We continue this week looking at various aspects of our display “Flowing through Time: Wittenberg, Tower Rock & the Mississippi River.” Among the models we received from the museum in Grand Tower was a large replica of a towboat and barges.
Having grown up in St. Louis, barges aren’t at all new to me; however, I’ve never really given them much thought. I found my research into them this week interesting. Hopefully you will find it so as well.
One of the earliest recorded uses of barges dates back to Ancient Egypt as a vessel for funeral proceedings for a pharaoh. The Romans used barges and canal travel to expand their reach and lines of commerce to move things like wine and oil.
Closer to home, the Mississippi River has long been a major artery for transporting goods. French settlers floated their harvest down the river as did fur trappers and traders. These simple boats were then replaced with steamboats which ultimately were expanded with barges.
According to a report I found on the USDA’s website:
Before there were locks and dams on the Nation’s rivers, the early commercial vessels were
designed to travel in shallow waters and had flexible cargo capability to handle passengers,
freight, or livestock. Some were equipped with second decks for additional carrying capacity.
These boats, called packets, made regular trips between river cities and were a primary mode
of transportation in the central United States for the first half of the 1800s. Packets were
propelled by steam-driven paddle wheels that permitted shallow-draft navigation on the
constantly changing and unpredictable rivers. Early steamboat traffic was most prevalent
during the spring, when high water permitted travel along most of the river system. The
topography of the valley on the lower Mississippi River, combined with water flows from the
Upper Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio Rivers, produced conditions for year-round navigation.
The steamboat era ended as railroads began to cross the United States. Railroads offered lower
rates and provided more city-to-city routes, especially to western destinations. In an effort to
become more competitive, packets added barges to the sides of the vessels to increase cargo
capacity. Before the addition of side barges, most packets were side-wheeled paddle boats. To
accommodate the side barges, the paddle wheel was moved to the stern of the boat.
Eventually, the packet evolved into today’s diesel-powered tow boat with propellers that
pushes barges up and down the rivers.
A standard modern Mississippi River barge is 195 feet long by 35 feet wide and has the carrying capacity of about 60 semi trucks! However, you hardly ever see a single barge. On the Upper Mississippi (upstream of St. Louis), the largest tow (number of barges to one towboat) is 15. So, to compare the towing capacity of barges to boxcars and semi trucks:
Slides from: Exploring the Economics of Using Barges on the Mississippi River to Transport Agricultural Commodities
On the Lower Mississippi (downstream of Cairo, IL), tows tend to look more like this:
While the nature of river shipping has evolved, the Mississippi River continues to play an important role. In recent years, 500 million tons of shipped goods flow down the Mississippi each year as well as 60% of all grain exported from the US.
Ranging from the simplicity of a homemade raft to the romance of a steamboat to the industrial power of a towboat and barges, the Mississippi River has been “Flowing through Time” carrying American commerce.