’t mention the New York Canal and Great Lakes Corporation, who first purchased the boats.
US 107 at Lock 9, Rotterdam JunctionUS 107, 109 and 120 lie upstream of Lock 9 as seen in 2013.
In a twist of history, the New York Department of Public Works took a step that “saved” the concrete barges, so we can still see them today. The barges were purchased and then filled with stone and soil, towed to various locks along the Mohawk River and then sunk as approach walls. The Annual reports for 1927 and 1928 state that barges were placed at the end of the upper and lower walls of Erie Lock 9, the lower wall of Locks 10 and 13. This was done to correct the error in design of building very short approach walls to the locks. In times of high and fast water, the bargemen found it difficult to control their boats during the approach into the locks. To correct this issue, the concrete barges were sunk at the end of the existing approach walls. This gave the bargemen the opportunity to gently bump into the wall during their approach to the lock, and then pivot off them. It was not a perfect solution, but the walls were never extended beyond this quick remedial measure.
US 102 at Lock 13US 102 at Lock 13
Over time, weather and water have taken a toll on the old barges. As the concrete failed and fell off, it left the old steel rebar sticking at at odd angles, waiting to catch the unsuspecting boater. The barges at Lock 13 have been buried in the last reconstruction after the 2011 floods. The floods and work appear to have destroyed the barges below Lock 10. The three barges along the upper wall at Lock 9 remain as the most intact and are quite the attraction in the winter when the water is low in the river. The barges below Lock 9 have been mostly buried and were in very poor shape when last seen.
US 112 and 116 lie downstream of Lock 9.
Concrete is still used to build rot resistant boats. The St Helena III at Canal Fulton in Ohio, and the General Harrison at the Johnson Farm and Indian Agency, also in Ohio, are animal powered boat rides that use a type of concrete in their hull. But this is a rather limited, and low impact usage.
As the United States entered the European War in 1917, it was found that the nation’s transportation facilities were not up to the task of mobilizing and supplying large quantities of materials and men to the east coast for shipment to the war front. What took place over the next three years was an experiment in the nationalization of the railroads, and to a much smaller extent, the waterways. I have tried to follow the chain of events that led to the take over of the New York Barge Canal and what happened after the War.
1917, The New Barge Canal, and The War
The year was 1917 and New York State found itself with a rather big problem. After fourteen years of planning, engineering and construction, the new Barge Canal was almost ready for use. Although terminal space was still being built, and plans were to have the entire canal channel and locks ready for use in the spring of 1918, there were few boats available for use on the canal. And there were many reasons for this;
The older wooden boats which had been used for years on the Enlarged Canal, were at best able to carry 250 tons, whereas the new canal was built to have boats of 2000 tons.
Boats operating on the new canal had to either be towed, or have a means of propulsion. Many family operated boats from the old Erie Canal simply didn’t have the means to purchase and operate a tug or powered barge.
It had taken years to build the new canal, and much of the new canal followed a new and different route across parts of the state. It had yet to be seen if shipping companies and industries would move to set up shop along the Barge Canal. The boat builders, the shippers, and the industry had taken a wait and see approach to use of the Barge Canal.
To put it as plain as one can, the State of New York had spent almost $150,000,000 dollars on the new canal, only to realize in a year before the grand opening, that few people and companies were ready or able to use it.
As the people in charge of the new canal looked at their new creation and saw few private companies ready to use it, they turned to the Federal Government for assistance. The reason they did this is because in the lead up to the War, the Federal Government, by way of the Department of Commerce under Secretary William Redfield, had begun to look at the readiness of the nation’s transportation resources. Redfield was from New York and was a waterways supporter. In 1916, he wrote, “Wherever it is possible to obtain direct transit by a steamboat on a waterway of sufficient size and depth for it to maintain speed the waterway provides at once the quickest and cheapest method of transit.” The Department created a Committee on Waterways, and it was a given that the men of New York would look to Secretary Redfield for help.
William Cox Redfield
On August 24, 1916, the President of the United States created the Council of National Defense to ready the nation for war. A number of committees were created by this Council, one of which was another committee on waterways. So New York, under the direction of the Department of Public Works, asked the newly formed Council to tour the new Barge Canal to see if it could be of use in shipping. The group toured the State looking at the almost completed Barge Canal still under construction. It was clear to the Committee that the lack of boats and terminals was a major problem. Whitford states in his History of the Barge Canal that the report of the subcommittee appointed to study the canal was never made public and no action was taken.
While this was going on, in April 1917, the Emergency Fleet Corporation was created by the United States Shipping Board, which itself had been created by The Merchant Marine Act of 1916. The EFC was to acquire, maintain, and operate a fleet of merchant ships to meet the needs of the national defense, and the foreign and domestic commerce, during the war. On July 11, 1917, the President gave to the Emergency Fleet Corporation all his wartime power and authority to acquire all the existing vessels needed and to construct whatever additional vessels might be needed. The EFC also could operate all the vessels that had been acquired by the United States. (And here is the important part for our study here.) Legally, the EFC could not actually operate the ships unless no private companies could be found to do so. But again, no movement was made by the Federal Government to use the Barge Canal.
So on August 1, 1917, the canal men of the State held a New York State Canal Convention. At this gathering, they passed a resolution asking the New York State government to petition the Feds to take over transport on the Barge Canal. By the end of August 1917, Governor Whitman asked President Wilson to take charge. And in spite of all this, little happened at the Federal level.
However, the public and the press jumped on the Federal control bandwagon, with many articles stating that the Feds must take over the canal and predicting great benefits for the State and her people. “Let the Canal Help Win the War” was the headline in the Tonawanda Evening News of December 7, 1917. “How the Barge Canal Can Relive The Freight Tie-Up”, reported the Brooklyn Daily Star of December 21, 1917. This all pointed to one simple need; “Ask the U.S. To Build Barges”, reported the Ellicottville Post of January 7, 1918. Without boats, the new canal was useless, and few boats were available.
While all this agitation was taking place the EFC was working under its charter. But on December 26, 1917, the President took control of all the transportation facilities in the country and appointed his son-in-law William Gibbs McAdoo as head of the United States Railroad Administration. The reason for this step was a total break down of the railroad operations during the winter of 1917 when cars and entire trains loaded with supplies for the war front in Europe stacked up on the East Coast leaving few empty cars to load. With all the yards filled with cars, trains filled with coal could not make their way to the docks to load the ships that needed the coal as fuel in order to cross the ocean. And with the cars filled with coal waiting to be unloaded, there were few empties to send back to the mines. In short, the entire network of railroads came to a standstill. It was against this backdrop that the President exercised his war time power over the railroads.
1918, and the Federal Takeover of the Movement of Freight.
In February of 1918, McAdoo, head of the USRA, created the Inland Waterways Committee. The goal was to see if the waterways could be used to break up the railroad traffic jams. The Committee of Inland Water Transportation, which was working as a subcommittee to the Council of National Defense, was turned over in total to the Inland Waterways Committee of the USRA. The rumors about the Feds taking over the Barge Canal resurfaced.
William Gibbs McAdoo
During this changeover period, State Engineer Frank Williams, who had spent years working on the Barge Canal and was desperate to make it a success, testified before the EFC. On January 31, 1918, he touted the canal and what it could do for the war effort. And he again stressed the lack of boats and shippers as a major problem for the State and her people who had invested $150,000,000 in constructing the canal.
It is here that we must introduce George Ashley Tomlinson. Tomlinson was a self made Teddy Roosevelt type man, having gone to the west as a young man to find and prove himself and learn the value of a hard days work. He then bounced around a bit, working as a reporter, joining Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and then returning to the newspaper business, finally becoming the Managing Editor of the Detroit Tribune. Encouraged by his father-in-law, he moved to Duluth and set to work to start a shipping business on the Lakes. By the time the US entered WW1, he had a fleet of twenty-six ships, and was a partner in many shipyards. He testified before the same Board that Engineer Williams was speaking to.
George Ashley Tomlinson
George Tomlinson took the exact opposite stand as Williams. He plainly stated that he, as a shipper and boat builder, would not use the canal if the Federal Government took control of the shipping and boat building. He stated that he had $3,000,000 of his own money ready to start the construction of 100 barges for use on the Erie Canal. He even stated that he had the steel all lined up. These barges would work with his line of Great Lakes steamers to move freight to and through the new canal. But, he cautioned, if the Federal Government was to run a line of barges on the canal, he would not.
What happened next was not recorded, but it appears from what Tomlinson said years later that he was almost immediately offered the job of Federal Manager of the Barge Canal, under the control of the USRA. He also stated later that he was made to see the need to have the Federal control over the canal. George Ashley Tomlinson was officially appointed by General Order #22 of the USRA, dated April 22, 1918, but it is clear from the records that he was serving on the Waterways Board months before this appointment.
Four days prior to April 22, McAdoo assumed control of shipping on the Barge Canal. It is one great misunderstandings of history that the Federal Government took over the Barge Canal. Even Richard Garrity in his memoir writes that the Federal government “operated and controlled” the Barge Canal. That was never the understanding that was worked out between the Federal government and the State. The Barge Canal was always to remain under the operational control of the State. The State constitution makes this clear. The State of New York would continue to maintain and operate the canal, it was just that the movement of traffic was be taken over by the Feds. They were to ensure the best use of the facilities, putting private boats under contract with the idea that one large management structure could coordinate the movement of freight. If there were not enough boats to move the freight, then the government would build and operate the boats as needed. This move by the Feds was greatly heralded by the State and her citizens for everyone knew that there were not enough private boats and that the Feds would need to build many boats. These boats would fill the empty canal and the construction of the Barge Canal would be justified. The headline in the Rome Daily Sentinel basically said what everyone else was saying; “McAdoo Takes Over Traffic Upon Canals”. The smaller headlines read; “Barge Canal and Connections To Be Operated As Part Of Railway System”, and then “To Build Great Fleet Of Barges”. The Ithaca Daily News reported; “Barge Canal Under Federal Control. Will mean much to Ithaca- Construction to start at once”.
But even in the State-wide joy, not everyone was happy. New York City Mayor Hylan was warning whoever would listen that the takeover by the USRA was a railroad plot to destroy the canal. But few papers carried this opinion.
On May 15, 1918, the completed Barge Canal opened. The New York Herald wrote of the USRA operations of the canal by saying; “Thus passes the old antagonism of the railways which so long retarded development of the State’s waterways.” The railroad and the canal were to become brothers in arms. With Tomlinson in charge, great plans were made. By the end of April, Tomlinson was stating that he intended to build barges for the canal. In June, Tomlinson was in Buffalo, urging the shippers of the city to use the canal. Here the paper reports an interesting conversation; Emphasis was laid on the fact that the new waterway was not created in opposition to the railroads. Although it was all part of the railroad administration, he [Tomlinson] supposed he was the only man connected with the canal administration who wasn’t a railroad man. It would be idle for me to seek to establish a barge canal system in opposition to the railroads. I don’t expect much encouragement from them, it is true and up to this date I haven’t gotten it. But we’re going to do business on the canal this fall. In the next thirty days we expect to be busy when the wheat comes east for the seaboard, as much of it will be diverted from the short hauls by rail to the water route.”… “At present we are operating on the railroad tariff”, said Mr. Tomlinson. “I have asked the administration to put on a differential for state service and expect a reply within a few days.”
It is hard to read Tomlinson and who he was. He said years later that a person did not need to like his job in order to be good at it. He was a practical man and was very successful in the shipping business. He saw that the people and industry needed to use the canal to make it successful, and he repeatedly pleaded with shippers to use and develop the canal. Terminal arrangements were made at Buffalo and New York City for large amounts of traffic. The papers did their part. The Syracuse Journal editorialized; “Let the communities through which pass the great fleet of carriers once catch the spirit of the industry and the new means of transportation will become as popular as the vastness of the enterprise merits”. In July, it was announced that a fast freight service was being added, with boats servicing terminals three times a week.
The good feelings were not to last. The tariff or shipping rate set by the USRA that Tomlinson spoke to was causing much concern. For the first time in history, the freight rates were equal between the railroad and canal, offering little incentive to ship by canal. By the end of June 1918, the USRA increased the railroad rates by 25%. But they didn’t lower the rates down to where the canal interests wanted them; instead they raised the rail rates. And this was not done to pacify the canal concerns, but to help the railroads who were losing money. The increase in rates resulted in an additional one billion dollars of revenue for the roads.
However, the concern lingered and grew that not only was the public not using the canal, but the federal government, who was supposed to be building large fleets of barges and shipping by canal, were instead giving all the traffic to the railroads. The New York Herald said that; “The State of New York is confronting a calamity unequaled in its history.” At the June 1918 NYS Canal Convention, just a month after the opening of the canal, and two months after Tomlinson’s appointment, a committee was appointed to make arrangements to go to Washington and speak directly with Director General McAdoo. The committee did not receive an appointment with McAdoo until October. When they finally got the chance to speak, what they heard was what they feared. The question was asked if the USRA would ship by canal, and McAdoo reportedly said that he would never ship by canal if he could ship by rail, because it would be harmful to railroad interests. It was the opinion of McAdoo that private boat owners could ship as they wished, however, it was pointed out by the New York delegation that the USRA had contracted with all the serviceable boats. And these boats were sitting idle, or were moving empty between ports. The question was also asked about the building of steel barges, which had been promised in April. They were told that all steel was being used in the war effort and none was available to build canal boats. However, the Federal government was having concrete boats built for use on the canal.
In late July, the Mississippi and Warrior Rivers were added to the USRA control, and on September 8th, George Tomlinson was appointed to become the Director of Inland Waterways, which had control of all the inland rivers and canals. H.S. Noble became the director of the New York Barge Canal section of the USRA.
On November 11, 1918, the War was over and it was hoped that the government would soon be returning control of the railroads and canals back to their owners. However, the railroads (and waterways) were still needed during the demobilization of the Nation, so control remained with the USRA. There were also numerous issues on the railroads that had yet to be dealt with. The problems that existed prior to the war and throughout 1917 were still there and simply handing the roads back to the private corporations might make things worse.
1919, and The Post War Era
One of the issues for the Waterways Division of the USRA is that they had been purchasing and building barges, tugs, and motorships, and they had many under construction as the war ended. The question then became; what to do with this equipment? With the railroads, the government had agreed to make restitution for use of the lines and the engines and cars could be given to the companies. But with the canals, there was no corporate structure to give the boats to. After all, New York State had offered the use of the Barge Canal for free. The short term answer was to operate the government fleet as a shipping business, and continue to provide a service to the State and the shippers. At the same time, the private boat owners were released from their contracts and allowed to operate without Federal control. And the Feds agreed that they would only take shipments between Buffalo and Albany. They would not compete in the local market. For the moment, this seemed to quiet the situation.
With the Nation at peace, public opinion quickly turned against government intervention of any kind, no matter how good the intentions. With no emergency to solidify public opinion, the mood was to go back to pre-war conditions. Although the cry in the papers was to return control of the canal to New York State, the railroads were feeling the same way. The War was over, and it was time to end the government control everywhere. For those in the government, there was still the issue of the failure of the railroads in the winter of 1917. Representative John Esch, a strong believer in the oversight of commerce, introduced a bill to the House of Representatives to switch oversight of the railroads from the USRA to the Interstate Commerce Commission. At the same time, Senator Atlee Pomerene introduced a similar bill in the senate. This became known as the Esch-Pomerene Bill and hearings were held. Although the bill pertained mostly to railroads, the fact that the waterways were controlled by the USRA meant that New York State would be impacted by any legislation. The New York Canal delegation was outraged to learn that the oversight of the federal fleet could be handed over to another federal agency, and much agitation against the Bill resulted. Superintendent Edward Walsh testified before the Committee on Foreign and Domestic Commerce on September 15, 1919 that any further government control or action would be disastrous to the canal and New York State.
In the end, Esch-Pomerene Bill was modified as the Esch Bill and sent to the House where it passed. Going to the Senate, the Bill was modified by Albert Cummins (and others) and the resulting legislation became known as the Esch-Cummins Bill, or the Transportation Act of 1920. This Act resulted in the returning of the railroads to private control as of March 1, 1920, albeit with much government oversight. And the Inland Waterways, well they were turned over to the Secretary of War. On March 1, 1920, George Tomlinson went back to private business, although he may have never totally quit his interests during his tenure in the USRA. A newspaper article from January 1920, states that Tomlinson had recently returned from a two month “ship building mission” to England. In January, 1920, he was appointed as the president of the Buffalo Drydock.
Why the end of federal operations of the waterways was not included in the Transportation Act was not clear. Senator Cummins said he thought the exclusion of the Barge Canal was a mistake, and all agreed that by the time it was noticed in the Act, the time it would take to remove it would push the passage of the Bill past President Wilson’s promised March 1 return date. So it had been left in.
With the government fleet waterways now under the control of the War Department, it was announced that the fleet would continue operations on the New York, Mississippi, Warrior and other waterways that had been under the control of the USRA. Recognizing that all the waterways were hurting from a lack of business, the Secretary of War decided upon an experiment of sorts, where the government fleet would operate solely as a commercial transportation company. (Director General McAdoo had suggested that the government retain control of the railroads for five additional years to see if they could be run as a nationwide experiment.) For the men of New York, this was a continued outrage. The message was clear; with any government craft working the canal, no private company would invest in shipping.
To be sure that the message was heard, in May 1920, an aide in the NYS Engineer’s Department wrote a article for the New York City papers titled; “Why New York’s $150,000,000 Barge Canal Is Idle”. Three reasons were given: a lack of boats, an intrusive Federal Government, and the shippers of the mid-west. An entire page was given to the article which carefully explained that after just two years, New York might abandon the new Canal if nothing changed.
Senator James Wadsworth led the charge to amend the Transportation Bill so that the Barge Canal could be exempt from federal government operations. While the Congressmen from the southern states were happy to have the federal government running barges on their rivers, the New York State Congressmen and men of commerce wanted them gone. More hearings were held and again, Superintend Walsh and others in the State traveled to Washington to beg the Federal government to leave. Again and again, it was claimed that not one private person would operate on the canal as long as the Government fleet continued to operate, because no one could compete with the Government. Although testimony revealed that many private boats were indeed operating on the canal, it was the position of the State that until the Federal government ended operations, the Barge Canal would never be able to prove her worth. Alexander Smith, the Editor of the Marine News, demonstrated the evils of the Federal Government by having placed into the record the testimony of George Tomlinson. George, it might be recalled, said early in 1918, that if the government was to go into the shipping business, he would not. That was proof enough that any level of control by the Fed’s would keep prosperous men of shipping away from the canal.
If the men of New York had simply gone before the Committee on Interstate Commerce and asked that the canal be exempt from the Transportation Bill, all would have been well. Even Chairman Cummins said that the matter would have been over. But they wanted more and asked that the resolution be changed so that in addition to the end of government operations, all the government built vessels; 73 barges, with another 27 being built, and 20 self propelled barges, would be given to the State of New York as “payment” for the use of the canal over the last three years. Thus begins a convoluted argument by Superintendent Walsh (and others), that New York State, who had at first told the Federal government that they were welcome to use the canal free of charge, deserved to be given (paid) a gift of the government fleet.
The men of the south protested and stated that if New York no longer wished government involvement, that they would be happy to take the barges for use on their waterways. The counterargument by Walsh was that the barges, being designed and built for the Barge Canal, were only suitable to the Barge Canal.
On February 28, 1921, the President signed the joint resolution to exempt the Barge Canal from the Transportation Act of 1920. The Government fleet was to be sold to the highest bidder.
The story might have ended there. But it doesn’t. In June 1921, Edward Walsh (the former Superintendent of Public Works and man who spent days testifying before Congressional Committees) and others under the name of the New York Canal and Great Lakes Corporation, purchased the government fleet for $1,400,000. By March 1924, Walsh and his concern were asking that the price be reduced as they could not make the payments. Stating that the canal was “almost unfit” for use, he placed the blame for his financial troubles squarely on the State. In March1925, a bill passed Congress to reduce the price of the sale by $900,000, from $1,400,000 to $500,000. By November 1925, the New York Canal and Great Lakes Corporation had been sold to the Munson Steamship Company for more than One Million. According to Garrity, the steel boats were later sold and moved to Cuba. (Walsh was also facing charges of failing to faithfully conduct the duties of his office while acting as Public Works Superintendent, but that is another article.)
Conclusion
So what really happened in the period between 1918 and 1921? It is clear that New York State asked the Federal government to take control of the new Barge Canal in the hopes that the federal boats would stimulate use of the new waterway. And although the terms; “federal control” and “federal takeover” have been used by many, the federal government never did take over the canal, they took over the movement of freight for one year during the War in 1918. By 1919, some private boating companies were using the canal in spite of the “federal control”. It is also clear that the actions by some people in the Federal government may have been purposely injurious to the new canal by routing freight away from the canal.
However, it is also clear that by the time the new canal was fully open, that there was a lack of serviceable boats and businesses to use the canal. Even if the Federal government wanted to ship by canal, there may have been no boats available to load. The War was over by the time the Federal government had time to design, bid out, and build new barges and ships for the canal. However, the Government pushed forward to finish the boats and put them into use.
When shippers didn’t rush into the canal use void, the builders and promoters of the new Barge Canal may have been looking around for scapegoats. It was clear by 1916 and 17 that there was a lack of boats and firms ready to use the canal. The Federal control would solve that problem. When it didn’t, it was clear that the Federal government control was keeping shippers away. And once the Federal fleet was gone, it was the lack of maintenance, the lack of terminals, etc. People may have been simply grasping at any reason to explain why shippers were not using the new canal. The Federal action of 1918-1921 was just a first in a long line of explanations as to why the canal never reached its full promise.
The Finger Lakes of Central New York are well known for their natural beauty and award winning wines. They are not so well known for the role they played in the state’s canal and boating history. Three of the Finger Lakes were connected to the Erie Canal by way of the Cayuga Seneca Canal, which joined with the Erie at Montezuma. From this junction, boats could travel south to Cayuga Lake and then west to Seneca Lake. Both Cayuga and Seneca Lakes are about forty-miles-long and allowed boats to reach Ithaca and Watkins Glen. In addition, the Chemung Canal allowed boats to reach the southern regions of the state and for a few brief years, provided a connection to the Pennsylvania canals and coalfields. The short Crooked Lake Canal allowed boat to travel between Keuka and Seneca Lakes. Once on Keuka Lake, boats could travel south about twenty miles to Hammondsport. Over the decades of canal transport, many boats were lost and now rest relatively intact on the lake bottom. These sunken boats could provide invaluable information about canal boat construction. Over the years, some boat have been found and investigated. The book, A Canalboat Primer (1981, Erie Canal Museum), notes that the Underwater Archaeology Association of Elmira found twenty-eight canal boats in Seneca and Keuka Lakes. Line drawings of one of these boats was included in the book.
In 2018, Art Cohn, the Director Emeritus of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, led a team of researchers from that museum on a hunt for the wreak of the Frank Bowley, a coal boat that had sunk in November of 1869. The loss of the Frank Bowley had been well documented in the papers and the approximate location was fairly well known. This allowed Art and his team to quickly find the canal boat. With some extra time to spare, the team conducted additional surveys which located an additional seven boats. It was clear that more boats could be found with more time and resources, and this encouraged the team to plan a return to the lake so a more in-depth survey could be conducted.
In the summer of 2019, Art Cohn, and Dr. Tom Manley, Assistant Professor of Geoolgy at Middlebury College, led a team of investigators on a Archaeological and Bathymetric Survey of Seneca Lake. This time they had the support of the New York State Museum; the Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation; the Canal Corporation; the Department of Corrections; as well as the Canal Society of NYS; Middlebury, and Hobart and William Smith colleges; and others. The primary vessel was Middlebury College’s research vessel R/V David Folger, with support from the Underwater Research Vessel Voyager. Together they were able to locate ship-wrecks and to map the lake features with a bathymetric survey.
Over the two years sixteen targets were found. These include one log raft, one lifting frame, seven original sized canal boats (one of which might be a packet boat), six Enlarged era boats, and one ship. What is notable is that if the team did find a packet boat, they might have found the only existing boat of this type. The report notes that in the cold fresh waters of the lake, these remains should be safe for years to come. However, the introduction of Quagga Mussels has changed the timeline for researchers. Research in Lake Champlain has shown that the mussels will consume any iron nails, bolts, or straps, which then destabilizes the boat. It is predicted that every boat will be covered and damaged no matter of the depth. As a result there isn’t a lot of time left before these sunken treasurers are lost forever.
Plans were made to return to the lake in 2020, but the pandemic delayed these until 2021. When the team is able to return, the goal is to complete the survey of Seneca Lake. It is hoped that the resources will be found to conduct a similar survey of Cayuga Lake.
The team released a very detailed report of the surveys and findings. This 106-page book, The Seneca Lake Archaeological and Bathymetric Survey 2019 Final Report, outlines the goals, gives a very good history of boating on the canals and lakes, and provides an overview of the sixteen targets and what the team believes these to be. I asked Art Cohn if the report would be made available as a pdf, and he has kindly allowed the ACS to post a copy on our website.
The Black River Canal was one of New York’s many lateral canals that extended navigation to the north and south of the main Erie Canal. Today, it is a remarkably intact abandoned canal, largely due to the fact that parts of the southern end continue to be used as a feeder channel to supply water to the Barge Canal, however canal locks and the prism can be found all along the thirty-five miles between Rome and Lyons Falls. And lately a trail has been established along sections of the towpath, giving it further protections.
The southern end of the BRC joined to the Erie Canal in Rome. This was near the location of Fort Stanwix, or to be more precise, at the intersection of Black River and Erie Boulevards. The canal then headed north, climbing into the mountains by following the valley of the Mohawk River and then the Lansingkill gorge. Today State Route 48 closely follows this same route and remains can be seen all along the highway. When the canal reached it’s highest point at Boonville, it began to descend along the Black River valley toward Lyons Falls. Lyons Falls was the northern terminus of the canal, but not of the navigation. By using the Black River north for forty-two miles, boats were able to reach the village of Carthage. This, the state reasoned was a cost effective project by turning the thirty-five-and-a-half-miles of canal into seventy-seven miles of usable waterway into the Adirondack Mountains.
Planning for the BRC, and many other canals, began as soon as the Erie Canal was completed in 1825. Early plans for the canal were ambitious as the hope was to build a canal through and over the mountains to reach the St. Lawrence River at Ogdensburg. This would have involved a series of canals and river navigation along a route north of Carthage that used the Indian and Oswegatchie rivers, passing through Gouverneur and ending at Ogdensburg. This route would have been 146 miles long. In reality, construction on the system ended once the canal reached Carthage.
An interesting footnote of BRC history was the close examination of the Morris Canal’s (New Jersey) inclined planes to replace the need for the great number of locks that were purposed along the canal. In all, the BRC was to use 109 locks over the thirty-five miles between Rome and Lyons Falls, which means about four locks per mile. In contrast, the Erie Canal used eighty-three locks along it’s 363 miles between Albany and Buffalo. The well known canal engineer Holmes Hutchinson traveled to New Jersey and made an in-depth report as to the usefulness of the inclined planes. In 1905, Whitford devoted many pages in his history of the New York canals to Hutchinson’s study on the subject.
The talk about the canal, conducting surveys, and attempting to find a suitable route, went on for years, until 1836 when a law (Chapter 157 of 1836) was passed that authorized the construction of the canal. The year is significant as it was also the year that construction began on the enlarged Erie Canal, a canal that would need an increased supply of water to fill it’s channel. Whitford notes that the law allowed the state to take as much water as could be reasonably spared from the Black River to supply the summit of the Erie Canal at Rome. The canal was to be called, “The Black River Canal and Erie Canal Feeder.” A second factor in the authorization was the never-ended supply of lumber in the mountains and the opening of lands to settlement.
The 1836 law was not without it’s opponents. Mill owners and those with interest is navigating the Black River pointed to the Act of 1811 that gave them ownership of all the waters of the Black River, and that the state was breaking it’s own law by taking water for the Erie Canal.
Water management on the BRC is a fascinating subject on its own. The Black River begins at the North and South Lakes (twenty miles due east of Boonville) and flows south-west toward Forestport, about fifteen miles (all distances are as a stright line, so the actual distance is much longer). It then flows north toward Hawkinsville which is three miles east of Boonville. The river continues to flow almost due north to Carthage and Great Bend, which is another forty-four miles. At Great Bend the river turns west to Watertown and Lake Ontario. Since the Black River is three miles east of Boonville and the canal route, a feeder canal was constructed to get the water from the river to the canal. To gain the proper slope so that water would flow between the river and canal, the feeder was extended for another seven miles to Forestport. To make the best use of this canal, it was built as a navigable canal, thus adding another ten miles to the navigation.
The feeder connected to a wide area along the river called Kayuta Lake. Later a dam would be built to create more of a reservoir. This watershed diversion was so important to the Erie Canal that even though the BRC was never a money maker, it’s supply of water was so critical to the operation of the Erie that the canal escaped a number of abandonment’s over the years. While most of the lateral canals were closed in 1877, the BRC kept flowing. And when the Barge Canal was constructed in the early 1900s, the BRC was kept as a navigable feeder. Even today, parts of the canal serve to take water from the Black River and pass it into the Mohawk.
Work on the BRC began in late 1837 and early 1838. Whitford’s history of canals gives a nice description of the work, and the requests made by people in the northern areas to extend the canal route either to Sackett’s Harbor on Lake Ontario, or to Ogdensburg and the St. Lawrence River. Whitford goes as far to list the routes, the cost, and the number of locks. Some construction on the feeder arm was done in 1841 and 42, during a drought that was hampering navigation on the Erie Canal. The Stop and Tax Law of 1842 brought all work to a halt. The construction materials, the lumber and stone, that had been purchased but had not being used were offered for sale to the public, selling for pennies on the dollar. Construction resumed in 1847, and by October 18, 1848, water began to flow through the feeder. In 1849 the amount of water being taken from the river to supply the Erie Canal exceeded the natural flow of water north causing the river to dry up for three months. To alleviate further shortages, a series of reservoirs were built to store water for the river and feeder. These include North Lake, Bisby Lake, and the Woodhull Reservoir. The Canal Society of NYS held a field trip to these sites in 2003, and for those with an interest in this system of water supply should find a copy of the guide book for the Adirondack Reservoirs. Whitford also delves into the subject.
The BRC was put into use on November 1, 1850, which means that navigation really began in the spring of 1851. There are a number of openning dates floating around. Whitford notes that the canal was in use in 1851, but was complete on November 13, 1855. The large canal map that the state published in 1862 states that the canal was completed in1849, so we can safely say that the canal was being used by 1851.
As this is not intended to be a complete history of the canal, I will skip forward to the 1870s when canal abandonment fever was sweeping across the state. The debate was could the BRC feeder system supply the needed amount of water to the Erie without the whole canal in use. The state wished to see if the Black River water could be sent south by using the Lansingkill and Mohawk and then taken into the canal at Rome. So an experiment was made in the spring of 1875, where the Erie Canal was opened before the BRC was filled. This supply proved to be insufficient and the experiment proved the worth of the canal as a feeder. This is how the BRC escaped the 1877 abandonment fate of most of the other lateral canals.
Nobel Whitford devotes an extensive number of pages in his history of canals to the work of David Whitford (his father, uncle?) who was selected to conduct a study on the water supplies of the Adirondack Mountains in the 1890s. At the same time, Verplank Colvin was advocating for the establishment of the Adirondack Park to protect the forests and thus the amount of water that could be used by the Erie Canal. The state created the Adirondack park in 1894 as a forever wild area under the NYS constitution, in part, to have water to fill the Erie Canal.
Abandonment would catch up with the canal as it was recommended by the state engineer to close the section of canal north of Boonville in the early 1900s. And this section was closed to traffic in 1905 as traffic had dwindled to almost nothing for several years. Oddly what saved this section of the canal, at least for a few years, was the Barge Canal and the construction of the Delta Dam. Rock and stone from quarries north of Boonville were to be used in the new dam and the best way to transport this stone was by the canal. Thus the canal and locks between Boonville and Port Leyden were refurbished and put into use for a few years.
During the construction of the Delta Dam, three new locks and a new aqueduct were constructed as to carry the canal around the new Delta Reservoir. The old canal from lock 7 to lock 13, including the village of Delta and the one-mile-long navigable Delta feeder, would be flooded by the new reservoir. The new concrete locks and aqueduct can be seen downstream and to the right of the dam. Lock 7 would be moved slightly south from it’s original site that was to be under the new dam. After all this work, the locks north of Boonville were refurbished once again in the hopes that the canal would be used up through the Black River and Carthage and the canal remained in a navigable condition into the 1920s.
And yet, only eighty-four boats left Boonville for Rome in 1921, three in 1922, and none in 1923. The canal was un-officially abandoned by disuse. The canal continues to carry water south to Rome by using the Forestport feeder and the section from Boonville to lock 63. At that point the water spills into the Lansingkill and flows south to join with the Mohawk River, and then into Delta Reservoir.
What all this later work has accomplished is to leave a relatively intact canal for historians to explore. By the time the canal was abandoned, the route of the highways and railroads had been established, so there was no rush to fill in the old canal and turn it into a highway or railroad. Over the years, some sections have been lost to the highways, most notably in the south along Black River Boulevard and north of Boonville along Rt 12. Most of the locks remain in fairly decent condition, although the aqueducts have removed due to flooding.
For those who are interested in further study, there are a number of good books. Of course, Whitford’s History of the New York State Canals was written while the canal was in operation, and it is likely the most complete. The book Forestport Breaks by Michael Doyle is a later look into how people were purposely breaking through the canal banks in the spring to cause leaks and floods, with the hopes that the state would hire locals to help make repairs. It was a job creation by destruction technique. The book Snubbing Posts by Thomas O’Donnell is called “An Informal History of the Black River Canal.” The Canal Society of New York State has printed four guidebooks for their field trips in 1981, 1994, 2003, and 2007. And then there is Walter Edmonds, who was a local author. Walter used the Black River country as a setting for his stories. Reading these delightful novels such as Rome Haul, or The Boyds of Black River (and many more), will give you a sense of what life was like in the southern Adirondack mountains and along the BRC.
The canal and locks are very visible on Google Earth, especially if you can go back to the 2003 images. From Rome to Boonville the route of the canal is very easy to follow. North of Boonville, the imagery is not so good, however by using the guidebooks and Google Earth and Google Maps, I was able to plot most of the canal structures. This work can be found in the Canal Index sheets.
