The Georgetown Canal Incline: Its Ups & Downs

The land currently owned by Georgetown University that is at the center of the Georgetown boathouse issue includes the remains of the Georgetown canal incline. The story of this structure constitutes a colorful chapter in a larger story that might well be called “The Trials and Tribulations of the Eastern Terminus of the C&O Canal.” The central theme in this story, and the reason for the incline, is quite simply the inadequacies of the tidewater end of the canal for the transshipment or delivery of canal cargos.

In October, 1849, a full year before the 50 miles between Dam 6 and Cumberland opened, Chief Engineer Charles B. Fisk wrote to Georgetown Mayor Henry Addison, concerning certain critical improvements to the canal as it passes through the city. He proposed, among other changes, the raising of some of the bridges over the canal to allow the passage of the larger freighters that were increasingly common on the waterway, the widening of the canal from the Alexandria Aqueduct to Potomac Street, and the construction of a turning basin for boats that unloaded above Lock 4. (Bears, 28)

While the problematic bridges were raised after the Civil War, and certain other improvements were made in the Georgetown section of the canal, serious delays and difficulties continued to plague the terminus facilities, and even increased as shipping on the canal grew. At the 43rd annual meeting on December 29, 1871, C&O Canal Company President James C. Clark (who served from June 1870 to June 1872) reported that “often a string of loaded boats from half mile to a mile in length is seen lying above the Collector’s Office in Georgetown, waiting their turn to get in to the wharves to discharge their cargoes.”

To address this situation, Clark introduced an idea that first appeared during the Civil War: constructing outlet locks (also known as river locks) above the aqueduct. These would serve the many boats that pass into the river for towage by tugboats to a destination below Georgetown, leaving the Georgetown segment of the canal to boats delivering their cargo there. However, the Canal Company, under court order to pay down its debts with the profits it was now earning, was focusing on the reduction of the interest on the construction bonds of 1844 and decided that it was,, therefore, impossible to undertake the expense of such a project at that time. (Sanderlin, 228–229) In the spring of 1872, H. H. Dodge, a local politician, advised the canal company that he would construct an outlet lock and lease it to the company. On May 10, 1872, the canal company signed a contract with Dodge’s Potomac Lock and Dock Company to do so. However, it was soon realized that lockage capable of overcoming the 40 feet between the canal and the river at the proposed location, would require a great deal of water—a commodity already often inadequate on the Georgetown level. (Skramstad, 552)

The canal company turned to William Rich Hutton, its chief engineer from 1869 to 1871, as a consultant. Hutton recommended an inclined plane or lift as an alternative to locks. This led to the company amending the contract with the Potomac Lock and Dock Company to allow “inclined planes, lifts, or other devices for obtaining the same end” as outlet locks. Hutton, as a consultant for the Potomac Lock and Dock Company, considered several plans, but ultimately designed the inclined plane, the cheapest option ($80,000 compared to $85,000 to $125,000). (Skramstad, 552–553)

Construction began in the spring of 1875, having been delayed as a result of financial uncertainties arising with the panic of 1873. The caisson was 112 feet long, 16 feet 9 inches wide, and 7 feet 10 inches high and rested on six six-wheeled trucks that moved on two pairs of iron rails 600 feet in length at a slope of 1:12. It was balanced by two counterweights moving on two pairs of 300-foot iron rails at a slope of 1:10. Two steel wire ropes supplied by John A. Roebling’s Sons, interconnected the system that included two pairs of winding pulleys, powered by a water turbine fed by a sluiceway between the canal and the river. The caisson, rails, counterweights, and machinery were built by the Vulcan Iron Works of Baltimore. (Skramstad, 553)

The incline worked by bringing the caisson up against a gated headwall in the towpath berm of the canal, to which the caisson would be held fast. The headwall and caisson gates were then opened, admitting water into the caisson and, once it was filled, a boat. When ready to descend, the gates would be closed and the caisson would descend down the incline to a river basin where the caisson’s lower gate was opened, allowing the boat to pass into the basin where it would be connected to a tug for its journey downriver. The entire process took only 12 to 18 minutes. (Skramstad, 554, 555)

The Canal Company’s President Arthur Pue Gorman (who held the office from June 1872 to August 1882) and the Board approved the incline on July 6, 1876. On January 11, 1877, a contract for a 25 year lease at $15,000 per year was executed between the C&O Canal Company and Dodge’s Potomac Lock and Dock Company. This would have paid Dodge $225,000 for the project that reportedly had cost $145,556.79. (Skramstad, 554)

As fate would have it, tonnage on the canal was dropping by this time and the congestion that had created the need for the incline was rarely a problem. Still, the incline operated more or less constantly until late 1879 when it began to be used only on those occasions when the Rock Creek outlet was inadequate or dysfunctional.

However, in August 1880, a flood severely damaged the Rock Creek outlet, causing it to be abandoned and requiring the use of the incline by all boats with destinations down the Potomac. This situation appears to have continued throughout the 1880s until the 1889 flood destroyed the incline, closed the canal, and forced the C&O Canal Company into bankruptcy. The 1890–91 restoration of the canal under the receivership returned the Rock Creek basin and outlet structures to service, and left the canal incline to pass into near oblivion. (Skramstad, 555)

There can be no doubt, however, that the C&O’s incline was one of the major engineering achievements in the canal’s history. In 1876, prominent 19th-Century engineer James McAlpine referred to it as the “largest incline in the world”; and it was paired with the caissons for the Brooklyn Bridge tower piers to represent the best of American engineering at the Paris Exposition of 1878. Additionally, many European technical journals described the work, and it was one of the inclines featured in an 1881 classic work on inclines by M. Joseph Hirsch. (Skramstad, 555) But the incline’s story doesn’t end here. Despite the praise it garnered, it also provoked controversies over aspects of its design, even causing some engineers to question the efficiency and safety of inclines and lifts in general. Significant technical difficulties had emerged in its operation and at one point it was determined that the automatic friction brakes were ineffective and they were removed for modification. This left only a pawl and ratchet system to control the caisson in the event of a failure of either the cable or winding machinery. (Skramstad, 554, 555)

In the fall of 1876, while adjusting the counterweights, the caisson slammed against the headwall, slightly cracking it. At the time it was felt that the damage was not important enough to report, although note was made of it in March and May of 1877 on two occasions when winding pulley axeles cracked. Then, on May 30, 1877, as the caisson was descending with a fully loaded boat, one of the masonry anchors for a winding pulley gave way, releasing the wire ropes that sheared off axles and allowed the counterweights to run down their tracks and smash into the incline’s lower wall. (Skramstad, 556)

Amazingly, the caisson and the boat it carried were not damaged, but three men were killed: Assistant harbormaster John Mead who was crushed by a counterweight, and two other incline workers who were struck by the lashing cables. From every direction blame was heaped on Hutton and his incline, and the report of the coroner’s jury stated:

We find that the accident…was on account of the insufficient strength of a portion of the iron work and masonry for the purpose intended, which from the evidence adduced was suspected by both the contractors and employees of the canal company for some time. (Skramstad, 557, citing the Washington, D.C. Evening Star’s June 2, 1877 coverage of the jury’s findings.)

Hutton then made a series of improvements, including the replacement of the iron rails with steel rails, a new and improved braking system, and the use of heavier winding pulleys. More significantly, it was decided to operate the caisson dry by draining the water from it once the boat was inside, allowing the boat to settle onto the caisson’s deck. This meant that the weight of the caisson and counterweights could no longer be equalized by adjusting the level of the water in the caisson, which in turn eliminated some of the advantages of the incline system and placed new stresses upon it. (Skramstad, 557)

To counter reluctance to use the incline, Canal Company President Gorman commissioned P. H. Dudley—a renowned railroad engineer and recognized expert on wheel and axle loads—to evaluate the incline. Dudley’s May 1879 report highlighted three major faults in the design and construction: (1) excessive weight on the wheels, axles, and rails supporting the caisson; (2) unequal distribution of weight when the caisson was operated dry, resulting in the axles being bent and rails crushed; and (3) the winding machinery being more complex than necessary. (Skramstad, 557)

Dudley also recommended a significant number of changes, including the addition of more wheels under the caisson. Hutton responded in July, admitting that more wheels might be desirable, but denying their necessity, and arguing against some—but not all—of Dudley’s other recommendations. Hutton also identified “the excessive pressure of the wheels on the rails” as the chief defect of the incline, but he insisted that the dry operation ameliorated the problem. However the decline of the canal company’s financial situation resulted in none of Dudley’s recommendations being implemented. (Skramstad, 558)

In 1880 and 1881, when James B. Eads promoted a large ship railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Central America, he cited the Georgetown incline in defense of his plan. Criticism immediately emerged, and S. L. Phelps, a ship captain, published a pamphlet attacking Eads plan, also citing the Georgetown incline to support some of his own arguments. In particular, Phelps, who had polled C&O Canal boatmen who used the incline, emphasized their fear of it and their belief that excessive strain was put on their boats when the caisson was operated dry. (Skramstad, 559)

Phelps’s pamphlet also quoted a letter Hutton had written to an Eads critic, Daniel Ammen. In that letter Hutton admitted that the friction in the Georgetown incline’s machinery had proved to be “far beyond anything we could have expected.” He also acknowledged that the unequal distribution of weight on the axles was still a problem despite its being alleviated by allowing about 20 inches of water to remain in the caisson. Hutton himself emphasized that the Georgetown incline did not support the argument for a large, interoceanic ship railway. (Skramstad, 559)

In a subsequent, private letter to Ammen, Hutton corrected errors in Phelps’s pamphlet and denied that the boats were damaged by transport in a dry caisson. He pointed out that the boats were flat-bottomed with “hog irons” to prevent the ends from sinking, and he asserted that it was over tightening the hog irons that caused a permanent camber in some boats. He also noted that, in any case, the boats often lay on the bottom of the canal when it was dry (as was the case every winter season).

Perhaps the most telling indicators of Hutton’s own early and late opinion of his incline were his admission in an 1878 letter to Gorman that he was uneasy about it, and his decision to leave it entirely out of an 1893 professional vita. (Skramstad, 560)

-- Karen Gray

Resources:

• Bearss, Edwin C. The Bridges: Historic Structures Report—Part II. National Park Service, January 31, 1968.
• Sanderlin, Walter S. The Great National Project: A History of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1946. (A 2005 reprint by Eastern National is available.)
• Skramstad, Harold. “The Georgetown Canal Incline” Technology and Culture, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Oct. 1969) 549–560.

The source of this article is Along the Towpath, Vol. 40, No. 2, June 2008, published by the C&O Canal Association.

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