1829 To 1919
The Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River were now connected by a navigation channel measuring nearly 14 miles (23 km) long, 10 feet (3 m) deep, 66 feet (20 m) wide at the waterline and 36 feet (11 m) wide along the channel bottom. A covered wooden bridge at Summit, Delaware, spanned the canal across the "Deep Cut", measuring 250 feet (76 m) between abutments. The bridge floor was 90 feet (27 m) above the channel bottom. Three wooden swing bridges also crossed the canal. 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. Each measured 100 feet (30 m) long and 22 feet (6.7 m) wide and was eventually enlarged to 220 feet (67 m) in length and 24 feet (7.3 m) in width.
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.
The Ericsson Line of steamboats originated as steamers built for freight only, however, the line converted to passenger boats during the time of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, as the demand for travel increased. The Baltimore and Philadelphia Steamship Companies, which operated the Ericsson line, built and furnished ships with seventy to eighty staterooms in addition to the freight facilities. In turn, these ships grew from less than one hundred to more than six hundred tons and greatly increased travel from Baltimore to Philadelphia. The Ericsson Line was named after its first ship, Ericsson, which was named after John Ericsson who developed the screw propeller that was installed on the vessel specifically designed for the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Ericsson was built at Reanie & Neafie’s shipyard in Philadelphia by Anthony Groves, Jr. The ship was finished in 1843, was 78 feet in length and weighed eighty tons. The ship began operations in 1844 under the direction of Captain Noah F. Ireland. The Ericsson Line operated out of Baltimore’s No. 1 Light Street Pier for 75 years, serving passenger and freight demands throughout the waterway with thirty registered steamers. The Ericsson Line’s success brought utility and prosperity to the canal and acted as a magnificent impetus for the expansion of trade by means of its enlargement and successful vocation with the Atlantic Deeper Waterways Association of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.
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 large waterwheel were installed at the pumphouse in Chesapeake City. Measuring 39 feet (12 m) in diameter and 10 feet (3 m) 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 mid‑1920s.
Throughout the 19th century the canal's use continued to change with the New Castle and Frenchtown Turnpike and Rail Road being its only major competitor. 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. New companies were formed instead, with at least six options to consider for a new canal route. Various committees and commissions appointed to study the issue failed to agree on a plan. President Theodore Roosevelt then appointed a commission in 1906 to report on the feasibility of converting the canal to a "free and open waterway".
Read more about this topic: Chesapeake And Delaware Canal