Down the Historic Susquehanna, a Summer's Jaunt Otsego to the Chesapeake

In the summer of 1899, a newspaper reporter from the Baltimore Sun, Charles Weathers Bump, took a trip down the Susquehanna River from Otsego New York, to the Chesapeake Bay.  During the twenty-eight-day journey from mid-August to mid-September Bump compiled stories, which were compiled for the newspaper’s readers. Those articles were then compiled into a book  Down the Historic Susquehanna: A Summers Jaunt from Otsego to the Chesapeake. The headwaters of the Susquehanna begin on Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, N.Y.  and flows 444 miles into the Chesapeake Bay at Havre de Grace, Maryland. In one of his articles in early September, Bump shares his thoughts on a stop in Sunbury, and the demise of the Pennsylvania Canal.

THE PASSING OF THE BOATS

Sunbury, Northumberland County Pennsylvania

September 3 - Today in glancing over some yellow time-stained copies of a Sunbury paper, I was surprised to find this paragraph:

PORT OF SUNBURY.

Sept. 1, 1840, Cleared - Canal boat Folly, to Baltimore, with lumber. Entered - Canal boats Gay and Mary Ann from Berwick, coal. It was a paragraph to cause melancholy reflections. Sunbury's dream of becoming an inland port long ago faded. The system of canals along the Susquehanna was extensive and had a busy commerce. Today the crack of the mule driver's whip on the towpath is scarcely heard, and it has been many years since the canals paid expenses as traffic highways. Many miles have been abandoned, and in the parts still operated, the business is as sluggish as the water. The steel rail is master of the field of transportation.

The river has been even more deserted. The lumber rafts, "keelboats" and "arks' are no more and the only freight or passenger boats left are the little steamers that ply for a few miles above or below an occasional progressive town. The Susquehanna is indeed unnavigable. Its loss of traffic is to be regretted, for the old order of things had a picturesque side.

It seems absurd now to read the statements of the author of a little book published at Philadelphia in 1796. "The design of these pages," he said by way of preface, "is to show the importance of the great national canal - the river Susquehanna; the eligible situation, for the purposes of trade and manufactures, of some places on its banks and at its mouth; its great connection with the other main waters of the United States, and the extensive and fertile surface of country from which it must drain the rich productions of agriculture and manufactures."

These river boats had various types. The canoe of the Indian was replaced by the "dugout" of the trader, an imitation of the Indian craft. About the time of the Revolution there was introduced the type known as "keelboats," or as "Durham boats," the latter from a town on the Delaware where the first one was built in 1750. They were 60 or 70 feet long, 8 feet broad and 2 feet deep, making a carrying capacity of from 20 to 30 tons. The stem and bow were sharp and had small decks on them. A boardwalk or "run" extended the full length of each side and was used in "poling" the boat against the current.

Masts with two sails were utilized when a favorable wind blew. A steersman and two polers on each side constituted the crew. The journey down to market was easy, except for the danger of "shooting the rapids” but on the return trip poling was arduous and the progress was not much more than a mile an hour. Fifty years ago, in the spring of 1849, no less than 2,500 rafts, containing more than 100,000,000 feet of lumber, floated past Sunbury from the mainstream in 26 days, and many hundreds more from the West Branch. Today the forests of the mainstream have been practically cleared, and those left on the West Branch are mostly floated in single logs to the booms at Lock Haven and Williamsport. The jolly life of these lumbermen, their adventures on the water, their dangers in the rapids, has passed forever from the Susquehanna. It had begun on the river about 1795. 

This evening, we leave the Susquehanna (River.) For a month we have journeyed beside it, and the promise of beauty and historic charm which induced us to start upon such a jaunt has indeed been well kept. Few rivers could do so much. With memory's aid this one shall ever be cherished.  (Condensed and edited)

Image: Flatboat (foreground) and Keelboat late 18th century

Wikimedia Commons: Public domain