Durham Boats

Typical scene from the late 18th century showing Durham boats navigating
the inland waterways of New York State.

My interest in Durham boats began in 1983, while directing environmental impact studies in history and archeology at the New York State Museum. We had been assigned a project impact area adjacent to the modern Barge Canal to be used as a dredging spoils disposal lagoon, but that included bits of the historic Erie Canal (1817 - 1890). And alongside those remains we found remains of the earlier German Flatts canal, actually built in 1798. This was the first I had heard of an earlier "Canal Age" in New York, and no doubt most had never heard of it, but my interest in this era spatked an interest in the unusual boats that utilized the system, decades before the more famous Erie Canal was even begun.

These short canals and navigation inprovements used experimental engineering to overcome the numerous obstacles in the inland waterway connecting the Hudson River, at Albany, to the Great Lakes, at Oswego, previously only passable in small "batteaux" capable of carrying only a ton and a half and having to pass over several land portages to complete the journey.

Started in 1792 by a private company chartered by the State, by 1798 these efforts had in fact allowed the larger "Durham boats" to pass along the entire route without portaging, and led to an expansion of western settlement, trade and national security.

((insert woodcut of Durham boat))

Durham boats were flat bottomed, as all boats had to be in a route obstructed by dozens of shallow "rifts" or shoals, many only knee deep. They were double-ended, like batteaux, but rather than poled from a fixed standing position, these boats were poled like the later river boats....or "flatboats"... of the West. Men walked back along cleated boards with 18 foot long iron-tipped poles to push the boat forward, often pressed into their shoulder while they dropped to hands and feet for extra purchase.

((insert canal passage image))

These boats had an extreme design, required by the conditions of the waterways. They were very narrow, from 8 to 10 feet wide, very long, from 50 to 70 feet, and had straight sides, making poling by the walking board method possible. This made them perfectly suited for the narrow canal locks this company created (see above), which appear to have been designed just to accommodate these river boats, as no actual "canal boats" existed at that time.

Since I frequently gave lectures on our projects, and on this topic of inland navigation and early canals, I decided to make a model of this boat for illustration. My model was a 1/4"=1' (1:48) Durham boat set up as a cargo vessel. I had a good set of plans, a block of basswood left over from my ship-in-a-bottle efforts, a set of small woodcarving tools... and just started in.

The hull was carved from solid basswood, and the the extensive cargo hold, which runs almost the entire length, was carefully carved out using chisels. Cleated running boards were added, and dowels used to make the mast and poles. The need for detailed cargo was eliminated by creating a covered cargo, which probably was more realistic as splashby would have been common from the need to push, and sometimes walk, these boats up rapids.

Since this was to be educational, to give a true sense of scale to the audience, I needed crew, and found, purely by luck, a set of Merten "O" scale German railraad personnel at the local model railroad shop. (As it turns out, this was a lucky event, as now (2011) these figures are impossible to find in that scale.)

As can be readily seen, these figures of 20th century European station personnel are simple and generic enough to be converted to 18th century boat crew. By sanding off a few pockets and buttons, the jackets become frocks or hunting shirts. Modern caps are converted to typical round hats by sanding off the bill of the cap and then filing the top of the head round with a "shelf" at the eyebrow level. (See sequence below.) then a "brim" is cut from mylar (or any thin but fairly rigid stock... card may work but might warp when painted) and a hole the same diameter as the head knob is cut or punched in the center.

((inster sequence photos)

If the fit is a tiny bit tight, the brim can be turned upward or downward realistically. If an upturned brim is needed, glue it to the head knob. (To convert this to an 18th century woman's bonnet, which was used on a later model, glue a length of thread under the brim, and when dry, tie it under the chin to draw down the brim correctly.

((insert drawings for brim with picture))

Home
Top
Next
E-mail me