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.
