Dispatches from the Samuel Center

Excitement at the Mud Lock

This post features three photos, with close-ups of two of them. Unless I’m misinterpreting the photos and others’ comments about them, this lock is near the current Cayuga-Seneca lock 1, aka CS-1, as here, and looking west. The northern point of Cayuga Lake is to the left. Note the narrow bridge in the distance, the…

will van dorp
2–3 minutes
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This post features three photos, with close-ups of two of them. Unless I’m misinterpreting the photos and others’ comments about them, this lock is near the current Cayuga-Seneca lock 1, aka CS-1, as here, and looking west. The northern point of Cayuga Lake is to the left. Note the narrow bridge in the distance, the row of utility poles, and pilings stacked along the path. I don’t know if this photo was taken before or after the next two, but it is an image of calm.

Here’s the second image, a busy one. The orientation is the same but from a slightly lower vantage point; note the path and bridge to the right,

utility poles, and the pilings might be covered by a tarp. A man sits of the tarp to the right side of the image. Between the man to the right and the one to the left, that might be a water pipe, with an elbow in the middle.

Details to the left side of image two show a commanding figure in the foreground, pointing at some work on the boat. A ladder leads down into the lock, and steam is being released. Partly obscured by the steam, spectators–women as well as men–look on. The nearer crewman on the boat attends to a sluice. Is this a dredge operation?

Here’s the entire boat in the lock. At least two more crew are working on the right side of the boat. And is that a second boat diagonal in the middle distance?

Here’s the complete third image, the busiest of the three. Again, the narrow bridge and utility poles to the right are the reference points. The vantage point is higher and to the left compared with image two.

Again, note the water (?) pipe, the steam, and lots of spectators right and left. At least seven crew are on the boat.

Women and men gather in the detail below, but

the man in the center–above and below–stands where the most drama is located; he is tending a block and tackle rigging. Something stubborn and heavy is being moved. Again, there are lots of spectators, and nary a trace of today’s PPE.

To the right side of image three, a team is standing by with a cart. I’m not going to guess about the purpose of the riveted metal piece beyond the cart.

I might be missing the big picture here with these three images. A differing perception, anyone?

4 responses to “Excitement at the Mud Lock”

  1. Lee Rust Avatar
    Lee Rust

    The canal boat is sitting awfully low in the water, so my guess is that it’s been partially flooded and the crew is busy pumping it out. That looks like a portable steam-driven pump sitting on top of the cabin, with bilge water pouring out through the sluice and steam exhausting from the vertical engine cylinder. There’s no smoke, so the raw steam for the engine is likely coming through that pipe from a mobile boiler off to the right. Such an unusual activity in the lock would be very likely to attract that crowd of casual onlookers.

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  2. Lee Rust Avatar
    Lee Rust

    In the first photo, the boat is only part-way into the lock, and that beam set across the lower gate may have been needed as a lifting point to get the partially submerged hull over the gate sill. In the second picture the crew has hauled the boat all the way in using the block & tackle arrangement and the beam has been removed.

    Up on the left in the first picture there’s a box with a big flywheel that looks like a hand-cranked pump, so perhaps they at first worked to drain the bilge manually until the steam pump could be rigged. In the second picture the lid to that box has been closed. The flexible hose draped off to the right may be a water supply for the unseen boiler.

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  3. Lee Rust Avatar
    Lee Rust

    One more thought about the canal boat. Since it looks pretty decrepit, I was wondering about the starboard half of the boat’s bow that’s colored black. If there was a leak in that area, caused either by collision or rot, perhaps that’s a big patch of tar paper to temporarily slow the leak and allow the hull to be pumped out.

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  4. tugster Avatar
    tugster

    Thx much, Lee. I couldn’t figure out several things about the images. You’ve offered plausible explanations for the source of that pipe coming in from the right as well as the black area on the “far” side of the boat in the lock.

    Reply

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