GPS- 43.066454, -76.471403
So what do you do when you are miles from home,
and your packet boat begins to spring a leak?
You can just let it sit and sink to the bottom.
A sunken canal boat would be a hazard to other canal boat captains,
mules, and their drivers.
You took it to the repair station,
The Dry Dock!
The semi-circle of stones on the has nothing to do with the canal...it was put in as a bench when this section of the canal was made into a park by the WPA workers...but the rest of the walls have a canal story to tell...
When a boat needed maintenance, you didn't just throw it out...
you took it to the closest dry dock which were spaced along the canal
like service stations for cars are along the roads today.
So what is a dry dock and what does it do? A dry dock served one, sometimes two functions. First, they were the repair station for boats. Like care repair and service stations sprinkled along Rt 20 in its heyday, drydocks fixed boats. A boat that sunk anywhere along the canal could back up boats for miles. So dry dock literally and figuratively helped keep the canal afloat. Also, a few drydocks actually built boats. In short, while all dry docks fixed them, not all constructed them. More about Dry Docks along the canal
A postcard pic of the Dry Dock in Illion...
note the chamber gates opening to let the boat out
And one on the Champlain Canal...note the gates holding the water out of the chamber
Jordan's original Dry Dock was located south of where the Locktender's House is today
Here it is on a map from 1834
After the Erie Canal was Enlarged,
a new dry dock was built just a bit west
where you see the entrance today.
While not very easy to see today, as it was filled in long ago,
the Jordan Dry Dock both fixed and built boats.
The wall was curved to allow boats to swing into the dry dock.
Here it is on the 1859 map
Here you can see the curved wall on the right.
This allowed boats to swing into the dry dock more easily.
Canal boats were made of wood which lasted about 20 years and needed regular maintenance. Here are a few pics of Dry Docks at work along the canal...
here is the Dry Dock in Port Byron
Here is the one a Vischer's Ferry...Clute's Dry Dock
and another view of its dry dock
A great pic of at Vischer Ferry of Clute's Dry Dock looking into the chamber. A boat would enter, the gates would close and water would be drained off so that repairs could be made. The boat rested on wooden supports which helped distribute the weight and stabilize the boat.
Another busy drydock was in Durhamville, the Doran Dry Dock.
These craftsmen helped keep the canal afloat.
Not only did they fix e'm, they built 'em...
Here's one they built being launched
Another one nearby is the one in Chittenango at the Chittenango Landing Canal Museum. This one was lovingly restored by volunteers who dug it out so that future generations could see the only original Dry Lock along the Erie Canal that is intact
More about the 3 Bay Chittenango Landing Dry Docks
The one in Jordan was next to a lumber complex...
handy when you want some wood to fix a boat
But today there is a stone wall where the gates would be...
looking out toward the canal from the top
Today, a storage barn for the library and other village items, the Library,
and part of the access road to a store sits on top of Jordan's Dry Dock...
looking south from the wall
Some stones uncovered from it when they put in a new sidewalk to the library
But Dry Docks are a part of the Modern Barge Canal, too.
Even Steel framed boats need regular maintenance!
(pic by Gary Prodrick)
But our packet boat doesn't need maintenance today, thankfully!
And so we pass it by and head onward to our next stop...
No comments:
Post a Comment