Canal Boats

A variety of boats on the canal served their owners for recreational or administrative purposes. The canal company often employed a paymaster to whom they made available a boat for his monthly trips up and down the canal to pay the company’s employees. Boats such as that were powered by steam—or in later years gas or diesel engines—and were sometimes able to operate in the river as well as the canal.

This photograph of Canal boat 58 in the canal near Hancock, was taken by Walt Keefer in 1958. The boat had been marooned there when the canal closed.

Five boats are moored in a boat basin near Two Locks. The empty boats were abandoned by their captains and are left to decay in the canal after operations shut down in 1924. With the end of the canal lifelong boatmen had to find new employment and many never gave up hope that the canal would resume operations again one day.

Canal Towage Company boat number 85’s condition after the flood of 1924. Boat 85 and its inhabitant shared their fate with numerous other boats and boatmen after the C&O Canal ceased operations. Dilapidated boats were used as housing or were left to rot in the canal prism until the flood of 1936 when most were washed away with the flood waters.

The canal boat captain in this photograph was George Bowers; the helmsman, Weaver Eversole; and the mule driver, Lloyd Lemen.

The B&O Capitol Limited engine number is 5227.

This stretch of canal is between Weverton and Harpers Ferry, at Millers Bend. It shows the proximity in which the railroad and the canal were built. The road as well as the railroad and canal had to get through the narrows near Weverton and Harpers Ferry.

U. S. CANAL BOATS ARE MOVING

Understood That Coal for Indian Head Will Go Forward Immediately.

A number of the U. S. Canal boats stationed at various points along the C. & O. Canal began moving toward Cumberland yesterday indicating that coal for the government at Indian Head, Md., would begin moving immediately.

The US boats are the same ones used during the war by the canal for hauling coal to Indian Head and had not been ordered out when the Towage Co. boats were ordered to load several weeks ago.

Synod Meeting.

Herald of Freedom and Torch Light, October 1, 1851

The Maryland Synod of the Lutheran Church will meet at Williamsport, on the 16th of October. The Sentinel says that upwards of one hundred ministers and laymen are expected to be in attendance. Williamsport is a pretty town, and is inhabited by clever, hospitable people, who will doubtless render the visit of this large body of Clergymen an agreeable one. — It is now accessible by Pack Boat navigation on the Canal besides Stage and other routes.

This is a passenger boat of some type. It is possibly an excursion boat that operated both in the canal and in the river (likely the slackwater sections behind the dams) in the Williamsport area. A boat like this was owned at one time by Ivan Ausherman of Hagerstown.

A paymaster's boat rises in a lock. The men at the front and the rear of the small boat have wrapped the rope around the bollards or snubbing posts to prevent the boat being damaged by being pushed by the rush of water into the lock walls. Note the distinctive grooves, where rope wore down the stone. The paymaster watches.

House boat, near Shepherdstown.

There were house boats on the canal as early as 1887. Merten's Sons had a lien against Wm. F.M. McCarty for a Canal House Boat, "Jamie", listed in the Washington County Boat Lien records. The claim was filed August 2nd, 1887 in the amount of $650.00. It was satisfied the following year. See Boat Lien Docket. Fred Mertens and Sons were boatbuilders in Cumberland.