The further west we go, the fewer dredges are seen as most of the digging took place in a dry environment with steam shovels and cable ways. Digging in the dry was better suited to the ladder dredge as the spoil could be used to build up banks or fill areas without all the wash water that was used in hydraulic dredges.
Contract 60 – The Mohawk Ladder Dredge
The ladder dredge Mohawk. Note the bank armoring in the foreground showing us that the channel was complete and that the dredge was either being used to deepen or fine tune the depth.The ladders all worked with a belt conveyor that was attached to a separate and smaller barge. Note the sheet piling that is being used to help form the bank. The stone in the fore ground was likely used as a bank core.The Mohawk in winter. Note the chain of buckets hanging from the boom.
Contract 60 – The Grapple Dredge
This un-named grapple used both a clam-shell bucket (top photo) and an orange-peel bucket (bottom). If you look close, you can see that the rig carried both buckets. This would have been used to conduct bank work and touch up areas along the canal.
Contract 63 – The Fairport All Electric Hydraulic Dredge
The Fairport was the only all electric dredge used during the construction of the Barge Canal.
The hull of the Fairport in the winter of 1911.Note that there is no smokestacks!The crew takes time to pose for this photo. What we don’t see is how it is connected to the shore power.The caption says that the boats are stalled, but not certain what this means. The second boat in the line is a steam-power canal boat and it looks to be pushing and towing the other two. Perhaps stalled due to low water?
Contract 66 – The Mineola Ladder Dredge
For some reason there are more images of the Mineola then of the Mohawk, but both operated in the same manner. A chain of buckets scooped up the spoil and then delivered that to the banks by way of floating belt conveyors.
We get a nice look at the floating monster that was the ladder dredge. These were used more in western gold mining operations then in canal construction, but they were used to construct the the Fox River navigation in Wisconsin. Here is a view of the backend. We get a look at the operating environment. Note the constructed channel ready to receive the spoils.
Contract 20 was the longest of all the contracts let for the construction of the Barge Canal, and it was divided into 4 parts, each identified with a A,B,C or D. The contracts ran between Schenectady west to Little Falls. It was purely a dredging contract to canalize the Mohawk River. Oddly, the construction photos doesn’t have any images from 20A.
So far I have found six dredges used by the two contractors, the S. Pearson and Son, and the American Pipe and Construction companies. We also find an unusual hydraulic dredge at work on this section. The Canajoharie was called a “hydraulic disposal boat,” or a “floating screening plant,” and it was featured in the January, 1911 issue of the Barge Canal Bulletin. The dipper dredges would work alongside the Canajoharie and dump their spoil into hoppers located on the bow of the boat. The spoil was then run through a series of screen that would separate out the stones by size. The stones were deposited in a scow and the lighter material was pumped to the shore by floating pipes. It was written that a second of these boats was in use on Contract 30, but I have not found a photo of it.
The material being excavated was certainly different from the mud, sand and muck that was being removed along the Seneca River. The material in the bed of the river was stony and not totally suited for hydraulic dredges. However, when the spoils were sorted and separated, the larger stones were useful as bank armoring.
Contract 20B- The Canajoharie, the Fort Plain, the St. Johnsonsville, the Midenville, the Mohawk and the Amsterdam.
The Canajoharie was a “hydraulic disposal boat,” built by Bucyrus. It did not have its own suction tube, instead it was fed by dipper dredges. The spoils were then mixed with water and screened, with larger stones being sent to a dump scow and the lighter materials being piped to the shore. We see the Canajoharie flanked by the dipper dredges Fort Plain and St. Johnsville. It is likely that both these were also built by Bucyrus. The one dredge is dumping into the large hopper where it would be mixed with jets of water. They are working just east of the movable dam and lock 15 at Ft. Plain. The dams have been set so that the dredges could work. The dipper Fort Plain at work near Midenville. Since the river was naturally wider then what was needed for the navigation channel, the dredges didn’t need to be too fussy about disposal. Here the dredge is creating a spoil bank that would be removed by a shore based shovel. We get a nice look at the dipper St. Johnsville. I have not been able to identify this dipper that is working below lock 11 in Amsterdam. Note that the movable dam is up so that the train can be run out along the dredged channel. If not needed as fill, the spoils were typically dumped behind the small islands that dot the river. Guy Park Manor can be seen in the top view. The “court of claims” stamp on these mean that they were introduced as evidence in a claim brought by the contractor against the state. We catch a view of the clam shell Mindenville on the left side of the photo. In the foreground is a crew quarters barge. This image gives us a idea of the amount of material that had to be removed from the river channel. I had to lift this photo of the hydraulic dredge Mohawk from the Engineering News. There were two hydraulic dredges at use on these contracts, the Mohawk and the Amsterdam. Oddly, the photo collection doesn’t show either. Both were built by the Morris Machine Works of Baldwinsville, NY.
Steam shovel on Contract 1. This might be a Marion model improved A.
The steam shovel was perhaps the most ubiquitous machine on construction and mining sites between 1880 and 1930. The earliest steam shovel dates back to 1835 when William Otis designed what was called a railroad shovel. The machine, which included a steam boiler, various steam engines, dipper arm assembly, fuel and water, weighed several tons.(1) At the time the only large construction projects that could use such a machine were in railroad construction so the shovel was mounted to a flatcar and set on standard gauge railroad wheels. The shovel could also be mounted to a barge and used as a dredge but that came later.
This shovel loads a train on Contract 12.
The Otis patent ran out in the 1870s, and this allowed many companies to begin the manufacture of their own machines. Well known brands were the Osgood, Marion, Bucyrus, Barnhart, and American steam shovels. Osgood shovels were produced in Troy, NY, while Marion, Bucyrus and Barnhart were all Ohio companies. Improvements were made to the shovels as they got sturdier, heavier and more powerful.
A Vulcan is working at Lock 8 in Rotterdam on Contract 8. This contractor would late abandon this project due to the quicksand.
Shovels were soon at work on railroad projects, canal construction, mining and quarrying, basically anywhere large quantities of materials had to be excavated. But as this is about canal construction, lets take a look at how they were used.
The crew of the Model 60 and the steam trail pose for the photographer at Cranesville.
Because the shovels were mounted to railroad trucks and moved on rails, the shovel could only cut level swaths. The shovel would be moved around the site by men laying out temporary rails. Once at the cut, the shovel would extend it’s outriggers for stability then begin excavate to its front and sides. The machine could cut about three times it’s width. All spoils had to be loaded into hopper cars that were set on a narrow gauge railroad. Once the area was cleared to its front, the track team would lay out a new section of tracks and the shovel would slowly crawl forward. If the job was large enough to warrant more than one machine, a second machine would begin to remove earth on a lower terrace, following behind the first. The tracks also helped to distribute the weight of the machine allowing them to work in wetter areas, however as they were not easy or quick to move, there are many photographs of shovels sitting in flooded work sites.
We get a good look at the bottom of the shovel after this one turned over. Note the chain drive.
Shovels could also be mounted to barges and used as dipper dredges. Many of these were site built with the machinery being shipped to the job site and the barge being constructed from locally sourced lumber. Once the job was done the machinery was removed and the barge discarded. (2)
This Bucyrus shovel is being used to move blasted rock. Not the men loading the skips in the foreground.
Although good at handling gravel, sand and other aggregate materials, they were not good at moving larger rock. Many times you will find the shovel being used to load skips that were moved by cranes or cable ways.
On Contract 6. The shovel is loading an inclined tipple.
As they were developed, steam shovels were fitted out with crawler tracks. The only existing shovel of this configuration can be seen in Leroy, NY where a Marion Model 91 sits in a field. Once the internal combustion engine and hydraulic drives began to be used in construction machinery, the days of the steam shovel numbered. One man could do the work of 4 or 5, and once mounted to crawler tracks instead of railroad tracks, the mobility of the machine made it more useful. Today the hydraulic excavator, a distant cousin of the steam shovel, can be found on almost every job site.
From Contract 6. Not certain of model.
If you are interested in seeing these machines at work, check out the videos of construction of the Panama Canal. Bucyrus and Marion both supplied shovels to this work and were certain to make movies about it. With the clouds and steam and smoke, they make for interesting viewing. Of course the most famous steam shovel might be the Bucyrus in which President Roosevelt posed along the Cublra Cut in the Panama Canal.
Steam shovels were slow to move and were often caught in flooded situations. This was a year after the flooded shovel. Note the dredge and steam pumps. The Marion Model 60 appears to be cold.
(1) A handy hint is that the model number refers to the weight of the shovel, thus a Marion 60 weighed about 60 tons.
Note the young girl sitting on the chair used by the man who operates the dipper.
(2) The images used in this post are from the New York State Archives, Barge Canal Construction Photos, 11833.
Of the many machines we see in the construction of the “modern era” canals, the cable way (it is also seen as one word, cableway) is likely the least noticed. However it is one of the few machines that has survived the through the years and is still in use today. The cable way was the true multi-tasker of the construction site.
A cable way is a very basic machine with two towers, a hoisting engine with a steam plant to power it, wire rope (cable), and a traveling carriage that ran along the cables.
The cableway in use at the construction of Lock 32, Oct 1910. All the construction images are from the NYS Archives, Barge Canal Construction collection 11833.
Depending on what work needed to be completed, the contractor would build tall wooden towers so that the cable spanned the construction site. If the bases were mounted on flanged wheels on rails, the cableway could have movement in all three dimensions; side to side, back and forth, and up and down.
The Lidgerwood cable way carriage. As the carriage traveled away from the tower, the long pieces on the right would deploy and support the smaller cables. You can see these on the first image. As the carriage returned, the horn (with the point) would pick them up and store them.
Cable ways were very good at spanning deep cuts such as along the Chicago Sanitary Canal or in Lockport on the NYS Barge Canal.
All we see of the cable way is the carriage and large rock skip that is being returned to the work site to be loaded by the steam shovel. Many times multiple skips would be in use and they would simply unhook the empty and hook onto the full one.
They were useful on sites with soft soils such as along the Hennepin Canal for dredging out muck and quicksand. They were useful on lock and dam sites that spanned deep or wide rivers and would “fly” in building materials and buckets of concrete. They were also very useful on sites where there might be blasting as the cable wouldn’t be damaged and could be left in place unlike a steam shovel or other large equipment. Depending on the diameter of the main cable, the cable way could lift and move tons of materials at one time.
The Cable way is used to move materials across the Mohawk River at Lock 9, Dam 5 in Rotterdam Junction. Work has just begun in 1909.Much of the lock is complete and work has moved to the piers of the dam, June 1910.Work is basically complete and the work site has been cleaned up, Dec 1911.
Many manufacturers made cable way equipment as most of it consisted of the basic steam engine and hoisting machine that were used in many applications. In the Barge Canal photos you often see it described as the Lidgerwood cable way, but other manufacturers were Flory and Mundy.
An ad from Manufacturers Record, 1919.Here the cable way is being used to shape the canal banks. It has been fitted with a clam-shell type dredging bucket. Note the caption says “Lidgerwood Cable Way.” Also note the piles of field stone on the base of the tower that was used as ballast. A typical construction site with the cable way, a steam shovel in the cut, and a jib pole is seen west of Lockport at the site of a guard gate, Nov 1910.
I wrote this article for the Canal Society of New York State’s journal Bottoming Out, some years ago. It is wordy, full of facts, and not really suited to the typical blog post. In all, it ran 17-pages. If you would prefer to download and print it, you can find a pdf version here. I hope you find it useful. Mike Riley, Feb, 2021.
Introduction
I think everyone understands that the Erie Canal has gone through many changes between the time it was first built in 1817-1825 and the building of the Barge Canal 1905-1918. When the canal was opened from Albany to Buffalo in 1825 it suffered from many imperfections that made the day to day operation and it’s use by the boaters difficult at times. The manner in how the canal was constructed following contours of the land made for many twists and turns. In 1834 the State decided to enlarge the canal from the four by forty feet dimensions to seven by seventy feet between Albany and Syracuse, and then in 1835, the State had decided to enlarge the full length of the canal from Albany to Buffalo. The goals were many but mostly centered around getting bigger boats on the canal. The locks were enlarged and doubled (two locks side by side), and new aqueducts were built. Since a larger canal needed more water, more reservoirs and feeders were constructed. This process of enlargement would last for the next twenty-seven years. Before the first enlargement had been completed, there were calls for a still larger canal which would allow for larger loads. In time this would be called the second enlargement, and that in turn would lead to the building of the Barge Canal. This article began its life as a look at the Second Enlargement of the Erie Canal. It has turned out to be an examination as to what factors led up to the second enlargement. As with everything about the canal, the more I dug into the history, the less clear things became.
A crop of the 1853 town of Mentz map showing the line of both the first (as dashed line) and the enlarged Erie Canal between Port Byron and Montezuma.
When did the Second Enlargement Begin?
We can flip the question about the beginning of the second enlargement to read, “when did the first enlargement conclude?” I am finding that an answer to this question is not as clear as one might think. For help, we might look to Whitford and his order of chapters. He places the beginning of the second enlargement at the same time as the Nine Million Dollar Act of 1895 since that is when the enlargement was written into the law. Another person might look to at when the shipper could move more tons of goods as an enlargement. So I set out to find a time when someone who had the power and the influence to make a call for a deeper canal made that call. Certainly demands for a deeper canal are not the same as actual digging, but other things did take place as a result of these calls, and these increased the capacity. As a result of this study, I decided to use the beginning of steam on the canal as my benchmark in a timeline of enlargement projects.
1858- The Steam Boat and a Deeper Canal
It is difficult to pinpoint the date of the first steam powered canal boat as many seem to claim the honor. It tends to circle around; “who built the first boat?”, and “who built the first successful boat?” In early August 1858, a trip was taken by New York State Governor King, Canal Commissioners Ruggles and Jaycox, and many others, to attend a celebration of steam on the canal. From Rochester to Buffalo they took part in a flotilla of steam boats that included the PS Sternberg, the Charles Wack, the Governor King, and the SS Whallon.i In one of the many speeches he gave, Governor King told the crowds that the Sternberg was the first successful steam boat and that the ongoing experiments with her and the others would show that steam was practical for use on the canals. He also said that it only remained for the State to, “Enlarge and deepen the canal, and make it what it was intended to be.” This was not a call to deepen the canal to more than seven feet; it was a call to deepen the canal to seven feet, as the canal enlargement had yet to be completed. Adding to the quote above, the Governor said, “Then you may put on the steam, and defy competition, from whatever source it may come.” The newspaper article went on to report that the boats often hit bottom on their tour, which is backed up by the annual reports of the time.ii
Although the railroads had yet to surpass the canals in tonnage of goods carried the men promoting the steam boats could see the future. In an extensive article about steam on the Erie Canal in Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review, the writer said; “It should be borne in mind that the railways are ‘up to time’ under the shrewdest competitive management, whilst the canal managers and forwarders have stuck like leeches to the tow-path, until they have sucked the financial blood from this great artery, so that she requires powerful stimulants in loans to reinvigorate her; hence, it wants an energetic and expeditious policy to meet the activities of the railways and redeem her from the sluggish habits of the past.”iii The point was that the railroad and the steam engine were evolving, while, even though the first enlargement process was ongoing, the canal had stopped growing. Clearly steam was the future, if only the canals would embrace it.
So let’s step away from the parade for a moment. One of the men on the Sternberg was temporarily appointed canal commissioner Samuel B Ruggles.iv He was a member of the State Assembly in 1838 and a canal commissioner from 1839-1842. Ruggles had been asked to fill the vacancy of Samuel Whallon. In this position he learned first hand about the condition of the canals and the progress of the enlargement. In 1858 the enlargement had been going on since 1835. Even with the missed Stop and Tax years (1842-1847), the work had been going on for eighteen years and it was far from complete. He wrote that, “It was soon discovered that the Erie Canal, the enlargement of which had been supposed to be nearly complete, had not a uniform depth even of six-feet of water, to which it had been limited during the progress of the enlargement, causing great dissatisfaction, delay and loss to the numerous persons engaged or interested in its navigation.”v
Let’s get back to the parade of steam in August 1858. Unlike Governor King who looked to the future, Samuel Ruggles looked back, “I have not time to speak to you of the future of this great work, and I desire only further to allude to the past, by calling to mind those to whom we are indebted for the grand canal, which has brought to you and the State so full a measure of prosperity. Let me in parting, point you to one memorial of those benefactors who have passed away, and whose monuments we see all along the line of this canal. Yonder, (pointing to a single arch of the old aqueduct) stands a monument to their wise forecaste and patriotism. Preserve that, fellow citizens, as a memorial of the triumphal accomplishment of a great enterprise. In Europe, and among all civilized nations, a mouldering ruin like that, illustrative at once of the art and enterprise of the past, would be cherished with religious care. Let it be your aim to secure it from the vandal hand, and preserve it for your children to contemplate as a memento of the opening of a new era to internal commerce.”vi This speech is interesting as it takes place during a tour of the new age of innovation, in which the central point is to push the State to finish the first enlargement. Ruggles is saying in effect, “The reason you are here is due in large part to the great canal. Let that arch be a reminder of this. Don’t forget it!” You can read similar reminders through all the yearly Annual Reports which all seem to start with a reminder of the past glory days of canals and the Empire State.
A push was made for the completion of the canal enlargement. Up to 1859, $29,800,000 had been spent on the enlargement. Engineers estimated that only one-million more would finish the work. On April 19, 1859, the Legislature passed a bill, Chapter 495 which in part gave money to survey the entire canal by boat, taking measurements of the actual depth, and publishing the results for all to see.
The 1860s
Thomas Colden Ruggles was appointed to carry out the survey, the first readings to be taken in 1860.vii A second test run was to be made in 1861. Ruggles found that the canal was between 5.9 to 6.7 feet deep. In addition there were large earthen benches that stuck out into the channel decreasing the width of the navigation channel and decreasing the amount of water in the canal. Ruggles also discovered that no surveys of the canal existed to aid him in his calculations of clearing out the canal channel. In the 1861 Annual Report, (the same one in which T.C. Ruggles report was published), the Canal Commissioners were quick to point out that this testing was a waste of money. On April 10, 1862 the State Legislature also reacted to Ruggles report by passing Chapter 169 of 1862, which declared the canal’s first enlargement complete as of September 1, 1862. What this meant was that if the canal was to be worked on after September 1, the money would need to come out of the general fund. The enlargement was complete.
Whitford noted that the policy change “left the enlargement of the canals far from actual completion.”viii As it stood in 1862, thirteen locks west of Syracuse only had one chamber; earthen benches remained along much of the canal; and over time, the canal had been getting shallower as soil, sewage, and trash filled up the canal prism. The depth was far from seven feet. And aside from the steam parade of 1858 little advancement was made in terms of non-animal towage.
The supporters of the canal only had to look to the loss of business to the railroads and see what the future held. In 1865 the canal hauled about a million tons more then the railroads. In 1867, the tonnage of freight moved by the canal and the railroad was about equal at about five-and-a-half-million-tons. In 1868 the canal hauled slightly more, and then after that the railroads pulled ahead never to lose ground again. The railroads were improving their steam engines which made it possible to move more freight in each train. In 1869 the Westinghouse air-brake was introduced and in 1873 the knuckle coupler was introduced. Meanwhile, the majority of boats on the Erie and other canals were being pulled by animal teams.
Little would happen along the canal during the next seven years. The locks west of Port Byron remained as singles. In his 1869 message, Governor Hoffman said it was the duty of the state to “foster and protect” the canal, and to restore it to full dimensions again, meaning seven feet of water.ix In May 1869, money was given to restart the lock doubling.x
The 1870s
The Governor repeated his message in 1870 and another $200,000 was given to the lock doubling effort.xi The Canal Commissioner stated that another $126,000 was needed to finish the work. One of the reasons to support the canals was that they acted as a check on the railroad’s freight prices. Even if the canals were not carrying great amounts, the fact that they were in business helped to regulate prices.
It was recognized that steam had not made the inroads along the canal as the people on the 1858 parade had expected. And in 1871 the Governor pointed out that Canada was actively enlarging their canals to allow for larger boats. The State reacted by encouraging any sort of towing system, saying that they wanted to see the use of steam, caloric, electricity or any motor power other than animals for the propulsion of boats.xii
In 1873, the newly elected Governor John Dix said that the State had been far too generous with its money over the Hoffman years and needed to make cuts. However, he did give his support for the canals and that the need to have full dimensions and steam. In 1874 Governor Dix mentioned the Canadian canals and the fact that ships of 1600-tons will soon be using the St. Lawrence River. He said that the State must respond by providing a canal that will cheapen the cost of moving goods or the State would lose its place in commerce. However, he warned, 1874 was not a time to even think about a ship canal across the State, since even as Governor Dix gave his 1874 message, the world had been in a financial depression since September of 1873.
In 1873, people selected from around the state met to discuss changes to the New York State Constitution. One of the big changes was to create the position of the Superintendent of Public Works, and to abolish the Canal Commissioners. Once recommended, and with the approval of the Legislature, the amendment would be placed on the fall ballot. Even with the change favorably voted upon by the voters, the change from Canal Commissioners to Superintendent would not happen until 1876.
In 1875, newly elected Governor Tilden made very favorable comments toward the canals, saying that the canal had enough capacity to do the job asked of it and more but that the canal needed to be cleaned out to seven foot.xiii His tone was measured, in light of the depression that was ongoing. “Economy from the best group of adaptations”, was his message. Then he wrote; “I may be excused for repeating here what I said in the Constitutional Convention eight years ago: “What the Erie Canal wants is more water in the prism; more water in the waterway. A great deal of it is not much more than six feet, and boats drag along over a little skim of water; whereas it ought to have a body of water larger and deeper even than was intended in the original project. Bring it up to seven feet- honest seven feet- and on all levels, wherever you can, bottoming it out; throw the excavation upon the banks; increase that seven feet toward eight feet, as you can do, progressively and economically. You may also take out the bench walls.”xiv
There are a couple of remarkable items in the Governors message. The first is that the Governor had made the argument for an honest seven feet in 1867, some five years after those in 1862 said the enlargement was complete, and here he was again making the argument again in 1875 some thirteen years after 1862. He also made statements concerning the way that boats move in the canal and this message may be the first serious call for a canal deeper than seven feet. But in doing all this, he also made it clear; “No Rash Innovations.”xv Complete the canal to seven feet, give steam a chance, study the results. In short, don’t do any thing else in a time of depression.
Governor Tilden was not done. On March 19, 1875, he released a special message to the Legislature. He began by saying that he had received a communication from the boatman, forwarders, and others concerned with the business of the canals asking for cheaper tolls and ways to cheapen the movement of freight. He then said he started his own investigation into the canals of the State, and that this investigation had found that many millions of dollars had been spent on useless improvements and repairs. He said that the canal must be cleaned out and gradually deepened so the boat is moving through more water. (more on this later) He asked for a measurement of the canal depth. He then pointed out the fraud in the canal bidding system and said that engineers, contractors, and commissioners have been ripping off the State for years. He finished with, “It is clear that, under the present system of canal management, the people will not be relieved from taxation, the boatmen from high tolls, or the needed improvements of the Erie and Champlain Canals will be finished.”xvi As a result, the Legislature set up an investigating committee which was given a year to study the management of the canals and make a report.
The Governors special message had the intended effect. The New York Herald ran a full page devoted to the message, the need for investigations, and the need for seven feet of water.xvii Thurlow Weed, no friend of Tilden, gave his support to the Governor.
Samuel Ruggles, the ardent canal supporter and member of the New York State Chamber of Commerce, joined the fight for the canals. Maybe not surprisingly, in May, 1875, the Chamber hired Thomas Colden Ruggles to run his depth survey/tests again, examining the speed of the boats on the canal, and the depth of water. Ruggles rode along on the City of Utica, a Baxter Steam Canal Transportation boat. He submitted his report to the Chamber on October 7, 1875.xviii Ruggles condensed his report down to three points; 1) that delays in navigation cause the boaters to waste money, 2) that in many places the canal is not more that thirty feet wide, and 3) that the boaters would be better served with eight feet of water. He also points out that in many places the canal has not been improved since his 1861 survey. On March 30, 1876, the Chamber passed a resolution in favor of making the canal seven-foot-deep, and deepening where ever possible.
The Canal Ring
In 1876, Governor Tilden called for a special investigation of “the canal ring”, and the waste and fraud connected to canal work. The conclusions of this investigation had an impact on what happened next with the canal enlargement. It is not the purpose of this article to investigate what was called “the canal ring”. But it is important to note what happened as it has such a bearing on what would happen next.
In March, Governor Tilden delivered the findings of the investigation which found; 1) almost fifteen million dollars had been spend over the last five years on canal repairs and improvements, 2) almost all the work done had little value to the State and was only done to enrich the contractors, 3) most of the bids and contracts were handed out illegally, 4) most of the work was useless. He then recommended that; 1) close all contracts, 2) make $400,000 available to close out any payments on closed contracts, 3) make $400,000 available to restore the canal so it could have seven feet of water, plus make $15,000 available for a complete survey of the canal, 4) use any non-expended balances left from prior appropriations on the Champlain Canal, 5) direct the canal board to come up with a set of recommendations for next year. These recommendations became law as Chapter 425 of 1876.xix The “canal ring” had been broken.
When the 1876 fall elections rolled around the voters had a chance to respond to the news of the canal ring by way of the Constitutional changes recommended in 1873. They were well prepared to change the management structure of the canals. The State would have its first Superintendent of Public Works, and the Canal Commissioners were to be gone. But change was to come slowly and political shenanigans would postpone the appointment of the Superintendent until late January 1878.
In 1877 newly elected Governor Lucius Robinson pronounced that the fraud on the canal was gone but that the boatmen had been harmed by the waste over the last years. And because of the ongoing depression the only way to help the boatmen was to cut the tolls.
At the heart of the matter for the boatmen was moving more freight at a faster speed. Whether it was a horse boat or a steam boat, the owner needed to get from Buffalo to Albany or New York City as fast as he could with as many tons of goods as the canal would let him carry. What stopped him was the depth of the water and the size of the enlarged locks. No boat could be larger then 98-feet-long and 17-feet-wide, with a maximum draft of six-anda-half-feet (if the canal had seven feet of water). This is why all the arguments made on behalf of the canal up to this point was to give the boaters a full seven feet of water, and to get the boats moving faster by allowing steam instead of animal towage.
As they had just finished enlarging the locks, it was unlikely that the State would enlarge the locks a second time, so every improvement had to work around the size restriction. Pennsylvanian William Frick had developed a device to allow two full size Erie Canal boats to be coupled so that one crew could safely steer the two boats. Most likely he based this on what he saw some of the Pennsylvania canals, with two small boats coupled together using a hinge device. In effect, his invention created one very long boat so the owner could move 400 tons instead of 200 tons. This greatly saved time and money as one crew could move twice the amount. But at the locks the boats had to be uncoupled and each boat passed through on its own. And lockage time was at least twice as working a single boat. And the work load on the horse was almost doubled. So it made sense to promote the use of a steam powered boat to pull or push a non-powered boat.
To drive home this point, in 1877, State Engineer John Van Buren, went into great detail as to the workload of the canal horse. He reported that despite all the efforts to get steam on the canal, the primary movers of boats was still the canal horse. He then gave an overview of the costs of running a horse boat and a steamer, an overview of the Belgium system of towage, an overview of the Frick coupling system, and the workload of either animal or steam to move a boat in the canal. He wrote that the animals would be better served to be owned by a large company and used in stages along the canal with proper food and rest, and then he concluded by saying, “The condition in which the horses employed on the canals are kept is very bad economy, to say nothing of its being a disgrace to our civilization.”xx
In his 1878 message, Governor Robinson announced that traffic was up on the canal, as all available boats were in use. The depression was over. However, since the State had cut tolls so deeply the revenue in 1877 did not cover the cost of running the canal which was higher because more boats were now using it. The State operated the canals under a constitutional article that said that the expenses for the coming year could not exceed the previous year’s revenues. If the expenses did run over the money had to be taken out of extraordinary repairs fund. With this restriction the State had to make cuts to the upcoming years budget. The Governor stated that governance of the canal under the auspices of the new Superintendent of Public Works would be able to cut the annual budget in half from 1877 and run a successful canal.xxi No mention of improvements was made. No mention would be made in 1879 either, however, it may have been that the Governor was giving the new Superintendent some time to get his bearings. The Governor also had other concerns to occupy his time. In a time of consolidation and cuts, the State had spent over nine-million-dollars on a new State Capitol building which was far from finished. The Legislature had moved in to the sections of the capitol that were usable. The Governor wished them well in their home hoping that it would lead them to pass only wise and good laws, but he feared that the new building was built in the fashion of European Courts and would lead to more dishonesty and corruption and he thought maybe the voters might wish that the earth would open and shallow it up.xxii
The Jervis Plan
Soon after VanBuren’s report was made public in January of 1878, John Jervis wrote at length of the need for a canal railroad.xxiii This may have been in response to the various methods of towage that VanBuren reported on which left out any sort of railroad / canal connection. In the 1878 International Review , Jervis wrote an article titled “The Future of the Erie Canal”, in which he attempts to make the case for canal boats to be pulled by steam engines on rails that would run along the towpath. His logic was that if the trains on rails were still pulled by horses as were the canal boats, the canal would be the dominate transportation of the times. However, since steam engines pulled train cars and horses pulled canal boats, the canal could not compete. Then he suggested that steam engines could tow five boats at one time. Nothing would come from this paper other then the fact that a well respected engineer had weighed in onto the future of the Erie Canal and added some facts to the discussion.
In the 1878 Annual Report of the Surveyor and Engineer, Division Engineer Sweet included the results of a study he conducted for State Engineer Horatio Seymour Jr. The purpose of the study was to determine “the commercial value of the proposed improvement of the Erie Canal by deepening it a foot.” In his remarks Sweet made reference to a survey of 1876, “which was undertaken for the purposes of this improvement”. This appears to point back to Governor Tilden’s address, and the resulting act of the legislature (chapter 425 of 1876) which authorized $15,000 for this study. Although Governor Tilden did not call for a deeper canal it appears that Sweet’s instructions were to investigate this. Was this an improvement or an enlargement? [And I pose the question, “Is this the start of the second enlargement?”]
Sweet’s tasks were; 1) to determine the cost to the State of enlarging the canal, and 2) to determine the savings to the boat owners if the canal was made eight-foot-deep. The first task was relatively straight forward. How much would it cost to either dig out the bottom of the canal another foot, or, raise the banks a foot? The second task was a bit more involved and centered on determining how much energy was needed to move a canal boat in the narrow confines of a canal. The energy thus expended is called the tractive force.
At its very basic level, a boat, whether it is being towed or pushed, will resist being moved. Whatever is pulling or pushing the boat the animal or engine will need to overcome this resistance. The amount of water around and under the boat, the shape of the hull, the draft and length of the boat, the current, the shape of the canal, all serve to have an effect the amount of force needed to move the boat. Both Engineers Sweet and VanBuren tried to quantify this force, although Sweet seems to have taken it a bit further. Interestingly, Sweet seems to have only looked at horse boats while VanBuren studied both. In the end he wrote that if the canal was one foot deeper (eight feet), a boat could carry about 50-tons-more, and still have less drag than the boats operating in the seven foot deep canal.xxv
Seymour’s Plan
In his first Annual Report, State Engineer Seymour outlined the challenges faced by the New York State canals.xxvi The railroads and the Canadian canals were the major focus. Studies showed that the St. Lawrence route was a shorter route to Europe and when complete, the locks along the Canadian border would allow much larger boats access to the Great Lakes. The Erie had to innovate and improve, or lose most of its water borne traffic to the Canadian canals. He then turned his focus to how to help the Erie Canal.
For Seymour it all came down to the ease of transportation and how to cheapen the cost of moving goods. He reasoned that the State could either increase tonnage, or increase speed. He noted Sweet’s study as to how to increase the size amount of tonnage a boat could move while decreasing the amount of time that a boat remained in transit across the state. He also suggested that locks could be lengthened and that machinery be installed on the locks to assist boats through the locks. He also suggests deepening the canal to eight feet.
The enlarged Erie to scale with boat. An added foot to the top and bottom of the canal is also shown. The boat takes up 25% of the canal.
Deepening seems to suggest that the canal should be dug deeper. That is not what Seymour wanted to do. He wanted to raise the banks one foot. This could be done by adding a foot of earth to the top of the banks, adding some boards to the various feeder dams, and adding structure to the top of locks and aqueducts. Some bridges might need to be raised. Digging out the bottom of the canal would be much more difficult as the floors of the locks and aqueducts would need to be reconstructed. And the culverts that passed under the canal might need to be lowered or reconstructed. But the main reason to add to the top of the canal was that this would greatly increase the amount of water in the canal prism, since the top of the canal was seventy feet wide, and the bottom was only fifty-two. More water meant reduced drag. This plan of improvement was called the Seymour Plan, a name that would stick up through the Nine Million Dollar Enlargement.
1879- T.C. Ruggles and the Ten Foot Canal
Inspired by the Jervis’ article, Thomas C Ruggles responded with his own argument for a deeper canal. Ruggles agreed that a extra foot of water in the canal would help but an extra three-feet would allow steamers to run faster at an improved economy.
“I will speak first of the length of boats, then of the bottom of the canal. All vessels that go by steam require length; they are now being made about ten times as long as broad. This makes room for machinery, for cabins, and for cargo. The only way left to do on the canals, as the locks would not admit longer boats than those in use, was to fasten one boat before the other, taking them apart at the locks. This in fact, has doubled the capacity of the steamer, and enabled the same crew to bring down twice the load for the same price, and has made steam a success. I recommended this plan in 1861, and left models with Auditor Benton. The plan was approved of by Governor Hunt and Canal Commissioner Hiram Gardner, and the press along the line of the canal. It was adopted in Illinois on a smaller canal than the Erie, and is now approved on the Erie. As I passed along the canal in 1875, captains of canal boats told me if one horse canal boat was fastened before another, the two were towed with less effort than separately.”xxvii Ruggles made the case for a deeper canal and longer locks of twice the current length, if possible.
Ruggles seems to have then taken a step that others had not. He reached out to the newspapers who then used his facts and figures in various articles to publicize the idea. Not all the press was favorable but many picked up on the idea of a deeper canal.
The 1880s
After many years of Governors saying nothing about the future of the Erie Canal, in his address of 1881, Governor Alonzo Cornell may have been forced to address the situation by the soon to be completed enlarged canal of Canada. He said that the new Canadian canal rendered; “the future of the Erie Canal a subject of much concern, and well worthy of your intelligent consideration.”xxviii He said that the State Engineer wanted to raise the banks to increase the water to eight feet, and then said that the Engineer goes into much greater detail in his Annual Report.
In the 1880 Annual Report, State Engineer Seymour devotes many pages to the question of a deeper canal. He outlined the “Danger To Our Commerce” by the St. Lawrence route. He wrote; “The British are so confident that they will wrest the trade of the west from us, that they have nearly completed works that will cost more than thirty millions of dollars. This is in addition to about twenty-millions spent in early improvements, making about fifty-millions paid out to gain the great prize they seek, the control of the carrying trade from the heart of our country to the markets of the world. They do not fear our railroads. While we are neglecting our water-routes, they spare no cost to perfect theirs.”xxix
He then moved into ways to improve the Erie Canal. He used letters from Engineer Van Richmond, George Geddes, and free-tolls promoter Alonzo Richmond to emphasize the need for a deeper canal. In a complicated tangle of letters, Alonzo asked Van Richmond about the practicality of adding one foot to the banks and digging out the canal bottom, who then cited the opinion of George Geddes. Geddes endorsed the idea of a nine foot canal and then said; “The engines must be on the boats, and able to move them backward as well as forward, and for this reason, if for no other, all schemes of railroads on the banks of the canal, or cables laid along its bottom to move the boats, have appeared to me idle, and but divert the public mind from a full investigation of the true plan of improving our means of transportation.”xxx This was certainly a criticism of the Jervis Plan and the other towing plans. He closes with this statement; “The path of improvement is now so plainly marked out that it most certainly will be followed. The opinions of all experts, who have given investigation to this matter, may be said to be alike, and the time for prompt action has fully come. In addition to the financial advantages that would flow from the improvements you advocate, there is a moral consideration worth the attention of all lovers of men and animals. It will be a great advance in this direction, to give the galled and jaded horses and mules of the tow-path an honorable discharge from that service, and it would be a great thing to substitute for the drivers, facing storms and hardships on the bank, educated mechanics, managing steam engines in the comforts of sheltered cabins.”xxxi
By law the State Engineer was given the authority to make some improvements to help the canal without having to ask for an appropriation.xxxii In 1880 machinery was installed into the Port Byron Lock 52, to assist in moving boats through the lock. Once the success at Lock 52 was seen, the other four locks that lifted boats from the west (47,48,49,51) were fitted out with the water powered machinery.xxxiii The State Engineer estimated that two and a half hours would be saved, which was part of his plan to increase the overall time that boats spent in transit.
In his message for 1882 Governor Cornell points out the obvious that by continued cutting of tolls, there was not enough revenue generated to cover the expenses of operating the canal. If the canals were to stay in operation a new method of paying the bills would need to be found. The Legislature passed an act that would be presented to the voters in November that would abolish the tolls and raise the money needed from direct taxation.xxxiv This amendment passed and September 30, 1883 would be the last day that tolls would be collected on the canal.xxxv
The last day of 1883 would end the service of Engineer Silas Seymour. Silas seems to have had held a different opinion of the canals then his predecessor Horatio Seymour. Silas’ Annual Report is full of gloom, from the washing of the banks from the passing steamers, to the filling of the canal bottom due to sediment and sewage, he stated that the idea of a free canal, even though it had only been in operation for a year, was a failure. He then gave three pages of his report extolling the expanding railroad system of the country, and why the canal was a drain. He wrote; “The last named alternative [selling the canals] would, in light of past experiences, appear to be the wisest of the three; for the reason that Pennsylvania, Ohio and other States, have found it for their interest to dispose of their canals; and thus reimburse their treasuries to some extent, for the capital invested in them; and there can be no doubt that the canals of this State can readily be sold for a sufficient amount, to liquidate the entire canal debt of the State; and thus relieve the people from the burden of any further taxation on that account.”xxxvi His last word about the subject was that “THE CANALS MUST GO”.xxxvii It was, as he wrote, his last official act to submit these opinions to the Governor and the Legislature.
Elnathan Sweet was to replace Seymour as the next State Engineer. Sweet, you will recall, wrote the report regarding the tractive force needed by the boats in 1878. Unlike Silas Seymour who had been a railroad man most of his life, Sweet had worked for many years on the canals. He knew the difficulties faced by the State and the boatmen. The divide between the railroads and the canals had grown so that in 1884 the combined railroads had moved over twenty-two million tons, whereas the canal had moved just slightly over five-million-tons. Sweet is notable for his publication The Radical Enlargement of the Artificial Water-way Between the Lakes and the Hudson River.xxxviii Sweet proposed a ship canal one-hundred-feet-wide and eighteen-feet-deep, with locks four-hundred-fifty-feet-long and sixty-feet-wide. Sweet wrote that it would need to step down from Lake Erie to the Hudson, so that water from Lake Erie could be used to fill its entire length. The valley of the Seneca River near Montezuma would have an embankment fifty-feet-high. From Utica to Albany the canal was to use a canalized Mohawk River. He not only proposed this idea through his Annual Report of 1885 (which covered 1884), but also submitted the idea to the American Society of Civil Engineers. It is amazing that some thought the idea grand for the fact that ships of war could be quickly moved into the Great Lakes in case Britain was to move their ships of war into the lakes.xxxix Others had opposing opinions saying that as a nation we should be using the St. Lawrence route, “If the same facilities, and even better, can be got by the expenditure of thirty-three millions [what the Canadian Canals had cost] than by the expenditure of two hundred millions, where is the ground for hesitation and doubt as to the course for prudent sensible men to adopt? Simply this- reluctance to depend in any way upon a foreign nation- pride in our own country- the sentiment which we call patriotism. If the object is to gratify this sentiment- to enforce a Chinese like national exclusion- to build up New York City- then by all means let us enlarge the Erie Canal. But if the object is, as we first stated it, to secure cheap, rapid and reliable transportation from the lakes to the seaboard, then let us take the route that God, the great engineer, has laid out for us.”xl Sweet estimated the cost of his ship canal to be between $125 and $150 million dollars.
Sweet’s Ship Canal proposal was the last of the big ideas when it came to the canal. Sweet had Gere’s Lock 50 lengthened so that two boats could be locked through at one time and then after seeing the success seen at Lock 50, the effort to increase the capacity of the canal centered around lengthening the locks and dredging out the canal to return it to seven feet. Over the years, sediment, sewage, trash an anything else that could be poured or thrown into the canal decreased the working depth. It proved hard enough the keep seven feet of water, let alone eight or nine feet.
The Governors seem to be ready to move on or perhaps away, from the canals. As we have seen, most at least made some mention of the canals in their yearly message. But with the canals free as of 1883, there seemed little reason to push for any improvements. Whitford made note of this, writing “The annual message of Governor Hill, covering the period of 1885, is worthy of note from the fact that it did not contain a single word of direct reference of the canals.”xli Governor Hill did mention the canals in his 1885 message, where he said that no substantial improvements had been made in years.xlii But then after that, canals were absent from the messages covering 1886 to 1891.
The State Canal Union
This does not mean that the canals had lost all their friends and supporters. The State Canal Union was formed around 1885 to bring together interested parties and support the canals. Governor Seymour was the first president of the Union, replaced by George Clinton after Seymour’s death in 1886. In an interview in 1892, President Clinton said that, “The Union was formed for the purpose of lengthening the locks on the canal and deepening the channel so as to give two feet more water; also to clean it out and in part construct vertical walls. The great object was to give a broader and deeper bottom, making it nine instead of seven feet.”xliii The state-wide union would later try to organize smaller “local” canal unions that would advocate for canal improvements from a local perspective. It appears that the Union disbanded in the mid 1890’s.
The New York Produce Exchange
The New York Produce Exchange was a commodities exchange that could swing lots of power. It advocated for the canals but, at times found itself in conflict with other pro-canal organizations that wanted lower grain elevator prices in New York and across the state. It is notable that TC Ruggles sent his proposal for a ten foot canal to this organization before he mailed it out to the media at large. When it came to the deepening of the canal, the Exchange was on the side of the canal men.
The 1890s
1892 was the one hundred year celebration of the canals in New York, going back to the first small canals around the rapids of the Mohawk River. The men of the State Canal Union would seize upon this centennial to serve as a backdrop to the question of what to do with the canal system. The State Canal Union set a date of October 19, 1892 in Buffalo for men to gather to show their support. Canal Union President Clinton said that “the main object of the convention, is to arouse public interest in this matter of canal improvement and to make the convention in a sense educational.”xliv Over three hundred people attended the celebration.
For the first time in years, the 1892 Governor’s message mentioned canal improvements, continuing the lock lengthening project that had been going on since 1884. In the previous two years, little had been done as the Legislature had not given any money for the locks. In 1893 money was given to restart the work. The Governor also stated that he felt electricity should be used to propel the boats and asked for funding to install poles and wires along the canal. This was done under Chapter 499.
Again, in 1894, the Governor makes extensive comments about the canals, but takes an interesting twist. At first he states that a ship canal is out of the question, then says that the lock lengthening project has been a failure and that even the deepening would be useless. Then he suggests that electricity is the way of the future and that the State should continue with the experiments and infrastructure started in the prior year.xlv
The question of the canals came to a head at the 1894 Constitutional Convention. Since the canals are written into the constitution, each convention gave the State the opportunity to make changes such as the amendment to sell off many of the lateral canals in 1873. The canal men knew that this was their chance and held meetings to discuss the resolutions to be passed along to the Convention. They adopted the plan that had been in the works all along, the Seymour Plan.xlvi Their estimate for the work of lengthening the remaining locks, and making the canal a uniform nine-foot-deep was between $10,000,000 and $12,000,000. This plan was rejected and instead, the Legislature was given the power to enact laws in regard to the improvement of the canals. Article 7, Section 10 of the NYS Constitution does not give any number in regards to the enlargement of the canal. It merely states; “The canals may be improved in such manner as the Legislature shall provide by law. A debt may be authorized for that purpose in the mode prescribed by section four of this article, or the cost of such improvement may be defrayed by the appropriation of funds from the state treasury, or by equitable annual tax.”xlvii This was no change in the Constitution, as the Legislature held this power already, however, the question was put on the ballot as a sort of public referendum on the canals.
A investigating Canal Commission later wrote that before the convention, there was a “general impression” that the work could be done for $7,000,000 to $9,000,000. The convention delegates asked for a revised estimate from the State Engineer and gave him just twelve days to estimate the entire work of deepening and enlarging the 350-miles of canal. The last real physical survey of the canal had been made in 1876, and with so little time, this is what the Engineer used. Without leaving the office he estimated the cost to be $11,573,000. As the Commission later wrote; “It was merely the best guess which the State Engineer could give, based upon such facts as he had at hand.”xlviii For some reason, the Legislature, State Engineer and friends of the canal came to a $9,000,000 figure for the Seymour Plan enlargement. The Commission wrote; “It was, in fact, an amount fixed without sufficient data and upon the theory that there would be no unusual difficulties and that the best plan was to do the work as cheaply as possible.”xlix
With the affirmative November vote, the canal men jumped into action wishing to get their resolutions in order before the Legislature opened its 1895 session. A canal conference was held on December 21where as the men resolved that; a liberal amount of money be allocated for the enlargement of the canals; that the money be expended in 1895 and 96; a plan be made to continue and complete the work already in progress, with surveys and estimates; that bonds be secured in the least time, commensurate with the economy.l
1895
The next couple months would serve as the beginning of the second enlargement and at the same time mark the end of the second enlargement. At the beginning of the 1895 Legislature, newly elected Assemblyman Edward Clarkson introduced a bill that would allow the voters, who had just voted in favor of the canal enlargement, to vote again in the fall election. One might view this as a stalling tactic of the opponents of the canals, but Clarkson was a canal man. The newspapers reported, “Hon. Edward M. Clarkson, secretary of the Boat Owners and Commercial Association, was elected member of the assembly from the eighth assembly district, Brooklyn. He will make a capital worker for canal interests.”li Clarkson was also a member of the New York Produce Exchange.lii The bill that Clarkson introduced was for $9,000,000, a sum that was attributed to the canal union.liii
The first odd thing about this step is that the law did not require that the voters re-vote on a sum. The 1894 vote allowed the Legislature to move ahead with the enlargement as they saw fit and never before had the Legislature gone to the people for a vote on a appropriation even though millions had been spent on the canal improvements since 1884. The second odd thing is the $9,000,000 figure that Clarkson had used, since it came from the canal interests. Even the State Engineer had reported that at least $11,500,000 would be needed. Other estimates ran even higher. Clarkson’s bill also required that Superintendent of Public Works be required to enlarge and improve the canals within three months of the issuing of bonds. And it said; “The work called for by this act shall be done in accordance with plans, specifications, and estimates prepared and approved by the State Engineer and Surveyor.”liv The bill moved through the Legislature and was approved to move onto the voter at the fall election.
The canal men and other commercial interests met in June to plot their campaign to get the voters to give their approval a second time. The campaign worked, as enlargement was once again given the nod of the voters, with a majority of 250,000. The newspapers wrote; “The great improvement will begin this year, and three years’ time will see the completion of a wonderful change in the condition of the canals. It means work for idle workmen, a low rate for the transportation of merchandise, grain and coal, and a movement for the general prosperity of the State.”lv
1896
With the approval of the voters work could begin. However, before a shovel could be put to earth, much work had to take place. A survey of the canal had to be made so that the engineers could decide what work was needed. Survey men had to be hired and trained, and assistant engineers hired. There were not enough available men on the civil service lists so more had to be found. The canal was divided into thirty-bid-sections, and into each section estimates for improvements had to be made. Test cores had to be taken to judge if the soil was rock, clay, or earth. Measurements had to be made as to whether to raise or lower the canal, what structures were present. An engineer and assistant was needed for each section. Once the estimates were complete, the work needed to be advertised in all the papers along the canal. And then the contractors would submit their bids, and from these, work was awarded. All this was supposed to take place within three months. It took a year.
By July 1896 it became clear that the work for the enlargement of the canal using the Seymour Plan would cost $13,500,000. And this did not include engineering, advertising or inspection, all things that the State had to do. The enlargement law as written did not apply to existing structures, say when a bridge had to be raised or if a culvert had to be rebuilt. In fact all the structures that were in poor condition could not be repaired under this law.lvi And it was clear to the Superintendent that the canal would suffer if any part of it was disturbed. He wrote the banks were likely to collapse if any work was done around them, say when digging out the bottom or adding soil to the top.lvii The State Engineer was told to make cuts to bring the work in alignment with the $9,000,000.lviii Wholesale cuts were made to structures, bank work, excavations. And the work was bid out.
ii Annual Report of the Canal Commissioners of the State of New York, Albany 1857, pg 42. This report covers the year 1856. In it, it was stated that the canal, although enlarged to seventy feet wide, only held five feet of water.
iv Wikipedia contributors, “Samuel B. Ruggles,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. The name Ruggles was well known in New York City. He donated the land in NYC for Gramercy Park, Irving Place, Lexington and Madison Avenues.
v Report on the Canals of New York, Committee of the Chamber of Commerce of State of New York, New York, 1875, Pg 21.
vii I have not been able to ascertain if Samuel and Thomas Ruggles were related.
viii Whitford, Noble E., History of the Canal System of the State of New York, Albany, NY., 1906, pg. 258
ix Message of Governor Hoffman from 1869. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909.Volume 6- pg 16. There is a volume series of annotated messages edited by Charles Lincoln dating between 1683 to 1906. All messages used in this article come from these volumes.
x Chapter 877 of 1869. Annual Report of State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany, 1892. This Report, which covers the year of 1891, contains a wealth of information about the canals, boats, and improvements. There is a list of the various laws passed in support of the canals beginning on page 75. Laws are also noted in Whitford and the messages of the Governors.
xviii Ruggles, Thomas Colden, Report to New York Chamber of Commerce. Eighteenth Annual Report of the Corporation of the Chamber of Commerce, New York, 1876. Pg 47
xix Message of Governor Tilden from 1876. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909. Volume 6, pg 994.
xx Annual Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany 1878, pg 62. This report covers the year 1877.
xxi Message of Governor Robinson from 1878. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909. Volume 7, pg 144
xxii Message of Governor Robinson from 1879. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909. Volume 7, pg 273
xxiii Jervis, John B., The Future of the Erie Canal, The International Review, New York, Volume 5, 1878, pg 379. John B Jervis was a engineer of note, with projects on the Erie Canal, the Delaware and Hudson, and many other civil works projects.
xxiv Sweet, Elnathan in a report to Horatio Seymour, Jr., Increasing the Depth of Water in the Erie Canal, Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany, 1879, pg 54. Sweet’s report was dated October 1, 1878. There appears to have been two completely separate studies carried out in regards to the workload of a motor, be it animal or mechanical, when moving a canal boat. VanBuren’s report appears to have been carried out in the fall of 1877, and Seymour had another made in the summer of 1878. Why two studies were made is unknown.
xxv Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, 58th Session, Volume 2, 1835. See Hutchinsons’ report on the enlargement of the Erie Canal. He first submitted it in 1834 as Assembly Document #88. It was resubmitted in 1835 as Assembly Document #143. Tractive force may have not been considered when the first Erie was designed, however, it is clear that that Engineer Holmes Hutchinson did consider the tractive forces when designing the first enlargement. If all had been equal between the first and second versions of the Erie Canal, the boats on the second Erie would have been twenty-six feet side. But they were only seventeen, which reduced the tractive resistance and allowed three boats to pass side by side. Governor Tilden referenced Hutchinson in his 1875 address when he called for canal improvements. Later Sweet and others will credit Hutchinson and Jervis for making use of the work of Frenchman Chevalier DuBuat, who in the late 1700’s, studied the way that boats moved in canals. This is all to say that as early as the mid 1700’s engineers realized that increasing the size of a canal boat was not always the best way to increase canal capacity.
xxvi Horatio was the son of John, and was not a junior at all. He appears to have been named for his uncle, Governor Horatio Seymour.
xxvii Ruggles, Thomas C. Letter of T.C. Ruggles on the Erie Canal. Report of the New York Produce Exchange for the Year 1879, New York, 1880, pg 72. Ruggles may have been making reference to a boat lashing system designed by William Frick. Frick applied for his patent on March 11, 1878, but some type of system was in use by 1875. Most of the engineers referred to the lashing system as the “Illinois system”.
xxviii Message of Governor Cornell from 1881. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909. Volume 7, pg 516.
xxix Annual Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany 1881, pg 8. This report covers 1880.
xxx Ibid. A letter from George Geddes to Engineer Seymour, pg 12
xxxii Chapter 99 of 1880 allows the Superintendent of Public Works and the State Engineer to make repairs and improvements.
xxxiii Annual Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany, 1882. pg 140. This report covers 1881.
xxxiv Message of Governor Cornell from 1881. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909. Volume 7, pg 685. Chapter 229 of 1882.
xxxv This law would remain in effect until 1994, when lockage fees were applied.
xxxvi Annual Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany 1884, pg 32. This report covers 1883.
xxxviii Sweet, Elnathan M., The Radical Enlargement of the Artificial Water-way between The Lakes and The Hudson River, American Society of Civil Engineers Transaction #299, Vol 14, New York, February 1885 p
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.
