NEW YORK, JANUARY, 1873.
NEW YORK:
EVENING POST STEAM PRESSES, 41 NASSAU STREET, COR. LIBERTY.
1873.
With Respects of the Author,
155 Broadway, N. Y.
During the maple sugar season of the spring of 1858, a well-to-do farmer,of western New York, whittled out a spiral or augur-like screw-propeller,in miniature, which he thought admirably adapted to the canal. He soonafter went to Buffalo, and contracted for a boat to be built, with two ofhis Archimedean screws for propulsion by steam.
Although advised by his builders to substitute the common four-bladedpropellers, he adhered to his original design, and with one propeller ateither side of the rudder—called "twin-propellers"—she was soon ready forduty. She is the vessel known to history as the Charles Wack.
She carried three-fourths cargo and towed another boat with full cargo, andmade the trip from Buffalo to West Troy in seven days, total time,averaging two miles per hour. But she returned from Troy to Buffalo, withhalf freight, in four days and sixteen hours, net time; averaging three andone-twelfth miles per hour, without tow.
This initiated the series of steamers from 1858 to 1862, and, with othersthat soon followed, created a general enthusiasm in behalf of steamtransportation, which led to a trip through the canal that fall, on achartered steam-tug, by the Governor of the State, the Canal Board, andother notables, and with public receptions, speeches, &c., at different[4]cities along the route.
That boat was soon followed by the S. B. Ruggles, a first-class steamcanal-boat, built by the Hon. E. S. Prosser, of Buffalo, with a first-classmodern propeller, and with double the engine capacity of the former.
The P. L. Sternburg soon followed, and was a first-class boat, withmodern twin-propellers, but with less engine capacity than the Wack.
The same season there were some local steamers built to run regularlybetween different cities on the line of the canal.
The following season of 1859 was the most active year the Erie Canal hasever known in regard to steam.
The C. Wack was sold to Mr. Prosser, who took out her Archimedeanpropellers, and substituted a modern propeller, and doubled her enginecapacity, and reproduced her as the City of Buffalo.
The Gold Hunter was produced by the Western Transportation Company, ofBuffalo. She was a short, oblong tub, with a square, box-like bow, androunded stern, designed only to carry machinery and coal, and was to berecessed into the stern of ordinary horse-boats by cutting away anequivalent space therefrom. She was designed to make a trip on the canal,and be immediately transferred to another boat for return trip, thus toavoid the usual loss of time at the termini of the canal. She was abandonedafter a brief trial.
The canal-boat Niagara had the Cathcart propeller supplied, whichconsisted of a union of the propeller and rudder by a uni