Barge History
Modern barges developed from the scow, a craft with a very distinctive hull design. The scow was a flat bottomed, flat sided, and often flat bowed and sterned vessel that was characterized by a "hard chine" or squared bilge. These boxy vessels were utilitarian craft meant to serve the ports, rivers, bays, piers, and even beaches in the largely unimproved Great Lakes from the War of 1812 through the early 20th century. They were an important part of 19th century commerce because they combined large cargo capacity with shallow draught and relatively low costs for construction and operation. Scows carried a variety of rigs (bark, schooner, sloop, or unrigged), but were most often rigged as sloops or schooners. By the late 19th century the sailing scow was well on its way toward obsolescence and the scow hull form was becoming widely used for unrigged barges like those square steel barges that are extensively used today. The first scow barges were of wood and later of steel.
In October 1784, George Washington sent a bill to Governor Harrison of Virginia proposing the Potomac Company and the James River to the Ohio River. Out of the James River Company grew the James River and Kanawa Canal; out of the Potomac Company eventually grew the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. These routes of navigation represented two of the four major efforts to connect the Atlantic Seaboard with the Ohio River System and the Great Lakes, the other routes being in New York and Pennsylvania.
The Western Rivers system, composed of the Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, and other tributary Rivers, carried most of the immigrants and freight that settled the Midwest. Starting in the late 1700s, most settlers travelled from the East Coast overland to Pittsburgh, Wheeling, or Redstone and then down the Ohio River to points west. A small number also traveled north from New Orleans and southern regions using the Mississippi and other rivers running from the North.
To reach the new lands of the West, Europeans adapted boat types already in use by Native Americans and on the East Coast. Explorers used birch bark canoes and settlers used larger dugouts to open the west to settlement. As more people moved west, boats with greater capacity were needed, which called for new boat types. A form of enlarged dugout, called a pirogue, was developed first. Pirogues were more capacious than dugouts and were themselves adapted into more useful forms. The first adaptation changed the method of construction, by taking the well-formed hull shape of the pirogue and replacing the hewn multiple-log construction of pirogues with European plank-on- frame construction.
Plank-on-frame construction was also used for another boat type called a bateau. Bateaus had been adapted for frontier use on the eastern seaboard in the early 1700s and were built for use on the Western Rivers later. When more traditional European construction practice was followed with these vessels, they resembled ship's boats but with more substantial timbers. When the best features of pirogues and bateaus were combined, they were given a hull shape that provided little resistance to the water, an external keel to help in steering, and sufficient cargo capacity to pay their way. This new vessel type was called a keelboat.
Cheaper transportation was afforded by the use of barges and flatboats. Flatboats were box-shaped variants of the scow hull form used for ferries on shallow Eastern rivers. Flatboats were the cheapest form of transportation on the rivers. Intended to travel only one way and then be broken up for lumber, flatboats could be built, loaded with household goods, and sailed by the settlers themselves. Barges occupied the middle range of watercraft between keelboats and flatboats. Though similar in construction to keelboats, early barges were built wider, more robust, and drew more water. Barges, with their deeper draft, transported heavy freight on the deeper rivers.
Barges developed in design and began to be built in standard sizes after the advent of steamboats allowed them to be towed easily. Barges of the period from 1830 to 1850 were of two general types. The more common type had a square-ended scow hull, built of planks and often used as workboats or on one-way trips down river carrying coal. This type was generally developed from the flatboat. Another type of barge was used for voyages both up- and downstream. These were usually greatly enlarged versions of the barges of the 1820s, called "model" barges for their finely modeled ends. Model barges were designed to act as companions to steamboats, providing extra capacity for as little cost as possible. Model barges and some scow barges were often used as floating warehouses on riverbanks where there was great fluctuation in the water level. These floating warehouses and passenger terminals were called wharfboats. Barges modified or built to be lived on were called houseboats.
The "tow-barge" or "consort" system of shipping that developed during the Civil War involved the use of a steamer and one or more barges towed in tandem from port to port. The barges were often cut-down steamers with engines and superstructure removed or schooners with shortened masts. The attraction of this system was that the towing steamer could increase its total cargo moved with relatively little increase in fuel consumption. The system made it possible for owners to get the maximum return out of their vessels, while decreasing overhead through reduced crew size and reduced maintenance costs.
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