The explosions used to help create the Erie Canal could be heard every day for miles. They used black powder back then. On that typical day, when the shattered chunks of shale and hardpan dust cleared, two dozen grit covered immigrants, slaves, and free blacks began the task of clearing the debris.
Meanwhile, in a makeshift medical tent a hundred miles away, fifty men “sweat out” their swamp acquired malaria. Death had taken four of them earlier that morning. The pay was terrible and the job was tough.
Many thought it was a wasted effort, the whim of a class privileged governor sipping coffee in his Albany mansion. Maybe he knew or maybe he didn’t that his dream of an America expanding westward through the New York State frontier would change everything.
There is a small town west of Albany, New York, that is bordered by the Erie Canal and the Mohawk River in Southern Saratoga County, named Vischer’s Ferry. The town is still there but its namesake vessel is long gone. In researching the subject of the painting above, it was no surprise to discover the ferry was a wooden, double-ended, flat-bottomed craft with loading ramps at either end.
What was most unusual was its means of propulsion. Vischer’s Ferry operated by using two short cables, fore and aft, attached to a much heavier cable which spanned the river. Adjusting the length of the boat’s cables caused the craft to traverse the river in either direction depending on the setup.
Once the passengers were on the western shore they crossed over the Erie Canal on a wooden bridge. Note that the canal, in which the tugboat is moored, is 15 feet higher that the river at that point.
Read more about the Vicher’s Ferry.
A version of this essay by artist L.F. Tantillo was first published in the newsletter of the American Society of Marine Artists. It’s provided here in support of the Albany Waterway project, which hopes to reconnect Albany with the Erie Canal and Hudson River.
Illustration: Len F. Tantillo’s “Vischer’s Ferry,” oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches, 2000.
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