Schooners and Brigantines
The keelboat builders Tarascan, Berthoud & Company of Pittsburgh built the 120 ton schooner, Amity and the 250 ton Pittsburgh in 1792. In 1793, these were loaded with flour; one was sent to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and the other to Philadelphia. Coal used as ballast was sold in Philadelphia at 37½ cents a bushel the next year on two of their brigantines, 200 ton Nanina and 350 ton Louisianna. The largest was the 400 ton brigantine Western Trader. Before 1803, the 70 ton gaffed rigged schooner Dorcus & Sally was built at Wheeling and fitted at Marietta, Ohio. Also, the 130 ton Mary Avery was built at Marietta. The 100 ton schooner Nancy was launched on June 27, 1808 at Wheeling and among others to include Little Kanawha before the era of the paddlewheelers. The uncommonly long wild black walnut timber used for hull construction, written in a journal of a coastal purchaser's observer, were a little lighter yet as strong as the heavier oak hull timber used at that time on the east coast. Some shipwrights from Rhode Island arrived about this time to join their neighboring regionals who had already relocated along the river's old growth forest shipyards. A few of these walnut-hulled schooners were sold with their freight, and a few were fitted as North American gun cutters (escort/patrol) with others of the US privateers during the War of 1812. One was also noted in the Caribbean. In January, 1845, Liverpool, England, not believing the marque home port and having to be shown the geography thereby not pirates, welcomed the Marietta-built 350 ton barque Muskingum. This was a cheerful first for Ohio River crews. The largest built was the ship Minnesota at Cincinnati of 850 tons for a New Orleans owner. A steaming paddlewheeler delivered it.
A few locally built and crewed barques made passage to Africa and back to the Kanawha region before the Civil War. These larger vessels moved during spring flood waters, having a little more draft than our earlier more common schooner's berthy 11-foot (3.4 m) draft or less, which were more able. The early upper Ohio Valley vessels' cargo included flour, smoked beef, barreled salt pork, glass-wares, iron, black walnut furniture, wild cherry, yellow birch and various beverages. Much of the bulk cargo were stored in flat-bottomed square-end "jonboats", as crates above the hold for some destinations required a davit method of loading and unloading the freight. It was during this era that sorghum and the Kentucky variety of tobacco were exported in greater volume from farmers in western Virginia's large bottomlands boat landings.
Read more about this topic: Waterways Of West Virginia