Durham boat


The Durham boat was a large wooden, flat-bottomed, double-ended freight boat which was in use on many of the interior waterways of North America beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century. They were displaced by larger, more efficient canal boats during the canal era beginning with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. The Durham name became associated with this boat type due to their use by the Durham Ironworks of Durham, Pennsylvania for hauling freight on the Delaware River.
They are also noted for their use in George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River during the American Revolution.

Construction

Durham boats were flat-bottomed and double-ended, much like large bateaux in both construction and appearance. Beyond that, very little is known of construction details. No plans exist and likely they were not used. No extant remains have been found and very little written description exists. Probably they were built with heavy stems at bow and stern and a series of frames amidships, likely from natural oak crooks when available, and planked with sawn boards, likely pine although builders would have used whatever material was available.
These boats would have varied from place to place, from builder to builder and also evolved over time, however in general, they were to long and wide. The bottoms were planked and flat, without a keel, but possibly with a larger “keel-plank” in the center. The sides were vertical and parallel, tapering to sharp at either end. Unlike the bateau, they were decked at both ends and had cleated walking boards along either side. They would have been fitted with a long “sweep” or steering oar and one mast which usually held two square sails.

Historic use on the Delaware River

The Durham boat “... was the sole means of moving commodities in both directions on the river between Philadelphia and points above tide. This boat was well known on the Delaware for more than a century.. even after the building of the canals, it was used on them as well as on the river to a considerable extent.”
They are also noted for their use in George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River during the American Revolution.
"They were used as early as 1758, by John Van Campen, for the transportation of flour to Philadelphia, manufactured from wheat grown in the Minisink."
The sides of the Delaware River Durhams were vertical with a slight curvature to meet a similar curvature of the bottom which was otherwise flat. The sides were straight and parallel until they began to curve to the stem and stern posts, about twelve or fourteen feet from the ends, where the decks began, the rest of the boat being open.
The usual length was 60 feet although shorter boats were built and in some cases, the length was extended to 66 feet with sometimes a foot or two added to the normal eight foot width. The usual depth was 42 inches with an additional 10 inches of height at the ends. The boats were shallow draft, three and a half to five inches empty and twenty-eight inches loaded. They normally carried from 15 to 18 tons downstream and 2 tons upstream.
On the Delaware, the usual crew was three men. Movement downstream was by the current with occasional use of two 18-foot oars. The boat was propelled upstream by the use of 12 to 18 foot iron-shod setting poles. Twelve inch wide “walking-boards” ran the length of the boat on either side. Crew members set their poles on the bottom of the river and walked from the forward end of the boat to the stern, driving the boat forward. The captain, who steered, held the boat from going back with the current with a pole while the crew returned to repeat the process.
At one time, there were reportedly several hundred Durham boats on the Delaware River. They sometimes traveled in groups as large as twenty-five so that the crews could aid each other. One observer recalled sitting on the river bank watching a number of Durham boats waiting for a favorable wind, and when a breeze came up, “…off they would go like a flock of sheep.”

Use on the Mohawk River

The Mohawk River was smaller and shallower than the Delaware and Durham boats were not introduced until much later, probably not until 1795 when the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company completed navigational improvements. Prior to that, freight on the Mohawk went by bateaux and Schenectady boat, which seems to have been a smaller, lighter version of the Durham.
Durhams on the Mohawk differed somewhat from those on the Delaware River, primarily in that they had flat bottoms rather than the partly rounded bottoms of the Delaware River boats. “…the Schenectady Durham, which is described as flat bottom, straight sides, with easy lines at bow and stern, to help flotation in striking a rapid. She was decked fore and aft and along her gunwales, which were cleated to give foothold to the boatmen. A mast was stepped near the bow with square sails."
From 1803-1820, Durham boats were the watercraft of choice on the waterway for traffic between the Hudson River and Lake Ontario via the Mohawk River.
The eastern terminus of this waterway was in Schenectady, New York, and the Durham boats were also known as Schenectady boats in this region. The waterway was the major one connecting the eastern seaboard of the United States to the continental interior. The improvements to it that made the use of Durham boats practicable were an important prelude to the construction of the Erie Canal. Durham boats aren't designed as canal boats, and their era on the waterway along the Mohawk largely ended with the canal's opening in 1825.

Durham boats on the Niagara River and Lake Erie

Durham boats replaced the use of bateaux on the Niagara River. Porter Barton & Co. ran them on a regular schedule carrying salt from Little Niagara to Black Rock beginning about 1805. At least one Durham boat “of about ten tons burthen” was reported built at the Black Rock shipyard on the Niagara River in 1809.
In 1810, a “salt boat” with a crew of four bound to Black Rock with 150 barrels of salt was upset and drifted down the river, and went over the falls. Three of the four crew members were lost. In another well-known incident, Captain Daniel Dobbins used an “old Durham boat” to transport two cannon each weighing 6300 pounds from Black Rock to Presque Isle to supply Commodore Perry’s fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie, "...when it was discovered she was leaking very much from the heavy rolling and heavy weight in her bottom, and likely to split open and founder, Mr. Dobbins took a coil of rope they had on board, and securing one end forward, passed the rope round and round her fore and aft, heaving each turn taut with a gunner’s handspike; and in this way, kept her together and afloat, all hands bailing."
During the period 1796 to 1820, “open boats” were in use on Lake Erie. These boats were used to carry cargo and passengers, usually between Buffalo and Detroit and places between. They traveled along the shore and sought shelter in the mouth of the nearest creek in the event of bad weather. These boats were never specifically described, but they were sometimes referred to as Schenectady boats or Durham boats.
The use of Durham boats on the Niagara River ended immediately in 1825 when the Porter Barton & Co. monopoly of the Niagara Falls portage was made worthless by the opening of the Erie Canal.

Durhams on the St. Lawrence River

The Durham boat was introduced on the St. Lawrence River in 1809 by Americans who brought them from the Mohawk River.
By 1816, regular passenger service by Durham boat had been established between Schenectady and Montreal. From the Montreal Herald of June 2, 1816, "Among the objects which attract public notice, we were the other day struck with the appearance of a handsome Durham boat of the ordinary size, or of about 250 bbls. Burthen. She was not intended for freight, but for passengers; she had a substantial roundhouse, 20 feet in length by 8 in width, well fitted up with sides of painted canvas, such as stagecoaches have; sixteen or twenty passengers can be tolerably accommodated in this boat."
The Durham on the St. Lawrence was described as "a flat bottomed barge with a keel or centre board with a rounded bow with a length from eighty to ninety feet with a breadth of beam from nine to ten feet with a carrying capacity of ten times that of the batteau. In 1835 there were 800 Durham boats and 1500 batteaux engaged in the navigation of Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence river."

Use in Other Locations

Durham boats were used in commercial trade on the Fox River between Green Bay, Wisconsin and Fort Winnebago. Their use on this waterway was pioneered by John W. Arndt in 1825. In the 1830s, Daniel Whitney, who had a lead shot tower in Helena on the Wisconsin River downstream from the portage at the fort, tried to organize transit for lead shot via the Great Lakes to markets in New York, but while the Durham boats were ideal for their task on the Fox River, the overall operation was too complex to compete with other means.

Modern Replicas

A series of modern replicas were built to be used in annual reenactments of Washington's historic Delaware River crossing. Five are stored at the Washington Crossing Historic Park in Pennsylvania. A sixth boat is on display on the green next to the Durham Post Office on Durham Road in Durham, Pennsylvania.
The Endurance was a replica Durham boat built by Parks Canada and the National Capital Commission in Ottawa in 1983. It was scrapped in 2006 except for the bow section which remains on display at the Rideau Canal Visitor Centre in Smiths Falls, Ontario.
The Erie Traveler is a 51-foot-long, 7 foot-wide Durham boat replica built during 2016-2017 by staff and volunteers of the Buffalo Maritime Center for the Locks Heritage District Corporation for demonstration purposes along the canal in Lockport.