The history of the Schuylkill River is properly the history of this whole area as well since we are located in the Schuylkill watershed. All area creeks and streams make their way to the Schuylkill.
Little recognized by history is the freight traffic the river carried before the 1828 opening of “the Navigation,” as the Schuylkill Canal was called. In the early 18th century, cargoes of wheat, whiskey, flour and anything else was freighted down river in large dug-out canoes that carried several tons. Lesser loads were paddled upstream in those same dug-outs. But by about 1760, Schuylkill canoe navigators had copied the successful Durham Boats of the Delaware and whole fleets of these sturdy craft transported an astonishing volume of merchandise all along the way from the head of navigation at Pottsville to Philadelphia.
At that time Philadelphia ranked second only to London in the value of its imports and exports, and much of the export came down the two rivers while imports traveled upstream.
Eighteenth century industrialist Robert Durham had extensive iron works along the Delaware. By 1750, Durham’s boat company was building small freight boats to navigate the river and haul his iron and anything else that would find a market in the city. They were sturdy, flat bottomed boats without keels measuring about sixty feet long and eight feet wide. Made of heavy planks, when empty they drew only a few inches of water, and when loaded with fifteen tons, the draft was still well under two feet.
These were the boats that George Washington famously used to cross the Delaware on December 25, 1776, and capture the Hessian outpost at Trenton. Resembling giant canoes, the Durham boats came to a point at bow and stern, so the long steering sweep could be moved to either end. Usually a crew of five, four men and a steersman, operated the boat. The crew used “setting poles,” slender twelve to eighteen foot wooden poles with iron tips, to guide the boat downstream. They used these poles to push the boat upriver by walking back and forth on walking boards built onto the top of the boat. Later the boats were fitted with oars for the downstream trip. Two tons was the usual upstream load. Still, it must have been exhausting labor to shove the boat upstream against the current.
While visiting Reading in 1794, Theophile Cazenove noted in his Journal: “In one of the back streets a carpenter makes boats which he then takes to the river. There was a finished boat in the middle of the street 60 feet long by 8 feet wide, costing 45 pounds. [$112.50] They are very flat and without a keel. Thus they carry to Philadelphia a load of 5 tons when the Schuylkill is low and 12 when it is high.”
In 1760, Franklin noted that properly constructed flatboats with ten-ton capacity were operating on the Schuylkill from Reading to Spring Mill Fall. The 1768 Potts estate inventory listed a boat valued at twenty pounds, and the Valley Forge accounting a year later carried a boat at twenty-four pounds. Similar craft were probably used at other Schuylkill Valley iron works as river transport was far more economical than freighting by wagon. In fact, the story of the Reading boats is the story of freight costs.
An article in the 1955 Pennsylvania Dutchman by Earl Heydinger notes: “The seventy-five mile trip [from Reading] to Philadelphia (fifty-six by land) consumed only fourteen hours on the river. A five-to-six-day round trip usually required one or two days to float to Philadelphia, another to discharge and to load the two ton return cargo , and three days to pole back to Reading.” The income for the trip was about $110 of which $48 was profit after the crew were paid $6.60 each for the round trip.
River-freight rates were $7.70 a ton for wheat and flour and $6.20 for bar iron. The two tons brought laboriously upriver paid $12.20 a ton. This was about $1.10 a ton cheaper than land rates.
The owners usually operated their own boats, but some larger warehouses had their own fleets. The figures are astonishing. According to the Reading Adler (Eagle), “One Reading company, Gerber and Strohecker, operated two warehouses and in the six months between December 20, 1800, and June 20, 1801, shipped twenty thousand barrels of flour, a hundred tons of iron, six hundred barrels of bread, and ‘an astonishing quantity of hats, lard, wax, etc. valued at $270,000.’ “
Another report of that same company between February 15 and June 1 1807, recorded that 13,198 bushels of wheat,4,695 barrels of flour, 51 tons of iron,1,256 gallons of whiskey, 153 barrels of pork, 200 bushels of corn, and 274 tubs of butter and lard were sent via the Schuylkill to Philadelphia. And this was just one company! There were many other companies and individuals operating boats in the same period.
In those days, just up river from Philadelphia there was a six mile section of falls: Spring Mill Falls, Rumhill Falls, the Narrows, and the Falls of the Schuylkill. At Spring Mill Falls enough cargo was off loaded to make the descent with the tiller double manned. Heydinger reports that “an eyewitness described the passage of the falls of Schuylkill by loaded reading boats as a beautiful and exciting sight. The long, narrow, sharp-prowed boats descended with great rapidity, being almost lost to sight one instant and high on the waves the next.”
Getting the boats back upriver through the falls was another story. There are conflicting accounts. It seems that towing ropes as well as poling were employed in this feat.
