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10 Along the Towpath, March 2015

Accompanied by the Past by Karen Gray

History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiq-uity. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), Pro Publio Sestio

C&O Canal Boats and Navigation: 1851–1870

Even before the opening of the last 50 miles of the C&O Canal’s 184.5 miles, the demand for boats designed specifically and solely for the canal rather than river navigation had developed—although it is not clear what the early boats looked like or who was building them. Only when boat builders began to appear in Cumberland do we begin to have a record (although far from complete) of builders and their products. Thanks to William Bauman’s transcription of canal company boat registers, mortgages, and newspaper articles, many of those records are now available in digital files and some are on candocanal.org.

For any canal, the limiting size of a boat is the "usable lockage" space within the smallest lock through which the boat must pass. For the C&O Canal with its 15 ft. lock width, that meant a maxi-mum 14.5 ft. width for the boats (although many boats were more narrow). However, the tendency of the lock walls to slump inwards could create major problems for the widest boats, necessitating that some of the facing stone on badly slumping locks be shaved off to restore the 15 ft. width.1 This was done so often to the towpath wall on Lock 31 at Weverton, that the thin masonry wall was replaced by a concrete wall during the receivership era.

Determining the maximum possible length of C&O Canal boats is a vexing problem. The original specifications for locks called for only 90 ft. between the upper sides of the sills, although later specifications lengthened this to 100 ft.2 It is a critical fact that any boat passing through these locks must fit between the point of the closed downstream gate and the hypotenuse of the miter sill of the upstream gate (or the breast wall for the lower 25 locks that had their upstream gate on top of the breast wall).

The problem becomes most clear with Lock 36 that Davies reported had only 89 ft. 11 in. of usable lockage, and Lock 13 that Hahn described as having only 90 ft. 3 inches clear for boats.3 As Hahn states: “Locks 5 thru 23, excluding those with drop gates, vary from 90 ft. 3 in. to 93 ft. 4¼ in.”4

It must be emphasized that it is not credible that boats would fill the entire usable lockage space. The movement of a boat in the turbulence during the operation of the lock would have thrown it back and forth against the gates unless the snubbing rope was tight enough to prevent any such movement as the boat rose or fell in the lock. However a snubbing rope kept so tight could easily break as the heavy boats (especially those with significant cargo) responded to the flow of water into or out of the lock. Reason suggests that some slack in the snubbing process would have been necessary to prevent extreme pressure on the rope even though such slack would allow a boat to move back and forth in the lock. To prevent this movement from causing boats to hit proximate gates, boats must have been shorter than the usable lockage of the shortest locks – or in other words at least under 89 and more likely 88 or even 87 ft.

The difficulty results from the fact that the C&O Canal Com-pany boat registers and other primary documents record boats that

were 92 ft. long.5 Such boats would not fit in the shorter locks as Hahn casually mentions in his discussion of the shortness of the lower locks. This critical discrepancy means that the usually stated boat length of 92 ft. presents the canal interpreter or historian with a major conundrum.6

Whatever the maximum length of the canal boats was, at the time of the October 10, 1850 opening of the last fifty miles of canal, four coal carriers began their journey down the canal with a total of 411 tons of coal among them. A fifth departed for Williamsport with 80 tons. Two of the four boats headed for Georgetown drew 3½ ft. while the remaining two drew 4 ft. and got stuck above Dam 6 due to the low water levels in the newly opened section.

At the same time ten empty and two loaded boats departed from Georgetown and Alexandria respectively (the latter would have used the Alexandria canal bridge to cross the Potomac).7 Nothing is known of the size and design of these boats, but the ones headed upstream from the Federal District must have been built somewhere other than Cumberland. Were they newly built boats intended for canal use only or boats still designed for canal and river navigation?

Effective April 1, 1851, the C&O Canal Company released new rules and regulations for boats on the canal. These divided boats into seven categories that indicate the great diversity of boats and the continued presence of river boats (note Class E and F in particular):

Class A –“Decked boats of substantial build, carrying one hun-dred tons and upwards”

Length (minimum of 76 ft. 9 in.; maximum of 92 ft. [?]); width (minimum of 14 ft.; maximum of 14 ft., 6 in.); draft when empty (minimum of 10 in.; maximum of 14 in.); draft when loaded (minimum of 4 ft.; maximum of 6 ft.).

Class B – “Boats of similar construction, carrying less than one hundred tons”

Length (minimum of 70 ft.; maximum of 90 ft.); width (minimum of 11 ft., 9 in.; maximum of 14 ft., 7 in.); draft when empty (minimum of 10 in.; maximum of 18 in.); draft when loaded (minimum of 3 ft.; maximum of 4 ft., 6 in.).

Class C – “Boats not decked, of substantial build, carrying one hundred tons and up-wards”

Length (minimum of 86 ft.; maximum of 92 ft.); width (minimum of 13 ft., 6 in.; maximum of 14 ft., 7 in.); draft when empty (minimum of 8 in.; maximum of 18 in.); draft when loaded (minimum of 4 ft.; maximum of 6 ft.).

Class D – “Boats of similar construction, carrying less than one hundred tons”

Length (minimum of 66 ft., 7 in.; maximum of 90 ft.); width (minimum of 10 ft., 8 in.; maximum of 14 ft., 6 in.); draft when empty (minimum of 6 in.; maximum of 4 ft., 2 in.).

Class E – “Long boats and scows, decked or not decked, of sub-stantial build”

Length (minimum of 58 ft., 10 in.; maximum of 85 ft., 4 in.); width (minimum of 13 ft., 4 in.; maximum of 14 ft., 6 in.); draft when empty (mini-mum of 10 in.; maximum of 12 in.); draft when loaded (minimum of 2 ft., 9 in.; maximum of 4 ft., 6 in..

Along the Towpath, March 2015 11

Class F – “Gondolas and other floats designed for temporary use”

Length (minimum of 71 ft., 4 in.; maximum of 85 ft.); width (minimum of 9 ft., 1 inch; maximum of 14 ft., 6 in.); draft when empty (minimum of 1½ in.; maximum of 6 in.); draft when loaded (minimum of 10 in.; maximum of 3 ft., 6 in.).

Packets – “Boats used chiefly for the transportation of passen-gers”8

Reflecting the concern that the boats would damage the gates and walls, the regulations specified that new boats have a curved bow and that no “boats or floats” have iron on the bow, stern, or sides. Additionally, boats were required to have something between the keel or stern post and the rudder to prevent a towrope from en-tering the opening between the two (as might happen when a boat passed over the submerged towrope of another boat.).9

Additionally, the requirements for boats included that they have:

•• A knife or sharp instrument affixed at the bow that would cut any towrope passing over it.

•• Two snubbing lines. (It's unclear whether this requirement was because boats were being snubbed on two posts, or a precaution in case a snubbing line broke.)

•• Lights at the front when traveling at night, or at both ends when tied up at night.

•• The name, hailing place, class, and registration number (gondolas exempted); and draft markings at the bow, stern, and midship that would indicate how heavily it was loaded (packet boats exempted).10

By the end of the 1852 boating season, Unrau reports that:11

[T]he number of boats navigating the canal was 205 of which about 140 were engaged in the coal trade. The majority of these boats were “new and built expressly for coal transportation”. They were generally capable of transporting upwards of 100 tons, and when the level of the water in the canal would per-mit, the average tonnage of the boats would increase to more than 120.

By 1855 there were 323 boats registered, of which 220 had coal-carrying capacities of 110 to 125 tons. For the boating season of 1857, 100 new boats were constructed. Clearly boats were rap-idly being built that were close in size and design to what would become the standard C&O coal freighter so familiar to us from late-era photographs.12 It is unlikely, however, that they were exactly the same.

Unrau further tells us that “in the spirit of expansion, the board purchased a number of boats from the recently-enlarged Erie Canal during the winter of 1857–58 to engage in the Cumberland coal trade.”13 This report suggests the boat builders on the C&O could not keep up with the demand. How the Erie boats may have dif-fered from those being built on the C&O is unknown. To reach the C&O, the Erie boats almost certainly would have been towed down the Hudson to New York, then down the coast to the mouth of the Chesapeake, and up the bay and Potomac to the Georgetown tide-lock. As the canal company charter did not allow it to operate boats commercially on the canal (its income was primarily in tolls), they must have sold the Erie boats to individuals or companies wishing to engage in canal trade.

The number and configuration of cabins on the C&O Canal boats during this 1851–1870 era may not have matched the ones seen in the photographs from the late 19th or early 20th century. Illustrations of the boats on the enlarged Erie (constructed 1835–1862) show cabins with a lower profile at the bow (for tow animals) and the stern (for crew), and no midship cabin in contrast to the later C&O boats.14

A rare glimpse of boat operations in this era is provided by the anonymous account of an 1859 trip down the C&O Canal on a coal carrier by a young New Englander who had been visiting in the Cumberland area.15 This source asserts that there were “some three or four hundred boats on the canal” at that time, and that:

A hundred or more of these boats were bought from the Erie Canal when that was enlarged, by the canal companies [note the plural] who now own nearly all the boats—the boatmen furnishing teams and outfit, receiving so much a ton for haul-ing the coal, paying their own expenses and the toll on the empty boat back to Cumberland. The cost of a new boat was from twelve to fifteen hundred dollars.16

In this document we are told that there were two kinds of boats on the canal. One was described by the author as of “very primitive shape” – a rectangular barge capable of carrying very large loads but very slow due to its flat ends. The author notes that “there were very few of these boats left and those that were painted at all were covered with a coat of coal tar [doubtless to limit leaks]."17

The other class of boats, according to the author, “had their ends molded and formed the same as a ship, making as fine lines as was consistent with the load they were to carry and the slow speed they sailed.” All the new boats were said to have been built in Cumberland “where they had a miniature ship yard employing the various mechanics as ship carpenter, smiths, painter, and caulkers to be found in large shipyards.”18

These “new” boats are described as having a center cargo sec-tion with “movable hatches making a watertight covering” and a “narrow walk around the edge.” At either end were cabins, the up-per part of which extended about 3 ft. above the deck. The front cabin was used as a stable and the rear as “a stateroom with berths and cooking galley.” Interestingly, “the cabin was not so wide as the boat above the deck, leaving foot-ways on each side.” Behind it “was the tiller deck from which the cabin stairs went down, and under [the tiller deck] a kind of cockpit, about four feet high” where crew could sleep. This latter area was described as the “hottest and least ventilated part of the boat.”19

The stairs down into the cabin of the later boats (for which we have considerably more information), entered the cabin from the starboard side, not the rear tiller deck. Those cabins too used the unventilated area under the tiller deck for storage and/or sleep-ing, but according to oral history accounts, that space was entered directly from the crew cabin. In the last decades of the canal when many boats were operated by families, this area was a common place for children to sleep. If the 1859 account is correct, it appears the sub-tiller-deck area on these earlier boats might have had a separate entrance, thus separating people in the cabin from those under the tiller deck.

It seems reasonable to assume that the early Cumberland-built C&O Canal freighters were undergoing design modifications in the 1850s and possibly through the next decade or two. Such modifi-cations may even have included hull changes to achieve maximum


cargo capacity within the limitations of lock size and canal depth as well as changes to cabin design in response to the growing experi-ence of crews on boats built specifically for C&O navigation.

As to the crew on these earlier boats, the author of the 1859 trip account tells us that it was under “Captain Coss” who “had a comfortable home in Williamsport and two canal boats." He also notes that the captain had apprenticed on a war ship. The “bows man” was Henry Butler, a free black nicknamed “Pic.” The author held “third place” on the boat, involving service in “every position from pilot to tow boy” but most importantly as cook. Finally, the crew included two tow boys about 12 years old, one Pic’s son known as “Little Pic,” and the other a white boy hired by the captain on the previous voyage.20 It is notable that Pic and Little Pic – the two blacks on the boat – were the ones who slept in the cramped and poorly ventilated sub-tiller-deck space.

This account also includes some insights on boat operation. For example the author states:

When the boat was loaded the water came within a foot of the deck, but when it was light it just skimmed over the water, not drawing more than one or two feet, and would be almost unmanageable outside of the canal as it had no keel to prevent it from drifting with the wind.21 The towrope was described as “fastened to an eye-bolt on one side near the middle of the boat…the pivot point on which the boat turned and drew nearly straight ahead.”22

According to the author of this account, the mules were changed every four hours and the typical day lasted 16 to 18 hours, although he notes “we were tied up to no regular hours and lived in Arcadian simplicity”. At times the captain would “take a quantity of hay or grain on speculation and peddle it out to the other boats” (presumably for their teams). On one trip he had a load of lumber and when transporting two barrels of whiskey from one town to another:

Pic and the Capt[ain] sampled the whiskey by driving down a hoop and boring a small hole with a gimlet and drawing out a flask full. After plugging the hole, they drove the hoop back and none but the crew were the wiser for it.23

The hazards of boating are revealed in two incidents recounted by the author. In one case the boat collided with “an old lugger standing high out of the water [and] drawn by a poor old white horse” when the “lugger” had veered toward them to avoid a tree that had fallen into the canal. Fortunately there was no significant damage to either vessel. In the other incident, the fall board (used when mules were changed to span the gap between the boat and towpath) slipped off the boat, dumping two mules into the canal. Boatmen nearby sprang in and led the mules up the steep tow-path bank. Interestingly, the mules were harnessed together for this transfer between the boat stable and the towpath, and the author notes that “if they had got tangled in their harness they might have both been drowned.”24 In later photographs of mules using drop boards they are not harnessed together.

Much changed in the next decade (the 1870s) with the surge of canal business that saw multiple boat builders begin to produce large numbers of boats. The full scale replica at Cumberland likely represents a pattern that became standard sometime after the Civil War. The next edition of this column will consider the boats and canal operation between 1870 and the flood of 1889.

Notes:1. See the Historic Structure Report: Masonry Locks by Harlan Unrau, 31 ff. (pdf version). The cause of this slumping was the subject of one of the major arguments between senior engineer Thomas Purcell and the young assistant engineer Charles Fisk in the summer of 1835.

2. The sills are the triangular structures against which the bottom of the gates rested when closed.

3. William Davies, Geology and Engineering Structures of the C&O Canal, p. 219; Thomas F. Hahn, Towpath Guide, 15th Edition (1999) p. 35.

4. Hahn, Thomas. Towpath Guide, 15th Edition (1999), p. 35.

5. See, for example, Harlan D. Unrau, C&O Canal Historic Resource Study, 2007 edition, pp. 349–50, and pp. 353.

6. Hahn, ibid., p. 35.

7. Ibid, p. 346.

8. Ibid. p. 347, pp. 349–350.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid, pp. 348–349.

11. Ibid, p. 50.

12. Ibid., pp. 350–351.

13. Ibid., p. 351. Note that the enlarged (second version) of the Erie was constructed between 1836 and 1862, due to the first version being too small.

14. It should be noted that boats built for the considerably larger New York Barge Canal in the early 20th Century, which appear frequently in photographs and art works, could never have operated on the C&O Canal.

15. Life on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal 1859, edited by Ella E. Clark and Thomas F. Hahn and published in 1979 by Hahn. The anonymous author states that his account of the trip was written from memory “thirty odd years” later (i.e. ca. 1890). The manuscript was given to the Library of Con-gress in 1923 by the City Library Association of Springfield, Massachusetts, and the Library of Congress had incorrectly titled the document: “Journal of a Canal Boat Voyaging on the Cumberland Canal between Cumberland, Maryland, and Georgetown, 1858.”

16. Ibid., p. 12.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., pp. 12–13.

20. Ibid., p. 8.

21. Ibid., 13.

22. Ibid. The boat people sometimes refer to the point where the tow rope is attached as the “sweet point” on the boat.

23. Ibid., p. 16.

24. Ibid., p. 17.

Correction from the December issue: The mule photo shown on page 6 was attributed to the wrong event. It was actually taken at Ferry Hill on the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Wilderness Act on September 6. This event was a joint effort between Ranger Kelly Fox (NPS), USFWS, and Potomac Valley Audubon. Multiple organizations, including the C&O Canal Association, were there and approximately 80 people were in attendance that day!

12 Along the Towpath, June 2015



During the war, the C&O Canal played an important role on behalf of the Union. Its most significant service was that of a coal carrier, especially during times when the main stem of the B&O Railroad was in disrepair, such as from June 1861 to March 1862. It also delivered a significant quantity of flour to the government at Washington, especially during the first year of the war when the Union army was rapidly expanding. The canal also supplied var-ious armies and commands in the field, such as General McClel-lan’s Army of the Potomac after the Battle of Antietam. Its most significant service in any single battle or campaign was in 1863 when it facilitated the Union army’s pursuit of the Confederates into Pennsylvania and, after the Battle of Gettysburg, aiding the army’s pursuit of the defeated foe. The canal also provided transpor-tation services to soldiers and commands in the field, including the evacuation of the sick and wounded. Canal boats—both privately owned and company scows—were used as ferries and to support temporary bridges. Finally, the canal’s prism itself, drained of water, and its dam abutments were used as a breastworks during military engagements on several occasions.

With its location on the border between the North and South, the canal was fortunate to have survived the conflict. Having done so and then undergone restoration following the conflict, the C&O Canal was poised to grow in tandem with the industrial growth of the nation.

Notes:

1. Washington Evening Star [n.d.], in Frederick Examiner, Jan. 11, 1865; John Scott, Partisan Life with Col. John S. Mosby (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1867), 444.2. Masters to Ringgold, March 6, 1865, Letters Rcd, C&O Canal Papers, Record Group 79, Records of the National Park Service, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.; Masters to President & Dirs., April 3, 1865. Letters Rcd., C&O Canal Papers.3. Spates to Ringgold, April 26, 1865, Letters Rcd., C&O Canal Papers.4. Cumberland Civilian and Telegraph, June 1, 1865.5. Detmold, Bramholt, Culter, Borden, Potts and Campbell to President & Dirs., June 12, 1865, Letters Rcd., C&O Canal Papers. 6. Spates quoted in Harlan Unrau, Historic Resource Study: Ches-apeake & Ohio Canal, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park, Hagerstown, Md. (2007), 768–769.7. Manning quoted in Unrau, Historic Resource Study: Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, 771; Thirty-Eighth Annual Report of the President and Directors of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, to the Stockholders, June 4, 1866 (Washington: R.A. Waters, 1866) 4–9.8. Forty-First Annual Report of the President and Directors of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, to the Stockholders, June 7, 1869 (Georgetown: Courier Print, 1869), 4.9. Walter S. Sanderlin, The Great National Project: A History of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Companies and Men: Business Enter-prise in America. (1946. Reprint, n.p.: Arno Press, 1976), 226.

C&O Canal Boats and Boating 1870–1889: Part I

By the early 1870s, the long, narrow, and shallow-draft boats used on the Potomac and its tributaries had become a small minority of the boats using the canal. The building of large canal freight boats was booming and trade on the canal was growing, with 395 boats engaged in the coal trade alone in 1870. These freight boats could hold up to 130 tons, and an occasional boat even carried a few tons more. Generally, however, they carried between 105 and 120 tons. In 1870 the total tons of coal carried to various wharves along the canal or in Georgetown, Washington, and Alexandria was 606,707.1

The rate at which boats were built is indicated by the fact that 40 were constructed during the 1869–70 winter, 60 in the winter of 1871–72, and in 1873 there were in excess of 500 boats in op-eration on the canal as a result of the coal companies having 91 additional boats built in the Cumberland yards. These numbers, however, also suggest that older or smaller boats were being retired at the same time.2

Precise data on the number of boats carrying agricultural and other cargoes has not been found, but trade tables for this period document 16,484 tons of flour, wheat, and corn as well as 968 tons of lumber carried in 1870. Annual tonnage shipped hit its peak in 1875: 904,898 tons of coal; 13,447 tons of flour, wheat, and corn; and 1,270 tons of lumber. 3

The importance of the grain trade on the canal emerges in the reports found in Washington’s Daily National Republican, such as that on September 9, 1870. The report describes eight grain mills along the canal in and on the level above Georgetown, and it states: “The bulk of grain is received by way of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, and a great deal comes by wagon from neighboring counties of Montgomery and Prince George, Maryland; but the supplies are not always sufficient to satisfy the demand.”4

By 1871, the inadequacies of the canal’s wharf access and meth-ods of unloading the boats in Georgetown were clearly apparent in the complaint of an officer from the company operating the Seneca quarries. He described the Georgetown level as often so clogged with boats that navigation was almost impossible, and on June 14 he counted ten tiers of boats three abreast, twenty tiers two abreast, and two tiers four abreast—all waiting to be unloaded.5

In 1873–74 the canal company surveyed the commercial car-go-carrying boats on the canal, creating a register of 539 boats.6 Of these, 538 were organized into 5 classes with boat lengths varying from 50 ft. to 96 ft., and the draft when loaded varying from about 2.5 ft. to 4 ft. 9 in. In this heyday of boat building, the variations make it clear that all the boats were not built to the same pattern and other details with regard to the cabins, hatches, and size of the tiller deck, etc. must have varied as well. 7

The last two—and smallest—classes (labeled D and E) likely included some of the boats able to navigate the upper Potomac and its tributaries, as the smallest had a length of 75 ft., and a draft when

Along the Towpath, June 2015 13

loaded of as little as 3 feet. Class E included only one boat 90 feet in length but with a draft of only 2 feet, 6 inches when loaded.

Of particular interest in the 1850–1889 era is the ownership of the boats and the makeup of the crew. Surprisingly, there is very little indication of boats being operated by a family—i.e., a crew composed entirely of nuclear family members, such as a father, pos-sibly his wife, and one or more of their children. More will be said of this in subsequent columns of this series on canal boating in the different eras, but it is likely that family boating became common only during the receivership years (1891–1924).

In 1851 most boats were registered to individuals, but many of these individuals owned more than one boat and a significant num-ber of single-boat owners can be identified as businessmen in towns on or near the canal. Indications are that businessmen hired men to operate their boats. Examples of this ownership pattern are James H. Anderson of Williamsport and L. W. Poffenberger of Shepherd-stown, both of whom owned three boats but were not captains of any of them.8

By 1873–74 nearly one fourth of the boats were registered in the name of companies, some with sizable fleets. The largest were the American Coal Company, which boasted 78 boats, and the Consolidation Coal Company, with 55. Among the boats in an 1875 register were those owned by, or operated for, two William-sport companies: Steffey and Findlay: and Embry and Cushwa.4 These firms are examples of the many coal companies that were not themselves involved in mining, but acquired their product from brokers in Cumberland and sold it to their own customers at their own wharf , or to the customers of another coal dealers with a wharf. 9

In addition to the coal carriers in this register, there were eight grain boats, one boat that carried bricks and another that carried limestone. The remaining boats were simply designated “outside boats” and likely carried whatever cargo their owner and/or captain could obtain.10

In 1877, after a rate war with the B&O Railroad and a two-month-long strike by the boatmen, one of the worst floods in the region’s 150 years of recorded history devastated the canal on November 24. To repair the flood damage, the canal company in 1878 issued bonds that were ultimately owned by the B&O Rail-road. This resulted in the railroad’s control of the canal under the receivership established by a 1889 bankrupt-cy court.

After the 1877 flood, A. L. Miller of the Consol-idation Coal Company documented the location of 170 loaded boats along the line of the canal, provid-ing an exceptional picture of the effect on canal boats of a major flood. The fact that the boats tended to be found in groups at specific places may be evidence of the boatmen’s awareness of danger and the decision of some to wait out the storm at preferred locations. For example, there were clusters of 6–10 boats on each of the following levels: Oldtown; the Paw Paw tunnel; Seven Mile; Two Mile; Dam 6; Williamsport; Locks 35 and 36 above Harpers Ferry; Berlin (now Brunswick); Monocacy; Seneca; and Seven Locks.11

Miller also noted the boats condition, such as those that would need to be lightened before they could be

refloated, and those that were so badly damaged as to be unusable until repaired, if repair was possible. Seven were clustered on the three-mile level between Lock 59 and 60 (above Dam 6 in the Paw Paw bends). Of these, four were damaged and would have to be un-loaded, and two required complete unloading or lightening before refloating. Only one boat, which was actually in a lock, appeared to be in good condition. At the Five-Mile Level where Little Orleans is located, one boat had been washed out onto the towpath and was not usable and at Four Locks where 23 boats had sheltered, one had been washed up onto White’s coal yard and was unusable. Of the five boats at Lock 43 (below Williamsport), all were unusable, with one washed onto the bank and another onto the river bottom (i.e., flood plain), while one was described as “upset in the lock”.12

There appears to have been no regular use of steam freight boats until the 1870s, during which time the number on the canal slowly increased, with one coming into service in 1873, three in 1874, five in 1875. By 1879 there were 19 steamers making between 7 and 22 trips in that year, the most notable being the steamer Areturus that made the 22 trips, carrying a total of 2,058 tons. It should be noted that this represents an average of 93.5 tons per trip—10 to 15 tons less than a mule boat due to the steamer’s boiler and engine occupying some of the hold.

Of particular interest is a packet boat, the Maryland, that was built in the winter of 1875–76 by H. Ashton Ramsay, a Baltimore builder of iron ships, marine engines and boilers. Entering service in June 1876, this steamer had an iron hull, two decks, and a skylight. It was one of the boats that rode out the 1877 flood with the 22 other boats at Four Locks.13 At the beginning of the boating season in early April 1878, the canal company president and board took the Maryland down to Georgetown, descending to the river on the inclined plane.

The other steam boats were likely all built in Cumberland at the boat yards of: William Young; Weld and Sheridan; R. & M. Coulehan; and Doener & Bender. Among the other steam boats on Miller’s list of the location and condition of boats on December

Steam Freighters at Cumberland - Photo courtesy of the National Park Service, C&O Canal National Historical Park

14 Along the Towpath, June 2015

7, 1877, were the Patton at Berlin (Brunswick) and the Regulus at Seven Locks.14

When it comes to the boatmen in this era, Unrau in his Histor-ic Resource Study of the canal notes that the canal company direc-tors were critical of the “abrasive behavior” of the boatmen, citing their:

(1) disregard of company rules and officials, (2) clamoring for access to the coal wharves on the congested Georgetown level, (3) reckless navigation practices which led to boating accidents and to the destruction of works on the canal, (4) incidents of physical violence vis-à-vis the lock tenders, (5) reluctance to meet the minimum requirements of the company regulations relative to the quality of the barges, and (6) attempts to defraud the company of its rightful tolls.15

In one particularly notorious example, George Reed, captain of the Mayfield and Heiston refused to pay fines for violations of canal company regulations, refused to obtain waybills and to pay tolls, and forced his way through the locks from Cumberland to George-town where his boat was unloaded. He continued that aggressive behavior on his way back to Cumberland where his boat was seized with the aid of the police until all fines and unpaid tolls had been paid.16

The most common kind of damage done by carelessness on the boatmen’s part involved damage to lock gates when boats were not sufficiently slowed and/or snubbed as they entered the lock or as water levels were changed. In the worst cases the damage could require the replacement of gates, preventing use of the lock until the new or repaired gate was installed. Such damage occasioned a heavy fine on the responsible boatman. In the 1877 to 1880 period, boatmen were fined for running into and/or breaking lock gates on nine occasions.17

But sometimes it was the boat that was damaged. In late No-vember 1872, the captain of the Loreto struck the upper abutment of Lock 15, knocking a one-foot hole in his boat, which caused it to sink and prevented passage by other boats for 24 hours. Another chronic problem involved leaky boats that would sometimes sink, impeding navigation. In the 1877 to 1889 period, some 20 cita-tions were issued by the company for boats that sank or required help in pumping to keep them afloat.18

Arguments that sometimes turned violent between crews on different boats, or between boatmen and locktenders, also appear as a repetitive problem in canal company records and newspaper re-ports.19 At times it is difficult to tell from the reports precisely what happened, as in the report “that a man named Bushrod, employed on the steamer Areturus, was seriously injured on Saturday by being struck with a hammer in the hands of the captain, W. T. Hassett.”20

Drownings were among the most common cause of deaths among the boat people as well as the locktenders and their family. In one case, a father watched his nine-year-old son drown after fall-ing from the boat into the canal. Neither could swim and no means of aiding the boy was apparently available on the boat.21 Incidental-ly, this incident is significant as an example of a father and young son on the same boat but no indication of other family members being present.

The extent to which closely related family members made up crews in this period can only be determined from news reports of canal incidents, and these largely provide a picture of apparent-ly-unrelated all-male crews, not families. When a young boy is men-

tioned, he is as likely to be simply referred to as a “tow boy” as to be described as a son of the captain or a crew member.

In my next column, I’ll continue a discussion of boating in this 1870–1889 era and explore some mysteries about boat operation in the 1870–89 era that emerge in an analysis of the information in William Bauman’s transcriptions of coal boat departure reports from the Cumberland papers. This data also suggests that captains did not always command the same boat or work for the same com-pany, and it provides further evidence contrary to the traditional image of one captain running the same privately owned boat with his immediate family serving as crew.

Notes:1. Unrau, Harlan D., Historic Resource Study Chesapeake & Ohio Canal (2007 edition), 352. Sanderlin, Walter S., The Great Nation-al Project, 307. 2. Ibid., 353.3. Ibid.4. Daily National Republican articles from 1870–71 concerning the canal were transcribed by William Bauman and are available from the C&O Canal NHP library as a pdf file.5. Unrau, ibid.6. William Bauman has transcribed this register (as well as others) and made it available in pdf format on the Association’s website at www.candocanal.org/histdocs/index.html.7. Ibid., 353–54. Note that the first 24 locks were built with about 90–91 ft. between gate pockets (or miter sills)—i.e., the lockage space available for a boat. This is too short for boats of the length given here. The mystery of boats that appear to have been too long, for the shorter C&O Canal locks, according to the registries, has not been solved. Locks 5, 6, and 7 were lengthened by 10 feet in 1876–77. In addition Locks 28 and 31 were both under 91 feet. I have discussed this problem more fully in past columns.8. “1851 Canal Trade”, consisting of transcriptions by William Bauman of canal-related article from the Cumberland Alleganian.9. Ibid., 354.10. Ibid., 354–55.11. The Cumberland Alleganian & Daily Times, December 7, 1877. This information was extracted from William Bauman’s 1877 Canal Trade document containing his transcription of canal-related infor-mation in this paper.12. Ibid.13. Ibid.; and Unrau HRS, 358.14. Ibid., 359; and Miller’s list from the Alleganian & Daily Times cited above.15. Unrau, 809.16. Ibid., 810.17. Ibid., 811.18. Ibid., 812.19. Ibid., 813–814.20. The Alexandria Gazette, October 7, 1878 as recorded in Wil-liam Bauman’s “1878 Canal Trade” transcriptions.21. Hagerstown Weekly Mail, September 25, 1874.

12 Along the Towpath, December 2015



C&O Canal Boats and Boating 1870–1889: Part II The June issue of Along the Towpath carried Part I of this focus on boating during the 1870–1889 era. That column (and the ones concerning earlier eras of C&O navigation) emphasized that our interpretation of boating on the canal is misleading if is based (as it almost always is) on practices and patterns characteristic of the canal’s last three decades (1891–1923). That is especially apparent when one studies William Bauman’s transcriptions of newspaper boating reports and articles about the canal in the peak years of boat use, the 1870s.1

In the December 2013 issue of this newsletter, Bill Hold-sworth, working with William’s transcription of 1875 records for boats passing Lock 75 and other sources, demonstrated just how important such sources can be in providing a data-based under-standing of canal use at the time. The following draws on William’s Canal Trade files for the mid-1870s, Bill’s work, and my own analy-sis from these sources. In the years of 1874 and 1875, some 539 boats can be docu-mented. However, for no year can a definitive determination of the number of boats using the canal be made due to such complications in the data as: names being changed when a boat was sold; the fail-ure to record boats that were not coal-carrying freighters and that operated in lower sections of the canal or used the canal only rarely; and likely errors in the original sources. The diversity of boats and “floats” is striking. For example, there are boats described as “scows” being used to haul coal and sand, such as the Hammon, that show up on a Tidelock register but not on the Lock 75 register. Also there are boats that are sometimes carrying stone and at other times coal, such as the Gilbert scows 2, 4, and 6. A “farmer boat” shows up a couple of times and a boat is simply shown as “Jenkin’s flat”. These latter demonstrate the infor-mal use of the canal by local people and occasional use by people owning boats primarily for their own products. A good example of the latter situation is seen in the case of Knott’s quarry, located near Bakerton, West Virginia, and across from today’s Dargan Bend Recreation Area. The quarry company owned boats that it used to transport limestone on the canal from its wharfs on the West Virginia shore of the Potomac. Those boats would have entered the canal from the river at the Dam 3 Inlet Lock. We find, for example, in the May 1875 register of boats pass-ing the Tidelock, the Irene Knott carrying limestone; and, in the last years of the canal’s operation, a steam boat named the George M. Knott and a mule boat (unnamed) — all owned by the quarry. Other unusual craft and cargo are indicated by entries such as the “Flat Boat Steel Works” and possibly the craft of the “H. Miltenberger Lumber Company.” Although there is evidence that standard coal freighters sometimes hauled wood, boats carrying di-verse cargo were typically not owned by coal companies or dealers, but by individual boatmen or business men hoping to make a profit with one or more boats.

Steamboats on the CanalThe 1870s was a time of much interest in and growing use of steam to propel canal boats. But that there were failures is apparent in a couple of newspaper references to the Pride of Erin. In September 1874 its launching was enthusiastically reported, although its ma-chinery was yet to be installed. Nothing more appears concerning it until a March 6, 1876, Alleganian article on another, highly suc-cessful steamboat, the Ludlow Patton. Almost in passing, the article states:

Recollections of the late lamented Captain Edward Lynch’s extraordinary anticipations for the steamer Pride of Erin, in which a number of our prominent and shrewd citizens invested many thousands of dollars, and the subsequent non-career of that boat, are too fresh in the public mind for repetition.

Contrariwise, the Ludlow Patton—described as being unique in that it has a propeller that could be raised or lowered—was re-ported to have made the fastest round trip “ever recorded” of four days and nineteen hours. The article also notes that it only burned 4½ tons of coal on that trip and delivered 102 tons. It appears that 105 tons was the maximum load of coal for any steamer (compared to the up-to-130 ton capacity of the largest mule boats). Another March 6 article is a general survey on the use of steam on the canal in 1876. It mentions that 10 steamboats were current-ly operating on the canal and it states: “The experiments hitherto made in the building and running of steamboats on our canal have been eminently satisfactory as a whole, and give bright promise of what in the future can be done in this line of operations.” Reference is made to two steamers used only in the lower sec-tion of the canal and owned by the Washington City Ice Company. Likely they delivered ice to customers along the canal from the ice houses in the federal district that were supplied at that time by ships from Maine’s Kennebec River ice industry. A mention is also made of the Skedaddler, a steam boat that had generally been used as an excursion boat on the river at Cumberland but had made a few trips down the canal with coal. Also discussed is the New Era, built to carry coal while also towing mule boats. The New Era was owned by John Cowden and Sons, and was launched from the yard of William Young & Bros., on September 29, 1875. It had two engines and two propellers on separate shafts and could carry 105 tons. Its propellers revolved “in the same direction towards each other to neutralize the agitation of the water”. That first fall it averaged a little over five days for each round trip. The Alleganian stated that it believed the Thomas Moore was the first two-wheel steamer on the canal. It had been reconstructed in the fall of 1874 by Messrs. Stewart & Co., of Rochester, Penn-sylvania, out of an old boat. Rochester is on the Ohio River west of Pittsburgh, and it is likely that the boat reached the C&O canal by way of the Ohio, Mississippi, Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic coast, Chesapeake Bay, and tidal Potomac route. At the time the town’s boat builders also built boats for Ohio and Pennsylvania canals, as well as the region’s rivers. The H. T. Weld was designed by Cumberland resident, Captain Alexander McDonald, and built at the yards of Messrs. Weld & Sheridan in 1874. Its distinctive feature was the revolution in op-posite directions of two propellers on one shaft. However the paper

Along the Towpath, December 2015 13

notes that during the previous winter of 1875–76, it was converted to a one-propeller boat, suggesting that its special design proved to be undesirable in the end. The Alleganian article concludes with a report that five oth-er steamers were being built. The engine for one of them also was coming from Rochester, just as had the rebuilt Thomas Moore. The Rochester engine is described as “an immense one, and the propeller will be five feet in diameter”. It is unclear how such a large propeller would work when the boat was empty with little of the hull in the water. One would expect that the propeller could be lowered for efficient propulsion when the ship was light, but there is no indica-tion of such a capability.

The New Era and Captain Peter CowdenA review of the trips on the canal by the steamer New Era provides examples of a boat being under a different captain on different trips, something that occurs frequently in the newspapers’ boating data. Also, it seems certain that the New Era did tow boats as it was de-signed to do, for the reports show another boat or two are often on the canal at the same time under the control of Captain Peter G. Cowden (although sometimes only “Captain Cowden” without a first-name, and there are other Cowden captains on the canal at this time). Recall that the boat was owned by John Cowden and Sons, making it quite possible that Peter was one of those sons. The New Era made all its trips for the Borden Coal Compa-ny, while other boats often carried for several companies. Also, the New Era’s destination was always Georgetown and never Alexandria or a Washington city wharf. Other boats sometimes served various locations on their trips to tidewater, and Alexandria was a frequent destination since some coal companies had their coal depots in that city, which was the only commercial port in the federal district deep enough for the deep-draft trans-Atlantic vessels. The 1876 list of New Era trips illustrates the difficulties of tracking a boat; a captain may be making a trip with boats under tow or traveling in convoy (as was most likely with multiple mule-boats under one captain). A round trip, even for a steamer like the New Era, would take five to six days. Many departure dates for a boat or boats under Captain Cowden appear impossible without making assumptions about the newspapers’ boating records. I found I could make sense of them only if I assumed (1) that the date listed for a boat’s “departure” in the newspaper was in fact only the date the boat was loaded rather than when it started down the canal; and (2) that the steam-er New Era and mule boats Henry Kraus and F.L. Tilghman were usually under Captain Peter Cowden. The issue of whether mule boats towed one or more other mules boats is a complex one and I tend to assume such boats convoyed when under one captain. In the supplemental data for this article I have included a list that reflects these assumptions and that covers the entire 1876 boating season. But regardless of the validity of my hypotheses, it is clear that during these busiest years of the canal, the actual boating practices were often much more complex than at other times — and that fact may be the single most significant characteristic of this 1870–1889 era.Note:1. See William Bauman’s transcriptions at: www.candocanal.org/histdocs/newspaper.html.

Date Boat

4/5 New Era and Henry Kraus.

4/10 F.L. Tilghman. However, it seems possible that the New Era and Kraus were held until the Tilghman was ready or that the Tilghman was held for the 4/15 trip. Otherwise Cowden made a remarkably quick trip between 4/5 and 4/15 with only this mule boat.

4/15 New Era and Henry Kraus

4/24 New Era and Henry Kraus, but delayed until 4/27 when the F.L. Tilghman was ready?

5/6 New Era and Henry Kraus, but there is also a departure date for them of 5/8. Likely the latter date was the real departure date.

5/13 F.L. Tilghman, but delayed until 5/17 when the New Era and Henry Kraus were ready?

5/30 Henry Kraus, but delayed to 5/31 when the F.L.Tilghman was ready? If this trip did not include the New Era (and it appears it did not), then likely Captain Cowden had these mule boats in convoy.

6/9 New Era

6/17 Henry Kraus, but delayed first until 6/20 when the New Era was ready and then to 6/21 when the F.L. Tilghman was ready?

6/27 New Era and then the Henry Kraus ready on 6/29?

7/13 New Era

7/19 F.L. Tilghman, delayed until 7/21 when the New Era is ready?

7/27 New Era, delayed until 7/29 for the Henry Kraus?

8/3 F.L. Tilghman, delayed until 8/7 when the New Era is ready?

8/14 New Era, delayed to 8/16 when the F.L. Tilghman is ready?

8/18 The Henry Kraus is ready but was it held until the New Era has returned and is ready to depart on 8/22?

8/28 F.L.Tilghman, delayed until 8/29 for the New Era and then to 8/31 for the Henry Kraus?

9/5 New Era

9/9 F.L.Tilghman, but delayed until 9/12 for the New Era to be ready?

9/28 New Era and Henry Kraus

10/2 F.L. Tilghman, delayed until 10/6 when the New Era is ready again?

10/12 New Era, delayed until 10/13 when the F.L. Tilghman is ready?

10/20 New Era

10/24 Henry Kraus, delayed until 10/26 when the F.L. Tilghman is ready and then to 10/27 when the New Era is back from its 10/20 trip and ready?

11/9 F.L. Tilghman without the New Era—although this would have Cowden making a trip with only a mule boat. (But see the paragraph below of Captain Donnelly’s trips with the New Era during this period.)

11/20 Henry Kraus, delayed to 11/22 when the F.L.Tilghman is ready? The two mule boats would likely be in convoy again under Captain Cowden.

11/25 New Era

11/30 Henry Kraus—thus a trip with a single mule boat.

Supplemental Table of Boat DeparturesSee discussion on p.14

14 Along the Towpath, December 2015

Per my assumptions, the first date for each entry identifies the loading date for the boat or boats then named which were reported as under Captain Cowden. The subsequent text is my effort to rec-oncile any other proximate dates of boats also under Cowden. If the New Era was involved, I presume any mule boat that he had at the same time was under tow. But Cowden was not always the captain of the New Era. Back on July 6 the New Era is shown departing with a Captain Bower in charge. This would have been immediately after Cowden made the run departing 6/29 and before the 7/13 run if my assumptions are correct. Then there are four runs with Capt. J. Donnelly in charge of the New Era on November 3, 11, 18, and December 2. Cowden’s 11/9 trip on the mule boat Tilghman and 11/30 trip on the Henry Kraus occurred during this period when the New Era was in the hands of Capt. Donnelly. Very possibly what really happened differed from my efforts above at reconciling the data. It is also very possible that there are errors in the original sources or the transcriptions of the data. Also there may be confusion of the various Cowden captains. Never-theless, it is not credible that such errors account for the otherwise consistently impossible record of trips by Cowden captains and their boats if the newspaper data is taken literally. There are other possible assumptions that might reconcile some of the data but none of them seem to do so as well as the simple hypotheses that actual departures are determined by when those in charge decide to send one or more boats down the canal in tow or convoy, and not the day reported in the paper that most likely represents only their loading.

Accompanied by the Past (Continued from p. 13)News and Notes from the Park Library

Archiving: Physical and Digital

The park library has a growing number of boxes neatly stacked in it as Blyth McManus, our cultural resources in-tern, makes progress in the enormous job of sorting out what can be stored in a distant location or what can be moved to a new storage area here at headquarters. Blythe (who says she thinks of her title as “fish wrangler, bat counter, and Jill of all trades”) has been proving that it is possible to make headway with our semi-chaos when I had begun to doubt that it was. Once the boxes are all filled and begin to go off to their des-tinations, we’ll begin to use our much needed shelf space for new books, documents, and other materials that didn’t stop coming in just because we ran out of space. Increasingly, however, it is new material available in dig-ital form that is improving our ability to answer questions from the public and staff, provide information for some park activity or project, or simply allow us to add information to some subject being researched. William Bauman’s work on the histories of some canal families and transcriptions of of-ficial documents and canal-related information in historic newspapers, are the primary examples of this. The Association is putting William’s work on its website and thereby making it available free. The invaluable nature of this service provided by the C&O Canal Association, in partnership with the park, is demonstrated by the increasing frequency with which I use those sources myself and refer researchers to them.

– Karen Gray

pursuit. A day later, while in possession of Hancock, the Confed-erates burned boats, and then moved west toward Cumberland. In order to distract and allow opportunity for McCausland to escape, Early on August 5 sent additional units across the river at Williams-port and Shepherdstown. The Confederates burned more boats and committed minor damage to the Conococheague Aqueduct during these screening raids. As a result of these raids and invasions during the summer of 1864, about eighty canal boats were burned. This was one third of the pre-war total of boats that navigated on the canal and was the highest number of boats destroyed during any single campaign of the war. In September and October 1864, the Confederates conducted a number of relatively minor raids across the Potomac, consisting of the usual boat burning and mule stealing. The raids, however, had the intended effect of slowing boating. On Oct. 15, 1864, the Washington Evening Star described the effect of the incursions: “the stealing of a team or two, or the destruction of a boat, is sufficient to alarm the boatmen, who before lost heavily by the raids of Mosby and the invasion of Early, and induce them to refuse freight and stay at home.”7

Damage the Confederates inflicted and attempted to inflict to the waterway during the war, as well as proposed operations that were not authorized, illustrates the importance of the canal to the Union

in the minds of the Confederates. Only disrupting the B&O Railroad was not enough to prevent movement of coal and other goods to Washington, or to prevent the canal from being used to supply com-mands in the field. In fact, the canal was the only supply line leading directly to Washington, D.C. from western Maryland’s coal fields, and was the primary route by which coal entered the city. The Wash-ington Branch of the B&O Railroad had no waterfront connection with the Washington docks and largely carried passengers and light freight. That officials at all levels of the Confederate government and military debated and/or conducted numerous raids against the canal during the entire four years of the conflict highlights the significance of the C&O Canal to the Union during the Civil War. Notes:1. War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, [hereinafter, “Official Records”; all references to series 1] (Washington: GPO, 1880–1901) 5: 858–859.2. Official Records, 5: 946.3. Official Records, 5: 1007.4. John G. Walker, “Jackson’s Capture of Harpers Ferry,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (Secaucus, NJ: Castle, 1982), 2: 606.5. Official Records, 27, pt. 2: 297.6. Greene to Ringgold, Sept 2, 1863, Letters Received, C&O Canal Papers, Record Group 79, Records of the National Park Service, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.7. Washington Evening Star, Oct. 15, 1864

The C&O Canal in Confederate Military History (Continued from p. 3)




C&O Canal Boats and Boating 1850–1889The era when only parts of the canal had been opened to navigation (1832–1850) was a time when river boats—those built for navi-gation on the Upper Potomac River (i.e. above tidewater)—dom-inated canal traffic. With the opening of the canal to Cumberland in 1850, a new era began, dominated by the increasing numbers of large freight boats designed specifically for the canal but also capa-ble of being towed by tugboats on the tidal waters of the Federal District rivers and the federal coal wharf farther down the Potomac at Indian Head (a location unserved by any railroad).

Details of this 1850–1889 era are being revealed as never be-fore by the compilation of newspaper articles being developed by William Bauman in files for specific years. Two recent columns drawing heavily on Bauman’s work have already focused on im-portant aspects of these years, such as the use of steamboats in the 1870s. In this column I am selecting a variety of reports that help us understand the canal better than we did before and show the value of these additional resources—provided gratis by one of the Association’s most dedicated and hard-working members.1

Mercerville in 1852

On March 20, 1852, a Baltimore Sun article with a Sharpsburg byline reveals the importance at the beginning of this era of Mercer-ville. That town was located 2 ½ miles from Sharpsburg, for which the primary canal wharf was one mile distant at Snyders Landing (Mile 76.65). Mercerville never grew into the village expected to develop at this site when it was named for Charles Fenton Mer-cer, the primary force behind the creation of the C&O Canal and the company’s first president. Eventually the area became known as Taylors Landing, with the name “Mercerville” found only in histor-ic records and on old maps.

Located at Mile 81 on the canal, the Mercerville area included a boatyard owned by Otho Baker that is described as building “the largest, strongest and prettiest boats that float upon the waters of the canal." While boatyards were developing and building rapidly at Cumberland in the 1850s, Baker’s yard was no slouch. Having just launched a boat at the time of the article, it was reported to have three more in the final stages of construction that were expected to be ready for sale within a month.

The article further states of Mercerville that Mr. Piper, who owns property there, has …

Some 15,000 barrels of flour in and around his capacious ware-houses, 5,000 of which he shipped off in the short space of three days. He does a heavy business.

It is not obvious which mill is producing this flour, but it is very possible that Piper had a mill somewhere nearby or that he served to warehouse and ship flour for several mills in the region.

It is further said of the Sharpsburg area that:

A number of our enterprising citizens are engaged in the coal transportation business, which must be lucrative, since a fleet of some twenty boats is owned by persons in the town and neighborhood.

Of course, this part of the canal had been open since 1835 (although the towpath along Big Slackwater would not be available until 1839). We know nothing of the design of Baker’s boats, but likely they were built specifically for the canal and not for operation on the often-shallow and challenging waters of the upper Potomac and its tributaries. Boats built for the C&O specifically would have been, for efficiency’s sake, of the maximum size that could pass through the smallest of its locks—that is, shorter than 90 feet in length, and narrower than 15 feet in width.

Early boatyards along the canal were reported at Williamsport and Hancock. However, there is no indication that either of them had the capability to build more than one boat at the same time, as had the Baker boatyard at Mercerville.

Of the 20 boats said to be owned by local people in 1852, it is unlikely that all were built after 1850, and those that were older were likely designed for operation in both the Upper Potomac and the canal, and therefore would have been very shallow and both more narrow, and shorter.

Canal Operations and Changes in 1871 and 1872

Some twenty years later, Bauman’s 1872 Canal Trade file pro-vides a picture of the canal as it enters its busiest and most finan-cially successful period. A long article in the January 3 Cumberland Alleganian notes:

In twenty-two years, extending from August, 1848, to May 30, 1870, the company had paid accrued debt and interest and dividends, $234,807.04, while in the past eighteen months the amount paid to the same creditors, was $441,333.33.

The previous year (1871) had seen the canal clear nearly $420,875 in profit and, compared with 1870, had handled almost double the general cargo carried on the canal while increasing the coal tonnage by 238,530 tons. This is especially impressive given that:

From March 10th to December 1st there was a total of fif-ty-two days suspension of navigation, embracing eighteen days by breaks and leaks, thirteen days by strikes, fifteen days by raising sunken boats, and six days by repairing lock gates.

It should be noted that the damage to lock gates, when done by a boat being improperly locked through, merited a substantial fine. In 1871, over $315 was collected in fines, according to a February 9 report in the Cumberland Alleganian, and these monies were given to the Boatman’s Benevolent Association by the Canal Company.

The picture we get from the newspaper articles at this time is of a busy canal that is nevertheless subject to certain kinds of dis-ruptions. In addition to those in the quote above, mention is made of the effect on shipping caused by a drought as well as “a scarcity of sailing vessels” at Georgetown that resulted in the coal wharves

Along the Towpath, March 2016 13

being “stocked to capacity” with no space for additional shipments. Interestingly, it was expected that this type of disruption will be alleviated by anticipated connections with the Western Maryland Railroad at Williamsport and the Cumberland Valley Railroad at Powells Bend wharf at mile 97.44.

The experience of the canal at this time begs comparison with the state of the railroads and their operating experiences ca. 1870–72. They also experienced disruptions from strikes, damage to in-frastructure, weather, accidents, etc. When the data can be found, it is surprising how often the railroad experience and that of the canal in the nineteenth century are parallel. This is not to deny the superiority that railroads developed in terms of speed and efficien-cy as they underwent continual improvement (especially in the last quarter of the 19th century). Among the differences are that: the railroads commercially operated the equipment using them, whereas the canals collected tolls on boats owned and operated by others; the railroads were increasingly efficient due to changes in their technology and industry, while the C&O Canal was ulti-mately frozen into its form at completion; and the canal ceased to operate for three to four months in the winter, while the railroads operated year-round—although subject to the vicissitudes of win-ter weather.

The diversity of cargo shipped on the canal in both directions is shown from the following report for 1871 appearing on January 17 in the Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser:2

During the year 1871, there were 2,276 arrivals of boats at the port of Alexandria, bringing 280 bushels oats, 3 tons fur-niture, 32 perches wrought stone, 6 tons sundries, 408,500 hoop-poles, 2,696 perches rough stone, 2,562 barrels (bbls.) cement, 1,460 railroad ties, 227,947 tons coal, 1,840 perches limestone, 254 tons sand, and 32 cords wood.

During the same time there were 2,257 departures of boats, carrying 8 bbls. cider, 1,052 bbls. fish, 2,800 bushels oats, 2 hogsheads bacon, 1 ton furniture, 3 tons general merchandise, 300 melons, 2,700 sacks salt, 18,000 feet lumber, 7,523,375 bricks, 330 tons plaster, 7 tons sash and doors, 20 tons sand.

The total tonnage of this general cargo is 233,982 descending and 15,871 ascending. That reflects the imbalance between down-stream and upstream cargo that was readily understandable in the days of river transportation but that continued to be significant in the use of the canal.

The rapidity with which boats were being built is indicated by this quote from the Cumberland News that appeared on February 27, 1872 in the Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser:

Considerable activity prevails at the various boatyards in Cum-berland, Md. From each a number of fine new boats have been launched during the winter, and more are on the stocks being rapidly hurried to completion. The addition of new boats to the coal trade the coming season will be upwards of fifty from the Cumberland yards alone, besides a large number built at various points along the line of canal.

One greatly wishes that details of the other boat builders had been given. It is one of those areas where the dearth of information

severely limits our ability to fully understand the practice of this craft and full extent of this industry in these years.

The critical dates of important events are often established by newspaper reports, and such is the case in a National Register article on April 13, 1872 that Bauman included in his 1872 Canal Trade file. It contained the full text of a letter from C&O Canal Co. pres-ident James C. Clarke to the Governor of the District of Columbia, H.F. Cooke, in which Clarke makes the case for the company’s sell-ing of the 1.3 mile branch canal from the Rock Creek basin to the Washington City Canal at 17th Street. As Clarke notes:

In prosecuting the great and comprehensive improvements now being done in Washington, in order to make the seat of the national capital worthy of the nation, the time must soon arrive when all that portion of the city south and east of the President’s house will be improved to the river front.

This is, of course, a clear recognition that it was time to aban-don the old idea of Washington City as one of three eastern termini of the C&O Canal. That concept had been part of a September 1828 compromise intended to resolve the competition between the three Federal District cities (Georgetown, Washington, and Alex-andria) for the canal’s eastern end. The compromise envisioned the Rock Creek basin as Georgetown’s terminus, a C&O Canal Com-pany branch from the Rock Creek basin to the Washington City Canal, giving Washington a terminus; and C&O support for Alex-andria in its bid to get substantial federal assistance to build an in-dependent canal between the C&O and Alexandria, satisfying that city’s interests. The C&O Canal Company also agreed to build, for an Alexandria canal, the abutment and connection to the C&O on the District side of the Potomac River.

The Canal in 1888

On January 7, 1888 The Cumberland Daily Times included an article about the Government’s desire to acquire that Georgetown abutment for the now-defunct Alexandria Canal and the C&O Canal Company’s willingness to transfer ownership to the govern-ment. The article notes that the abutment had been built between 1836 and 1846 (the year the Alexandria canal opened) for a cost of $40,060 and it was currently valued at $40,000 with the land it occupied being worth $5,000.

At the same time, on February 9, the Daily Times provided news on the effort by the holders of the 1844 construction bonds to get a bill through the state legislature that would result in the sale of the canal under the mortgages held by Maryland. This is especially interesting given the importance of these bonds in the final decisions concerning the canal after the company’s bankrupt-cy in late 1889.3

On May 6, The Civilian, Cumberland’s Sunday paper, reported that a rock slide below the tunnel had been cleaned up the previous Monday when a second, more extensive slide occurred at the same place and was expected to take a week to be removed. A review of newspaper reports over the years reveals that the slide problem be-low the tunnel was a periodic one—which is perhaps a comforting historical context for the C&O Canal National Historical Park's experience of the same.

Continued on p. 14


Accompanied by the Past (Continued from p. 13) Among the most valuable benefits that we get from the Bauman transcriptions is a source for realistic, fact-based data on the canal’s capabilities and limitations, successes and failures. These are a sub-stantive corrective to the distortions and inaccuracies in sweeping statements about the canal, such as the oft-heard-or-read statement that it was obsolete by the time it reached Cumberland because the B&O had reached the city eight years earlier (which reflects a deep misunderstanding of the primitive state of railroads at that time and of the customers that the canal would serve throughout its history while the railroads did not).

In this year, 1888, the papers carried lists day after day of coal boats departing and arriving, and of a city concerned for the neg-ative economic impact on it should the canal close. A February 13 interview with an unnamed canal official or employee ,who was fa-miliar with the canal’s financial records, sought to explain the ways that the canal contributed to Cumberland’s economic life. After re-viewing the money it brought to the town’s economy, the speaker concluded: “Cumberland can’t afford to lose the canal.”

Within a little more than 15 months, the city would face the pos-sibility of the canal’s permanent closure in the aftermath of the “Great Flood” of June, 1889, concerning which I will write in fu-ture columns.

Notes:

1. The information below draws on William Bauman’s Canal Trade files of 1852, 1872, and 1888. Many of these Canal Trade files can be found as pdf documents on the C&O Canal Association website or are available on request from Karen Gray, volunteer in the C&O Canal NHP headquarters library most Tuesdays and Thurs-days at 301-714-2220 or by email at [email protected].

2. In the quoted material below, the specific values for barrels and hogsheads vary, but a common value for a barrel was around 40+ gallons and that of a hogshead was about 60+ gallons. Hoop poles were straight slender lengths of green sapling wood, usually of hickory or white oak, that were used as stock for barrel hoops.

3. Although it will be seen in later columns that I intend to write on the rulings of the courts ruling on the C&O bankruptcy that Maryland’s claims to those mortgages are legally questioned by 1889.

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