Inland waterway

“ In 1907 active preliminary work was begun on the Louisiana section of a great interstate inland waterway projected by the national government between the Mississippi and Rio Grande rivers, almost parallel to the Gulf Coast and running through the rice and truck-farm districts from the Teche to the Mermenton river (92 m.) . The competition of the water lines is felt by all the railways, and the importance of water transportation is rapidly increasing. ”

“ Highways: 1,346,500 km total; 373,000 km asphalt, concrete, stone block; 554,000 km asphalt treated, gravel, crushed stone; 419,500 km earth (1980)
Inland waterways: 142,000 km navigable, exclusive of Caspian Sea (1980)
Freight carried: rail—3,728.0 million metric tons, 3,439.9 billion metric ton/km (1980) ; highways—24.1 billion metric tons, 432.3 billion metric ton/km (1980) ; waterway—568. 1 million metric tons, 244.9 billion metric ton/km, excluding Caspian Sea (1980)
Pipelines: 70,000 km crude oil; 20,000 km refined products ”

“ The most pressing demand of the day connected with our inland waterways is for navigation and carriage of freight. The need is urgent. The notably reserved and cautious Interstate Commerce Commission has just declared:
It may conservatively be stated that the inadequacy of transportation facilities is little less than alarming; that its continuation may place an arbitrary limit on the future productivity of the land ”

“ No more from this side of the Isthmus than from the other does one discern any depression in the watershed, any break in the range sufficient to indicate that at this point there is an easy passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The hollows through which both railroad and canal pass are hidden deep in the folds of the hills, which stand so thick together that it is hard to believe any waterway could ever be carved out between them and impossible to tell the spot where the cutting is being made. ”

“ He has to overcome the obstacles to navigation presented by cataracts like Niagara, St. Anthony’s, and other falls, by laying down a new waterway, where locks or lifts will overcome the differences of level or gradient represented by the cataracts. He has to feed artificial waterways in such a fashion that they are never short of water. He has to carry canals under mountains by tunnels, and through valleys by aqueducts. He has to raise the level of his waterways for navigation or for irrigation by barrage works, like those that are now being carried out on the Nile at Damietta and Rosetta. ”

“ The Commissioners appointed by the Canadian Government to meet with a similar Committee appointed by the United States Government to consider the subject of international and deeper waterways, preface their report by alluding to the commerce of the Great Lakes in these terms: “It is impossible to convey, within reasonable space, an adequate idea of the extraordinary [49] development of inland water transportation on the Upper Lakes—which for rapidity, extent, economy and efficiency has no counterpart even on the ocean. ”

“ Most rivers have sand-bars, sunken rocks or logs in the channel, making the passage of boats difficult and dangerous. Others are well suited for navigation, except at points where rapids and falls make it impossible for boats to pass. The Ohio, the Tennessee, the Missouri and the upper Mississippi abound in such dangerous places and these should be canalized. It is the improving of rivers in these ways, dredging harbors to make them safer, and digging canals to provide a short passage between two bodies of water, that constitute what is known as the Improvement of Inland Waters. ”

“ One is to build it and let the water in to the foot of the hill, and then to raise vessels over, the crest of the hill, and down the other side to where the canal again starts, by means of inclined planes, or marine railways.
The other method is by "locks," as they are called. That is, there are built a series of basins with powerful, water-tight gates dividing them. Boys who live along canals well know how locks work.
A boat comes along until it reaches the place where the lock is. It is floated into a basin, or section, of the waterway, and a gate is closed behind it. ”

“ Most river navigations beyond the reach of tides, are impeded by shallows in summer, by floods in winter, by artificial rights of mills, drainages, &c., all of which are avoided by the Grand Junction Canal, which, availing itself of cross valleys, and perforating narrow ridges, has opened an inland navigation from the metropolis 11 to the British Channel, to the Irish Sea, and to the German Ocean. ”

“ Had this opening up to navigation been completed prior to the building of the railroads along the banks of the rivers and across the mountains, it would have been of inestimable benefit to the tributary country, but until its present population shall have increased ten fold, perhaps twenty fold, and the railroads shall be unable to handle the traffic; when the waterway craft shall be aids to the railroads, not competitors, I believe transportation of freight by steamboats or by barges with tugs will be impracticable. ”

“ It is thus evident that rivers, whether navigable naturally or rendered so by art, must be regarded as water highways possessed of considerable disadvantages and drawbacks in respect to inland traffic when they are on the scale and of the type found in England. Dependent on the forces of Nature—ever active and ever changing—rivers must needs be the exact opposite of the fixed and constant railway line unless those forces can be effectually controlled under conditions physically practicable and not too costly. ”

“ I for one, leaving out of consideration for the present details which are subject to modification and change, believe that it will be a fatal error for the nation to commit itself to the practically hopeless and visionary sea-level project and to delay for many years the opening of this much needed waterway connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific. ”

“ Inland navigation in England is carried on mostly, if not entirely, by canal boats, barges, and lighters, in streams strictly land guarded, or in canals. They have no great rivers and no navigable lakes, and there can be no analogy between the inland navigation in the two countries. ”

“ Longer canals have been made both in Europe and in the United States, but no canal hitherto completed has been built of the same large dimensions, nor has any other canal cost so considerable a sum of money. It is not too much to say that no other waterway has been more important to commerce, nor has any other been attended with the same momentous and permanent political consequences. It is satisfactory to be able to add that few waterways of modern times have been so successful from a financial point of view. ”

“ But the waterways that still survive may in many cases be made the nucleus of a new and better system, under which the great inland towns of Lancashire, Staffordshire, and Yorkshire may find their lines cast in more satisfactory maritime places.
There are not a few people who regard the canal system almost as they might regard the Dodo and the Megatherium. It is to them an effete relic of a time when civilisation was as yet but imperfectly developed. ”

“ Eventually, large rivers, under favourable conditions, often furnish important natural highways for inland navigation in the lower portion of their course, as, for instance, the Rhine, the Danube and the Mississippi; and works are only required for preventing changes in the course of the stream, for regulating its depth, and especially for fixing the low-water channel and concentrating the flow in it, so as to increase as far as practicable the navigable depth at the lowest stage of the water-level. ”

“ This increase of property is not confined within the six mile limit, but extends much farther away from the route than it does in an old well-settled region having previously felt the influence of a commercial route. Thus the extension of a waterway into new fields is beneficial to the region along the banks of the old waterway, but affects the territory a distance from the route little or none at all; while a waterway extended into a new region is of very great benefit to the region immediately along the route and it is also beneficial, to a less degree, to the remote regions. ”

“ The predominant importance of the debouchment stretch of a river is indicated by the presence of such cities as London, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, Odessa, Alexandria, Calcutta, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hongkong, Canton, Nanking and Shanghai, Montreal and Quebec, New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Buenos Ayres and Montevideo. This debouchment stretch gains in practical value and hence in permanent historical importance if it is swept by a scouring tide, which enables the junction of inland and maritime routes to penetrate into the land. ”

“ The Great Lakes were the shortest waterway to the Atlantic, and New York dug its Erie Canal which afforded an outlet—pinched and straitened, it is true, but still an outlet—for the cargoes of the lake schooners and the early steamers of the unsalted seas. Even the commonwealths forming the north bank of the Ohio River turned their faces away from the stream that had started them on the pathway to wealth and greatness, and dug canals to Lake Erie, that their wheat, corn, and other products might reach tidewater by the shortest route. ”

“ The mouth of a large river system is the converging point of many lines of inland and maritime navigation. The interests of commerce, especially in its earlier periods of development, demand that the contact here of river and sea be extensive as possible. Nature suggests the way to fulfill this requirement. The sluggish lowland current of a river, on approaching sea level, throws out distributaries that reach the coast at various points and form a network of channels, which can be deepened and rendered permanent by canalization. ”

“ All this is without precedent. But it is American. It is progress, and takes the necessary risk to leave the world better, at least in a material way, than we found it. In the proposed deep waterway, which is certain some day to be built to connect the uttermost ends of the Great Lakes with tide-water on the Atlantic, able and competent engineers of the largest experience have designed locks with a lift of 52 feet. ”

“ On the shingle bars, in fact, which have been cast up by the ocean currents. There is still a great body of water in the lagoon inland, and this creates a very powerful scour, sufficient to keep the channel deep and open with the aid of a dredge, which is constantly at work. The workmen employed by the Harbour Board are kept busily engaged raking out and stacking up the great round water-worn boulders, which the tides are perpetually casting on the bank at the mouth of the harbour. ”

“ But it is not until you cast off upon its waters yourself that you realize how constant is the stream of vessels using this ocean highway! That material galore for picture and story hourly runs to waste here, is not the fault of the Grand Canal.
Cross this water-street when you will, schooners, “two”, “three-masters”, with big mildewed mainsails still hoisted, wait at anchor off Port Hawkesbury for a fair wind to carry them through, the while fleet-winged schooners from the Gulf, like the “Birds of Passage” that they are, take it, literally, “on the run”. ”

“ It has been suggested that these great lakes are no more 'inland' than the close and narrow seas, like the Baltic and the Mediterranean, and that the navigation of those seas is never termed 'inland navigation.'
But the analogy does not hold. The very term 'inland' implies remote from the sea or tide water, and while the lakes are great like close seas, they are still remote from tide water, and therefore inland ”

“ The maintenance of the level of the Great Lakes is a matter of great importance to the large freight boats, which always load to the limit of depth at critical points in the dredged channels or in the harbours. Fears have been entertained that the water power canals at Sault Ste Marie, the drainage canal at Chicago and the dredged channel in the river Detroit will permanently lower the levels respectively of lake Superior and of the Michigan-Huron-Erie group. ”

“ East of Tamper Bay, in a distance of 125 miles across the peninsula of Florida at its narrowest part, with one exception, the maps show on the Atlantic coast depths of 27 feet to 28 feet of water quite close to the shore, and thence to the broad expanse of the Atlantic a free and unobstructed way for vessels. It is believed by competent authorities that a very efficient ship canal, with adequate depth of water, could be made here without great cost. The land is level across the proposed route, with only a few feet elevation above tide-water. ”

“ Grain merchants, East and West, hold strongly to the opinion that the route which will bring the largest class of vessels navigating the Great Lakes to the seaboard at least expense is the route that will capture the trade. A ship canal for the Ottawa route, having twenty-five to thirty feet depth of water, with locks of 500 to 600 feet in length, would seem to offer many advantages, though in the estimation of the Deep Waterways Commission “its consideration is not now justified.” ”

“ The exigiencies of their trade calling imperatively for further improvements, the engineers furnished them with the design for a new ship canal, which reduces the navigable distance to 151⁄2 miles, on a course about west from Amsterdam to the North Sea, available for larger vessels than formerly entered the port—and has provided a new harbour on the coast, with an area of 250 acres, bounded by breakwaters formed of concrete blocks set in regular courses, with 853 feet of entrance between the pier heads, and 261⁄4 feet minimum depth of water. ”