Durham Boats - Built in Pennsylvania - Shipping and Crossing the Delaware - 18th Century America

I once read that Washington could not have crossed the Delaware if not for all the fishermen from New England in the army to man all those boats. Historical prejudice from New England history writers assuming that Pennsylvanian and Jersey farmers turned Soldier did not know one end of a fishing boat from the other.

Just a cursory research into the Waln family that started with land grants from William Penn in the 1680s showed me that the main cash crop of Mid-Atlantic settlers in pre-revolutionary times was lumber. Lumber to build clamming boats and row boats and freight boats and even ocean going vessels to ship that precious cash crop of lumber over to Great Britain. 

That there were formal ship building "yards" along the Delaware River down at Philadelphia all the way up to the Lehigh River and beyond, and informal ship yards along side the banks of those two rivers where farmers in off seasons were building boats of all sorts, sizes and flavors. 

That I dare say from the time of William Penn 1680s until the Revolution in the 1770s, America's wealth besides southern tobacco and New England dried fish was Mid-Atlantic lumber and shipping.

That the hated stamp tax would have in an indirect manner started a data base of stamps put on legal documents and sending that data back to England of just how extremely rich the American colonies were. An asset worth exploiting properly through an American Doomsday Tax Book based on information from stamp duties in America. Wealth worth having and wealth worth keeping and not sharing across an ocean to fund despotic dreams of Global Empire. 

That I dare say from what I have seen and read of these early days of this country, that there was probably more local shipping in freight, fishing and ocean travel, more so than in the whole of the  British Isles at the same time. 

That the American revolution based on its lack of cash and use of barter was a revolution built and traded on potatoes, hay, flour and lumber to name a few of the plentiful commodities out there to be capitalized and exploited. 

The Durham Boat was a standard flat bottomed Delaware River freight boat of 40 to 60 feet long and 8 feet wide which was open in the middle for freights of ore and flour and were flat topped at both ends with a foot wide walking path on both sides for the "oarmen" to use long spikes to push the boats upstream in the shallow parts along the river with a weighted down cargo.  A busy avenue of trade back and forth between the Delaware and Lehigh valleys and all points north and west. 

That these boats were the basic design of the later covered and streamlined canal boats of 19th century America. 

That Washington used these boats for his troops for that famous trip over to Trenton on Christmas Day 1776. The horses and cannon coming over on regular ferry boats. Please have your ferry tokens ready folks.