Barge nowadays generally refers to a
flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by
tug
A tugboat or tug is a marine vessel that manoeuvres other vessels by pushing or pulling them, with direct contact or a tow line. These boats typically tug ships in circumstances where they cannot or should not move under their own power, suc ...
s, but nowadays most are pushed by
pusher boats, or other vessels. The term barge has a rich history, and therefore there are many other types of barges.
History of the barge
Etymology
"Barge" is attested from 1300, from
Old French ''barge'', from
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
''barga''. The word originally could refer to any small boat; the modern meaning arose around 1480. ''Bark'' "small ship" is attested from 1420, from Old French ''barque'', from Vulgar Latin ''barca'' (400 AD). The more precise meaning of
Barque as "three-masted sailing vessel" arose in the 17th century, and often takes the French spelling for disambiguation. Both are probably derived from the
Latin ''barica'', from
Greek ''baris'' "Egyptian boat", from
Coptic
Coptic may refer to:
Afro-Asia
* Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya
* Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century
* Coptic alphabet ...
''bari'' "small boat",
hieroglyphic Egyptian
D58-G29-M17-M17-D21-P1 and similar ''ba-y-r'' for "basket-shaped boat". By extension, the term "embark" literally means to board the kind of boat called a "barque".
The British river barge
In
Great Britain a merchant barge was originally a flat bottomed merchant vessel for use on navigable rivers. Most of these barges had sails. For traffic on the
River Severn the barge was described as: ''The lesser sort are called barges and frigates, being from forty to sixty feet in length, having a single mast and square sail, and carrying from twenty to forty tons burthen.'' The larger vessels were called trows. On the
River Irwell
The River Irwell ( ) is a tributary of the River Mersey in north west England. It rises at Irwell Springs on Deerplay Moor, approximately north of Bacup and flows southwards for to meet the Mersey near Irlam. The Irwell marks the boundary be ...
there was reference to barges passing below Barton Aqueduct with their mast and sails standing. Barges on the
Thames were called west country barges.
Narrowboats and Widebeams
During the
Industrial Revolution, a substantial network of narrow canals was developed in Great Britain from 1750 onward. These new British canals had locks of only wide. This led to the development of the
narrowboat
A narrowboat is a particular type of canal boat, built to fit the narrow locks of the United Kingdom. The UK's canal system provided a nationwide transport network during the Industrial Revolution, but with the advent of the railways, commerc ...
s, which had a beam of no more than . It was soon realized that the narrow locks were too limiting. Later locks were therefore doubled in width to . This led to the development of the
widebeam.
The narrowboats were initially also known as barges, but only a very few had sails. From the start, most of the new canals were constructed with an adjacent
towpath, which made it possible to tow them by draft horses. These types of
canal craft are so specific that on the
British canal system
The canals of the United Kingdom are a major part of the network of inland waterways in the United Kingdom. They have a varied history, from use for irrigation and transport, through becoming the focus of the Industrial Revolution, to today's ro ...
the term 'barge' is not used to describe
narrowboat
A narrowboat is a particular type of canal boat, built to fit the narrow locks of the United Kingdom. The UK's canal system provided a nationwide transport network during the Industrial Revolution, but with the advent of the railways, commerc ...
s and
widebeams.
The Thames barge and Dutch barge
On the British canal system, the
Thames sailing barge, and
Dutch barge and unspecified other styles of barge, are still known as barges. The term Dutch barge is nowadays often used to refer to an accommodation ship, but originally refers to the slightly larger Dutch version of the Thames sailing barge.
Crew and pole
The people who moved barges were known as
lightermen. Poles are used on barges to fend off other nearby vessels or a wharf. These are often called 'pike poles'. The long pole used to maneuver or propel a barge has given rise to the saying "I wouldn't touch that
ubject/thingwith a barge pole."
The 19th century British barge
In the United Kingdom the word barge had many meanings by the 1890s, and these varied locally. On the
Mersey a barge was called a 'Flat', on the Thames a
Lighter or barge, and on the
Humber a 'Keel'. A Lighter had neither mast nor rigging. A keel did have a single mast with sails. Barge and lighter were used indiscriminately. A local distinction was that any flat that was not propelled by steam was a barge, although it might be a sailing flat.
The term Dumb barge was probably taken into use to end the confusion. The term Dumb barge surfaced in the early nineteenth century. It first denoted the use of a barge as a mooring platform in a fixed place. As it went up and down with the tides, it made a very convenient mooring place for steam vessels. Within a few decades, the term dumb barge evolved, and came to mean: 'a vessel propelled by oars only'. By the 1890s Dumb barge was still used only on the Thames.
By 1880 barges on British rivers and canals were often towed by steam tugboats. On the Thames, many dumb barges still relied on their poles, oars and the tide. Others dumb barges made use of about 50 tugboats to tow them to their destinations. While many coal barges were towed, many dumb barges that handled single parcels were not.
The 19th century American barge
In the United States a barge was not a sailing vessel by the end of the 19th century. Indeed, barges were often created by cutting down
razeeing sailing vessels. In New York this was an accepted meaning of the term barge. The somewhat smaller
scow was built as such, but the scow also had its sailing counterpart the sailing scow.
The modern barge
The iron barge
The innovation that led to the modern barge was the use of iron barges towed by a steam tugboat. These were first used to transport grain and other bulk products. From about 1840 to 1870 the towed iron barge was quickly introduced on the Rhine, Danube, Don,
Dniester, and rivers in Egypt, India and Australia. Many of these barges were built in Great Britain.
Nowadays 'barge' generally refers to a dumb barge. In Europe, a Dumb barge is: ''An inland waterway transport freight vessel designed to be towed which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion''. In America, a barge is generally pushed.
Modern use
Barges are used today for low-value bulk items, as the cost of hauling goods by barge is very low. Barges are also used for very heavy or bulky items; a typical American barge measures , and can carry up to about of cargo. The most common European barge measures and can carry up to about .
As an example, on June 26, 2006, a
catalytic cracking
Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) is the conversion process used in petroleum refineries to convert the high-boiling point, high-molecular weight hydrocarbon fractions of petroleum (crude oils) into gasoline, olefinic gases, and other petroleum prod ...
unit reactor was shipped by barge from the
Tulsa Port of Catoosa in
Oklahoma
Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...
to a refinery in
Pascagoula, Mississippi. Extremely large objects are normally shipped in sections and assembled onsite, but shipping an assembled unit reduced costs and avoided reliance on construction labor at the delivery site (which in this case was still recovering from
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cost ...
). Of the reactor's journey, only about were traveled overland, from the final port to the refinery.
Self-propelled barges may be used as such when traveling downstream or upstream in placid waters; they are operated as an unpowered barge, with the assistance of a tugboat, when traveling upstream in faster waters. Canal barges are usually made for the particular canal in which they will operate.
Barges in the United States
In times before industrial development, railways, and highways: barges were the predominant and most efficient means of inland transportation in many regions. This holds true today, for many areas of the world.
In such pre-industrialized, or poorly developed infrastructure regions, many barges are purpose-designed to be powered on waterways by long slender poles – thereby becoming known on American waterways as poleboats as the extensive west of North America was settled using the vast tributary river systems of the
Mississippi drainage basin. Poleboats use muscle power of "walkers" along the sides of the craft pushing a pole against the streambed, canal or lake bottom to move the vessel where desired. In settling the American west it was generally faster to navigate downriver from
Brownsville, Pennsylvania, to the
Ohio River
The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...
confluence with the
Mississippi and then pole upriver against the current to St. Louis than to travel overland on the rare primitive dirt roads for many decades after the
American Revolution.
Once the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads reached Chicago, that time dynamic changed, and American poleboats became less common, relegated to smaller rivers and more remote streams. On the Mississippi riverine system today, including that of other sheltered waterways, industrial barge trafficking in bulk raw materials such as coal, coke, timber, iron ore and other minerals is extremely common; in the developed world using huge cargo barges that connect in groups and trains-of-barges in ways that allow cargo volumes and weights considerably greater than those used by pioneers of modern barge systems and methods in the
Victorian era.
Such barges need to be towed by
tugboats or pushed by
towboats. Canal barges, towed by draft animals on a waterway adjacent
towpath were of fundamental importance in the early
Industrial Revolution, whose major early engineering projects were efforts to build
viaduct
A viaduct is a specific type of bridge that consists of a series of arches, piers or columns supporting a long elevated railway or road. Typically a viaduct connects two points of roughly equal elevation, allowing direct overpass across a wide v ...
s,
aqueducts and especially canals to fuel and feed raw materials to nascent factories in the early industrial takeoff (18th century) and take their goods to ports and cities for distribution.
The barge and canal system contended favourably with the
railways in the early
Industrial Revolution before around the 1850s–1860s; for example, the
Erie Canal in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
state is credited by economic historians with giving the growth boost needed for
New York City to eclipse
Philadelphia as America's largest port and city – but such canal systems with their locks, need for maintenance and dredging, pumps and sanitary issues
were eventually outcompeted in the carriage of high-value items by the railways due to the higher speed, falling costs and route flexibility of
rail transport. Barge and canal systems were nonetheless of great, perhaps even primary, economic importance until after the
First World War in Europe, particularly in the more developed nations of the
Low Countries,
France,
Germany and especially
Great Britain which more or less made the system characteristically its own.
Nowadays, custom built special purpose equipment called modular barges are extensively used in surveying, mapping, laying and burial of subsea optic fibre cables worldwide and other support services.
In the United States, deckhands perform the labor and are supervised by a bos'n or the mate. The captain and pilot steer the towboat, which pushes one or more barges held together with rigging, collectively called 'the tow'. The crew live aboard the towboat as it travels along the inland river system or the intracoastal waterways. These towboats travel between ports and are also called line-haul boats.
Types
* Admiral's barge
*
Articulated tug and barge
*
Barracks barge
A barracks ship or barracks barge or berthing barge, or in civilian use accommodation vessel or accommodation ship, is a ship or a non-self-propelled barge containing a superstructure of a type suitable for use as a temporary barracks for s ...
("accommodation barge")
* Bin barge
*
Canal motorship
*
Car float
*
Ferrocement or
"Concrete" Barge
*
Crane barge
A crane vessel, crane ship or floating crane is a ship with a crane specialized in lifting heavy loads. The largest crane vessels are used for offshore construction. Conventional monohulls are used, but the largest crane vessels are often catama ...
*
Dredges
Dredging is the excavation of material from a water environment. Possible reasons for dredging include improving existing water features; reshaping land and water features to alter drainage, navigability, and commercial use; constructing da ...
* Deck barge
*
Dutch barge
*
Dry bulk cargo barge
*
Gundalow
*
Hopper barge
*
Hotel barge
*
Horse-drawn boat
*
Jackup barge
*
Landing craft
Landing craft are small and medium seagoing watercraft, such as boats and barges, used to convey a landing force (infantry and vehicles) from the sea to the shore during an amphibious assault. The term excludes landing ships, which are larger. Pr ...
*
Lighter
*
Liquid cargo barge
Liquid cargo barges are barges that transport petrochemicals, such as styrene, benzene and methanol; liquid fertilizer, including anhydrous ammonia; refined products, including gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel; black oil products, such as asph ...
* Log barge
* Notch barge
*
Narrowboat
A narrowboat is a particular type of canal boat, built to fit the narrow locks of the United Kingdom. The UK's canal system provided a nationwide transport network during the Industrial Revolution, but with the advent of the railways, commerc ...
*
Norfolk wherry
*
Rocket landing barge
* Oil barge
*
Paddle barge
Paddleboarding is a water sport in which participants are propelled by a swimming motion using their arms while lying or kneeling on a paddleboard or surfboard in the ocean or other body of water. This article refers to traditional prone or kneel ...
*
Péniche or Spitz barge
*
Pleasure barge
*
Power barge
Power most often refers to:
* Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work"
** Engine power, the power put out by an engine
** Electric power
* Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events
** Abusive power
Power may a ...
* Row barge
*
Royal barge
A royal barge is a ceremonial barge that is used by a monarch for processions and transport on a body of water.
Royal barges are currently used in monarchies such as the United Kingdom, Sweden and Thailand.
Traditionally the use of royal barges w ...
* Sand barge
* Severn
trow
*
Tank barge
A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong vehicle armour, armour, and good battlefield mobility (military), mobility prov ...
*
Thames sailing barge
*
Tub boat
A tub boat was a type of unpowered cargo boat used on a number of the early English and German canals. The English boats were typically long and wide and generally carried to of cargo, though some extra deep ones could carry up to . They a ...
* Vehicular barge
*
Whaleback barge
]
A whaleback was a type of cargo steamship of unusual design, with a hull that continuously curved above the waterline from vertical to horizontal. When fully loaded, only the rounded portion of the hull (the "whaleback" proper) could be seen ...
*
Widebeam
Image gallery
File:PénicheRecyclageFerrailles2008Deûle2.jpg, A self propelled barge carrying recycling material on Deûle channel in Lambersart, France
File:Barge with cars.jpg, Self-propelled car barge on the River Danube
File:Péniches sur le Canal du Midi.jpg, Barges near Toulouse, France
File:Andromeda (ship, 1958) Hannover Mittellandkanal 2006 by-RaBoe.jpg, Self-propelled barge ''Andromeda'' in canal at Hanover, Germany
File:Messina_Karden_Bug.jpg, Tank barge on the River Moselle
The Moselle ( , ; german: Mosel ; lb, Musel ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it jo ...
, Germany
File:CrushedStoneBarge.jpg, Self-propelled barge carrying bulk crushed stone
File:IjmuidenBarge.jpg, Self-propelled barge in the port of IJmuiden
IJ_(digraph).html" ;"title="n IJ (digraph)">n IJ (digraph) and that should remain the only places where they are used. >
IJmuiden () is a port city in the Netherlands, Dutch province of North Holland. It is the main town in the municipality ...
, Netherlands
File:Pegasus_barge_being_moved_by_Freedom_Star_and_towboat_American_2.jpg, Barge carrying the Space Shuttle external tank for STS-119 under tow to Port Canaveral, Florida, United States
File:Yangzhou-Modern-Grand-Canal-boats-3351.JPG, Self-propelled barges on the Grand Canal of China near Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China
File:CoalbargePittsburgh.JPG, Coal barges passing Heinz Field
Acrisure Stadium is a football stadium located in the North Shore neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It primarily serves as the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League (NFL) and the Pittsburgh Panth ...
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on the Ohio River
The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...
File:Suphannahongsa-docked.jpg, Royal Barge ''Suphannahong'' docked at Wat Arun pier, one of the Thai
Thai or THAI may refer to:
* Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia
** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand
** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand
*** Thai script
*** Thai (Unicode block ...
royal barges featured in the royal barge ceremony
Image:Donna York.jpg, Towboat ''Donna York'' pushing barges of coal up the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky, United States
File:Ilia Efimovich Repin (1844-1930) - Volga Boatmen (1870-1873).jpg, ''Barge Haulers on the Volga
''Barge Haulers on the Volga'' or '' Burlaki'' (russian: Бурлаки на Волге, ''Burlaki na Volge'') is an 1870–1873 oil-on-canvas painting by artist Ilya Repin. It depicts 11 men physically dragging a barge on the banks of the Volg ...
'' (1870–73), by Ilya Repin
Ilya Yefimovich Repin (russian: Илья Ефимович Репин, translit=Il'ya Yefimovich Repin, p=ˈrʲepʲɪn); fi, Ilja Jefimovitš Repin ( – 29 September 1930) was a Russian painter, born in what is now Ukraine. He became one of the ...
File:Kapal tongkang.jpg, ''Tongkang'' or car barge, landed on Ketapang Port, Banyuwangi, Indonesia
File:slipway at portland.JPG, Slipway at Portland Harbour
Portland Harbour is located beside the Isle of Portland, Dorset, on the south coast of England. Construction of the harbour began in 1849; when completed in 1872, its surface area made it the largest man-made harbour in the world, and rema ...
, Dorset, England, holding a split dump barge (on right)
File:Barge on Mosel by Kues (1).jpg, Barge on the river Mosel in Germany.
File:Water_Barge_YW-59.jpg, US Navy Water Type B ship Barge, YW-59, launched August 29, 1941
File:YFN-958-Covered_Lighter_Barge-Non-Self-Propelled.jpg, YFN-958 a covered lighter barge, non-Self-propelled. Built by Mare Island Navy Shipyard in 1944.
File:Concrete Barge - Erie Canal - Lock 13 - 3.jpg, Ferrocement Barge, US-102, in the Erie Canal
File:Ww2 concrete barge, National Waterway Museum.jpg, WW2 concrete barge at the National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, UK
File:Sun Shining Into a Barge.jpg, Sun shining into the empty asphalt barge ''Endeavour'' while under repair in Muskegon, Michigan.
File:Pelican Barge, Darling Harbor, Sydney, NSW, AU.jpg, A barge decorated to look like a pelican
Pelicans (genus ''Pelecanus'') are a genus of large water birds that make up the family Pelecanidae. They are characterized by a long beak and a large throat pouch used for catching prey and draining water from the scooped-up contents before s ...
carrying a jumbotron display.
File:AWB Rajawali Natuna.jpg, Accommodation Work Barge
See also
*
American Waterways Operators
*
Burlak
A burlak ( rus, бурла́к, p=bʊrˈlak) was a towpath puller in Russian Empire.
Overview
The exact origin of the word is unknown. Different versions include old middle-German ''bûrlach'' (working team with fixed rules, artel), or Tatar ''b ...
*
Canal boat ''Ross Barlow''
*
Car float
*
Chain boat
*
Container on barge
*
Dory
*
Float (nautical)
* ''
Hughes Mining Barge
The ''Hughes Mining Barge'', or ''HMB-1'', is a submersible barge about 99 m (324 ft) long, 32 m (106 ft) wide, and more than 27 m (90 ft) tall. The ''HMB-1'' was originally developed as part of Project Azorian (mor ...
''
*
Lighter
*
Mobro 4000
The ''Mobro 4000'' was a barge owned by MOBRO Marine, Inc. made infamous in 1987 for hauling the same load of trash along the east coast of North America from New York City to Belize and back until a way was found to dispose of the garbage. During ...
*
Pusher (boat)
*
Shallop
Shallop is a name used for several types of boats and small ships (French ''chaloupe'') used for coastal navigation from the seventeenth century. Originally smaller boats based on the chalupa, the watercraft named this ranged from small boats a l ...
*
Tub boat
A tub boat was a type of unpowered cargo boat used on a number of the early English and German canals. The English boats were typically long and wide and generally carried to of cargo, though some extra deep ones could carry up to . They a ...
*
Type B ship
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Notes
External links
Barge Lehigh Valley 79 at the Waterfront Museum Brooklyn,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
,
United States
Britain's Official guide to canals, rivers and lakes*
DBA The Barge AssociationThe American Waterways Operators
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