The C&D Canal
The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal (C&D Canal) is a 14mile long, 450foot
wide and 40foot deep ship canal that cuts across the states of Maryland and
Delaware. The C&D Canal is owned and operated by theU.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, Philadelphia District. The project office in Chesapeake City,
Maryland, is also the site of the C&D Canal Museum and Bethel Bridge
Lighthouse.
In the mid17th century Augustine Herman, a mapmaker and Prague native who
had served as an envoy for the Dutch, observed that two great bodies of
water, the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay, were separated only by a
narrow strip of land. Herman proposed that a waterway be built to connect
the two. The canal would reduce, by nearly 300 miles (500 km), the water
routes between Philadelphia and
Baltimore.
More than a century passed, however, before any action was taken. In 1764 a
survey of possible water routes across the Delmarva Peninsula was made. The
issue of constructing the waterway was raised again in 1788 by regional
business leaders, including noted Philadelphians Benjamin Franklin and
Benjamin Rush. In 1802, following actions by the legislatures of Maryland,
Delaware and Pennsylvania, the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company was
incorporated. More surveys followed, and in 1804 construction of the canal
began including 14 locks to connect the Christina River in Delaware with the
Elk River at Welch Point, Maryland, but the project was halted two years
later for lack of funds.
Construction
The canal company was reorganized in 1822, and new surveys determined that
more than $2 million in capital was needed to resume construction.
Eventually the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania purchased $100,000 in stock, the
State of Maryland $50,000 and Delaware $25,000. The federal government's
investment was $450,000 with the remainder subscribed by the public.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recommended a new route with four locks,
extending from Newbold's Landing Harbor (now Delaware City), westward to the
Back Creek branch of the Elk River, Maryland.
Canal construction resumed in April 1824, and in several years some 2,600
men were digging and hauling dirt from the ditch. Laborers toiled with pick
and shovel at the immense construction task, working for an average daily
wage of 75 cents. The swampy marshlands along the canal's planned route
proved a great impediment to progress as workers continuously battled slides
along the soft slopes of the "ditch" being cut. It was 1829 before the C&D
Canal Company could, at last, announce the waterway "open for business". The
near-$2.5 million construction cost made it one of the most expensive canal
projects of its time.
1829 to 1919
The Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River were now connected by a navigation
channel measuring nearly 14 miles long, 10 feet deep, 66 feet wide at the
waterline and 36 feet wide along the channel bottom. Locks to pass vessels
through the waterway's various levels were constructed at Delaware City, Delaware and St. Georges, Delaware, and two at Chesapeake City.
Teams of mules and horses towed freight and passenger barges, schooners and
sloops through the canal. Cargoes included practically every useful item of
daily life: lumber, grain, farm products, fish, cotton, coal, iron, and
whiskey. Packet ships were eventually established to move freight through
the waterway. One such enterprise—the Ericsson Line—operated between
Baltimore and Philadelphia, and continued to carry passengers and freight through the canal into the 1940s. The cargo tonnage peaked in 1872 with more than 1.3 million tons transiting the canal.
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| The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operates the C&D Canal Museum at Chesapeake City, Maryland, housed in the original canal pumphouse with a waterwheel and pumping engines. |
Loss of water in the locks was a problem from early on. As boats passed
through at Chesapeake City, the equivalent of a full lock of water was lost
to the lower-lying portion of the canal. This loss due to locking vessels
through the canal, compounded by leakage through the canal banks and normal
evaporation, made it necessary to devise a means of lifting water into the
project's upper part. A steam operated pump was purchased in 1837 to raise
water from Back Creek and in 1852 a steam engine and largewaterwheel were
installed at the pumphouse in Chesapeake City. Measuring 39 feet in diameter
and 10 feet wide, the iron and wood waterwheel had 12 troughs which filled
with water as it turned; the water then spilled over the hub into the
raceway and into the uppermost canal level. By 1854 a second steam engine
was in use. The two 150 horsepower (112 kW) engines consumed eight tons of
coal daily while lifting 170 tons of water per minute into the canal. The
waterwheel and steam engines remained in continuous use through the
mid1920s.
Throughout the 19th century, steam power brought larger and deeper-draft
vessels that could not pass through the restricting locks. By the turn of
the 20th century the decline in canal traffic and great cost of operation
and repairs brought a downward trend in canal profits. Clearly a larger,
wider and deeper waterway was needed.
At the time, however, little thought was given to improving the existing
canal. President Theodore Roosevelt then appointed a commission in 1906 to
report on the feasibility of converting the canal to a "free and open
waterway".
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| A full-sized replica of the 30foot Bethel Bridge Lighthouse is
located on Corps property, a short walk from the museum. The original
lighthouse was used to warn vessels of locks and bridges in the days before
the 1927 canal changes made it sea level. |
1920s to 1970s
In 1919 the canal was purchased by the federal government for $2.5 million
and designated the "Intra-coastal Waterway Delaware River to Chesapeake Bay,
Delaware and Maryland".
By 1927 the eastern entrance at Delaware City had been relocated several
miles south at Reedy Point, Delaware. All locks (except the one at Delaware
City) were removed and the waterway was converted to a sea-level operation
at 12 feet deep and 90 feet wide. These improvements cost $10 million. Two
stone jetties at the new eastern entrance were completed in 1926.
The "new" canal opened in May 1927 with great celebration, yet plans already
were underway for further expansion as the sizes of ships and amounts of
cargo continued to increase. The Philadelphia District took over operation
of the canal in 1933. Between 1935 and 1938 the channel was again improved —
deepened to 27 feet and widened to 250 feet at a cost of nearly $13 million.
The project was also expanded to include a federal navigation channel 27
feet deep and 400 feet wide for some 26 miles in the Upper Chesapeake Bay,
from the Elk River to Pooles Island.
Through the years, as the sizes and tonnages of ships using the canal
continued to grow, accidents and oneway traffic restrictions strained the
canal's capacity. Between 1938 and 1950 alone, eight ships collided with
bridges. In 1954 the United States Congress authorized further expansion of
the channel to 450 feet wide and 35 feet deep. These improvements began in
the 1960s and were completed in the mid1970s.
Thus the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal approached 175 years of service as a
vastly improved waterway, far different from its 19thcentury predecessor.
Modern day canal
Today's canal is a modern sea-level, electronically controlled commercial
waterway, carrying 40 percent of all ship traffic in and out of the Port of
Baltimore.
Information Source: Wikipedia