The Sailing Canalboat General Butler by Herbert K. Saxe They were born around 1823 on Lake Champlain, out of Yankee ingenuity. They had names like O.J. Walker, P.E. Havens and General Butler, each very alike, but different. They were sailing hybrids-half canal barge, half sailing vessel-and they filled a unique niche in early American maritime history. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, these doughty vessels profitably plied the length of the Champlain waterway. They travelled from Canada to New York under sail on the lake and the Hudson River, and under tow in the canal. Life aboard the canalboat was not always placid, however. On December 9, 1876, in a violent storm on Lake Champlain, the General Butler, a gaff-rigged canal schooner, badly battered by the howling wind, lost steerage and slammed into the breakwater just off Burlington, Vermont, sinking in forty feet of water. The Butter slept undisturbed for more than a century until located by divers in 1980. Today, the Butler is remarkably preserved in the cold water of Lake Champlain-a fascinating textbook for inquiring nautical archaeologists. Since 1982, diving teams under the aegis of the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation and the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum have been conducting intensive underwater archaeological studies of the wreck, finding answers and discovering details about the design and construction of thi s little-known type of vessel. Thi s ongoing archaeological effort is yielding details on 19th century shipbuilding techniques and how people lived and worked during this period of Lake Champlain history. Measurements taken under water establish that the Butler, like others of her genre, was 88 feet long and 14 feet wide. Such a long and narrow shape was typical of canal boat design-hulls could be quite long, but no wider or deeper than the locks they had to pass through. Thi s severely elongated hull was transformed into a schooner with the addition of a centerboard and two gaffrigged masts . The masts were set in tabernacles which allowed them to be easily removed or lowered to the deck for canal navigation. This design made it possible to load cargo at distant and remote northern ports all around Lake Champlain, then
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The canal schooner General Butler, above,featured a centerboard and folding masts. At right, the remains of the Butler as they lie in forty feet of water on the bottom of Lake Champlain. Drawings by Kevin Crisman.
PHOTO COURTESY TOWN OF WH ITEHALL.
At right, the busy harbor of Whitehall, New York , in 1868, with stacked lumber and vessels awaiting passage through the canal.
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SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90