Barge

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For other uses, see Barge (disambiguation).
"Bargee" redirects here. For the type of food, see bhajji.
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Barges towed by a tugboat on the River Thames in London, England, United Kingdom
A barge is a flat-bottomed boat, built mainly for river and canal transport of heavy goods.
Some barges are not self-propelled and need to be towed or pushed by towboats. Canal
barges, towed by draft animals on an adjacent towpath, contended with the railway in the
early industrial revolution, but were outcompeted in the carriage of high-value items due to
the higher speed, falling costs, and route flexibility of rail.

Contents

1 Etymology
2 Types
3 Modern use
4 Towed or otherwise unpowered barges in the United States
5 Image gallery
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

Etymology

A barge carrying recycling material on Dele channel in Lambersart, France

Barge is attested from 1300, from Old French barge, from Vulgar Latin barga. The word
originally could refer to any small boat; the modern meaning arose around 1480. Bark "small
ship" is attested from 1420, from Old French barque, from Vulgar Latin barca (400 AD).
The more precise meaning "three-masted ship" arose in the 17th century, and often takes the
French spelling for disambiguation. Both are probably derived from the Latin barica, from
Greek baris "Egyptian boat", from Coptic bari "small boat", hieroglyphic Egyptian

and similar ba-y-r for "basket-shaped boat".[1] By extension, the term "embark" literally
means to board the kind of boat called a "barque".
The long pole used to maneuver or propel a barge has given rise to the saying "I wouldn't
touch that [subject/thing] with a barge pole."[2]

Types

Accommodation barge
Admiral's barge
Autonomous spaceport
drone ship
Barracks barge (Houseboat)
Canal motorship
Car float
Crane barge
Dutch barge
Dry bulk cargo barge
Hopper barge
Hotel barge

Jackup barge
Lighter and Dumb steel
lighter
Liquid cargo barge
Log barge
Norfolk wherry
Oil barge and Dumb
steel oil barge
Paddle barge
Pleasure barge
Power barge
Horse-drawn barge

Row barge
Royal barge
Sand barge
Severn trow
Spitz barge
Thames sailing
barge
Tom Pudding
Vehicular barge

On the Great British canal system, the term 'barge' is used to describe a boat wider than a
narrowboat, and the people who move barges are often known as lightermen. In the United
States, deckhands perform the labor and are supervised by a leadman or the mate. The captain
and pilot steer the towboat, which pushes one or more barges held together with rigging,
collectively called 'the tow'. The crew live aboard the towboat as it travels along the inland
river system or the intracoastal waterways. These towboats travel between ports and are also
called line-haul boats.
Poles are used on barges to fend off the barge as it nears other vessels or a wharf. These are
often called 'pike poles'. On shallow canals in the United Kingdom, long punt poles are used
to manoeuvre or propel the barge.

Modern use

A towboat pushing a barge on the Chicago River

Barges are used today for low-value bulk items, as the cost of hauling goods by barge is very
low. Barges are also used for very heavy or bulky items; a typical barge measures 195 by 35
feet (59.4 m 10.6 m), and can carry up to about 1500 tons of cargo.
As an example, on June 26, 2006, a 565-ton catalytic cracking unit reactor was shipped by
barge from the Tulsa Port of Catoosa in Oklahoma to a refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
Extremely large objects are normally shipped in sections and assembled onsite, but shipping
an assembled unit reduced costs and avoided reliance on construction labor at the delivery
site (which in this case was still recovering from Hurricane Katrina). Of the reactor's 700mile (1,100 km) journey, only about 40 miles were traveled overland, from the final port to
the refinery.
Self-propelled barges may be used as such when traveling downstream or upstream in placid
waters; they are operated as an unpowered barge, with the assistance of a tugboat, when
traveling upstream in faster waters. Canal barges are usually made for the particular canal in
which they will operate.
Many barges, primarily Dutch Barges, which were originally designed for carrying cargo
along the canals of Europe, are no longer large enough to compete in this industry with larger
newer vessels. Many of these barges have been renovated and are now used as luxury Hotel
Barges carrying holiday makers along the same canals on which they once carried grain or
coal.

Towed or otherwise unpowered barges in the United

States

Multiple barges pushed around a tight bend on the Cumberland River.

In primitive regions today and in all pre-development (lacking highways or railways) regions
worldwide in times before industrial development and highways, barges were the

predominant and most efficient means of inland transportation in many regions. This holds
true today, for many areas of the world.
In such pre-industrialized, or poorly developed infrastructure regions, many barges are
purpose-designed to be powered on waterways by long slender poles thereby becoming
known on American waterways as poleboats as the extensive west of North America was
settled using the vast tributary river systems of the Mississippi drainage basin. Poleboats use
muscle power of "walkers" along the sides of the craft pushing a pole against the streambed,
canal, or lake bottom to move the vessel where desired. In settling the American west it was
generally faster to navigate downriver from Brownsville, Pennsylvania, to the Ohio River
confluence with the Mississippi and then pole upriver against the current to St. Louis than to
travel overland on the rare primitive dirt roads for many decades after the American
revolution.
Once the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads reached Chicago, that time dynamic
changed, and American poleboats became less common, relegated to smaller rivers and more
remote streams. On the Mississippi riverine system today, including that of other sheltered
waterways, industrial barge trafficking in bulk raw materials such as coal, coke, timber, iron
ore and other minerals is extremely common; in the developed world using huge cargo
barges that connect in groups and trains-of-barges in ways that allow cargo volumes and
weights considerably greater than those used by pioneers of modern barge systems and
methods in the Victorian era.

The towboat, Herbert P. Brake, of New York, pushes a new barge east on the Erie Canal in
Fairport, New York, United States
Such barges need to be towed by tugboats or pushed by towboats. Canal barges, towed by
draft animals on a waterway adjacent towpath were of fundamental importance in the early
industrial revolution, whose major early engineering projects were efforts to build viaducts,
aqueducts and especially canals to fuel and feed raw materials to nascent factories in the early
industrial takeoff and take their goods to ports and cities for distribution.
The barge and canal system contended favorably with the railways in the early industrial
revolution before around the 1850s1860s for example, the Erie Canal in New York State
is credited by economic historians with giving the growth boost needed for New York City to
eclipse Philadelphia as America's largest port and city but such canal systems with their
locks, need for maintenance and dredging, pumps and sanitary issues were eventually
outcompeted in the carriage of high-value items by the railways due to the higher speed,
falling costs, and route flexibility of rail transport. Barge and canal systems were nonetheless
of great, perhaps even primary, economic importance until after World War I in Europe,
particularly in the more developed nations of the Low Countries, France, Germany, Poland,
and especially Great Britain which more or less made the system characteristically its own.

Image gallery

Car barge on the Danube River

French barges near Toulouse, France

Self-propelled barge Andromeda in canal at Hanover, Germany

Self-propelled barge carrying bulk crushed stone

Self-propelled barge in the port of IJmuiden, Netherlands

Barge carrying the Space Shuttle external tank for STS-119 under tow to Port
Canaveral, Florida, United States

Horse drawing a barge on the Kennet and Avon Canal.

Self-propelled barges on the Grand Canal of China near Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China

Coal barges passing Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on the Ohio River.

Royal Barge Suphannahong docked at Wat Arun pier, one of the Thai royal barges
featured in the royal barge ceremony

The towboat, Donna York, pushing barges of coal up the Ohio river at Louisville,
Kentucky, United States

19th Century Barge Haulers on the Volga, by Ilya Repin

Tongkang or car barge, landed on Ketapang Port, Banyuwangi, Indonesia

See also

Barges in TUGS
Burlak
Chain boat
Canal boat Ross Barlow
Car float
Hughes Mining Barge

Nautical portal

American Waterways Operators

Mobro 4000
Towboat
Tub boat

References
1. An Egyptian hieroglyphic dictionary: with an index of English words by Sir Ernest
Alfred Wallis Budge from Google Books
2. Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill (1885). H. W. Lucy, ed. Speeches of Lord
Randolph Churchill. ...never was land so easily and cheaply in the grasp of the
capitalist as it is now, if he chose to put out his hand, and yet there is not a capitalist in
his senses who would touch it with a barge pole.

External links
Look up barge or bargee in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Barges.

Barge Lehigh Valley 79 at the Waterfront Museum, Brooklyn, New York, United
States
Britain's Official guide to canals, rivers and lakes
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Barge". Encyclopdia Britannica (11th ed.).
Cambridge University Press.
Crane Barge 89 Ton Design 264B
DBA The Barge Association
The American Waterways Operators
[hide]

t
e

Modern merchant ships

Dry
cargo

Tankers

Passenger

Support

Other

Barge
Bulk carrier
Car float
Chain boat
Coaster
Collier
Container ship
Heavy-lift ship
Hopper barge
Lake freighter
Lighter aboard ship
Livestock carrier
Reefer ship
RORO ship
Submarine Cargo Vessel
Train ferry

Chemical tanker
FPSO unit
Gas carrier
LNG carrier
Oil tanker

Cable ferry
Cargo liner
Cruise ship
Cruiseferry
Ferry
Narrowboat
Ocean liner
RORO ship
Train ferry

Dive support
Fireboat
Supply ship
Tender
Towboat or Tugboat

Cable layer
Crane vessel
Dredger

Drillship
Fishing vessel
Icebreaker
Merchant submarine
Narco-submarine
Pipe-laying ship
Research vessel
Riverboat
Semi-submersible
Snagboat

Categories:

Barges
Shipping

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