History: The C&D Canal opened in 1829, shortening the trip between
Baltimore and Philadelphia by nearly 300 miles.
Sponsored by
By
Lucie L. Snodgrass Special To The Sun
October 26, 2003
ON A
LATE summer afternoon, a huge oil tanker bearing a Liberian registry glides past
Chesapeake City. A lone man fishing from the banks of the Chesapeake and
Delaware Canal barely looks up as the ship slips by, its wake slapping against
the banks.
Passing ships are as common as flies in this part of Cecil
County. They have been since 1829, when the canal first opened with the aim of
increasing commerce in the mid-Atlantic region. Since then, almost everything
about the canal has changed -- but its purpose has not.
Then, as now, it
linked the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River, allowing ships to speed their
way between Baltimore and Philadelphia, cutting nearly 300 miles from the
voyage. And although recent years have seen renewed debate about the optimum
depth of the vital shipping channel, few would dispute that its history has been
a grand one.
The dream of a waterway cutting across the wedge of land
separating the Chesapeake Bay from the Delaware River goes back to the earliest
days of European settlers in Maryland. Augustine Herrman, an enterprising
surveyor and mapmaker who settled in Cecil County in the mid-1600s, is credited
with the idea of digging a canal through the narrow strip of
land.
Subsequent dreamers, including Benjamin Franklin, were equally
possessed of the notion. Surveys of the area were completed in the 1760s, and
attempts were made as early as 1804 to build a canal. But it was not until 1829
that the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal finally opened.
Built by several
thousand men over a five-year period, the 14-mile canal cost nearly $2.5
million.
Contributions came from Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania,
public subscription, and about $450,000 from the federal government. It was
among the largest and most expensive canals of its time.
With terminus
points in Chesapeake City, Md., and Delaware City, Del., the canal could be
traversed in a matter of hours, shaving several days off the journey between
Baltimore and Philadelphia. Teams of mules on the towpath were hooked to barges,
pulling them through the canal and into its locks.
Developments prosper
From the beginning,
the canal was a heavily trafficked passenger and commercial route, due in part
to the lack of overland roads. In turn, said Michael Dixon, a historian and
director of the Cecil County Historical Society, the opening of the canal made
possible the development of the Chesapeake end of the canal, including
Chesapeake City.
"At the entrance of the man-made ribbon of water across
the peninsula, where a lock controlled passage into the C&D, old salts, mule
drovers, captains and merchants transacted business, it being the logical place
for enterprise," Dixon said.
In many ways, the canal was a great success.
Still, it was confronted from the start by challenges such as the instability of
the banks -- which sent huge piles of dirt into the canal's channel -- to
maintaining the proper water level in the canal, to the necessarily high tolls
levied on ships passing through the canal.
Added to that were the
seemingly endless improvements the canal needed, costing millions of dollars in
the years before the Civil War and reducing the canal's
profitability.
The war effort
According to Edward Ludwig III in his book The
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal: 150th Anniversary, 1829-1979 the canal's greatest
achievement might have been its central role in America's wars. Beginning with
the Civil War, Ludwig writes, the C&D Canal played a critical role in
transporting troops and materials from the North to Washington.
"Vessel
after vessel, loaded with troops, passed through the waterway on April 20, 1861,
heading south to defend Washington. During those few days of our Nation's
history the great cost of constructing the canal was justified over and over as
the man-made ditch saved the Capital from invasion by Southern
troops."
Of World War I, Ludwig writes: "Though outmoded with its ten
foot depth and three narrow locks the Canal aided the war effort in many ways.
Millions and millions of feet of lumber passed through the waterway as this
product was in great demand for building barracks and wooden ships and for many
war orders that could be carried out by using wood instead of steel."
By
World War I, however, the canal was fighting for its survival. Freight was
increasingly being hauled on the Pennsylvania Railroad, the canal's major
competitor. And the C&D's shallow depth and outdated lock system severely
limited the canal's ability to accommodate larger ships with heavier cargoes.
Its future was uncertain.
Several years earlier, President Theodore
Roosevelt appointed a commission to study the feasibility of a new canal.
Ultimately, it was deemed impractical and attention turned once again to
upgrading the existing canal -- this time under the auspices of the federal
government.
A new era begins
In August 1919, the United States purchased the
canal for $2,514,289. Two years later, steam shovels began excavating the
canal's banks, widening the canal to 90 feet. At the same time, the canal was
dredged to a depth of 12 feet. By 1927, the locks were gone, and the pumping
plant that had supplied the water to the canal was shut down.
President
Calvin Coolidge set in motion the opening of the lock-free canal and ushered in
a new era in its history.
Since then, the canal has been widened and
deepened again. In 1935, work began to widen it to 250 feet, with a 25-foot
depth. By 1941, at the outbreak of World War II, the canal's depth stood at 27
feet. As before, the canal played a vital transportation role in the war effort,
but it was curtailed by a major accident that occurred in 1942 when a
Baltimore-bound ship, the Franz Klasen, hit the span bridge in Chesapeake City.
The accident wrecked the bridge and forced the canal's temporary
closure.
The residents of Chesapeake City, who had already endured many
changes because of the canal, were without a bridge until 1949, when a
replacement span was opened.
The years after World War II saw an increase
in pleasure crafts traversing the canal. Sailboats and small powerboats shared
the water with increasingly larger and heavier tankers with greater drafts,
carrying more flammable cargoes. After another canal accident in 1952, Congress
authorized another widening and deepening, this time to a depth of 35 feet. The
cost at the time was $100 million.
Looking ahead
Fifty years later, the canal still plays a vital
role in maintaining Maryland's maritime and economic health. Forty percent of
all ships calling at Baltimore use the C&D Canal on their way to
Philadelphia or New York. Huge freighters and cargo ships, some 700 feet in
length, pass through the canal, dwarfing the communities that grew up, and then
receded, in its shadow.
According to James Tomlin, resident engineer for
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns and operates the C&D Canal,
9,000 deep-draft commercial vessels pass through the canal every
year.
"The C&D basically handles much of the fuel and hard cargo
traffic for the port of Baltimore," Tomlin said. "It sees about $1.5 billion
annually going to the port of Baltimore. But it's not just to the port, it
serves the entire region."
In 2001, the issue of dredging and increasing
the canal's depth came up again, as the canal, at its 35-foot depth, began to
lose the business of newer, heavier vessels that required a substantially deeper
draft. A recommendation by the Maryland Port Authority to deepen the canal to 50
feet was debated in Annapolis
and Washington, with proponents and opponents equally passionate about what they
perceived as the benefits and drawbacks of the plan.
For now, the issue
has receded, although no one expects it to remain that way. Too much is at
stake, including, some argue, the future of the port of Baltimore.
