BERKSHIRE NO. 7

Berkshire No. 7 is of historical significance because its design is directly derived from that of 19th-century canal boats. It was built comparatively recently, in 1935, and apparently was never used on a canal, although such use may have been considered a possibility when it was built. Nevertheless, the Berkshire No. 7 has all the characteristics of a typical canal boat: the bluntly rounded bow, the raised strakes to limit collision damage, the single long coaming, the low cabin in the stern, and the simple rectangular hull shape. Because there are so few surviving examples of actual wooden-hulled canal boats (one authority cites only two), Berkshire No. 7 has a historical value that outweighs its being less than 50 years old: it is an example of a form that has virtually disappeared.

Indeed, its external appearance is nearly identical to that of the nearby sunken Priscilla Dailey which was built in 1929 on the Champlain Division of the New York Barge Canal. Moreover, the Berkshire No. 7 differs only slightly from the 1 905 Elmer S. Dailey, an Erie Canal boat also sunk at this location: it is wider and deeper than the older vessel and lacks the raised strakes along its full length but overall the two are remarkably similar. Only the Berkshire No. 7's steel skeleton suggests that there is a transitional design, one leading from the small wooden canal boats of the 19th century to the large all-steel catamaran-hulled barges commonly in use today both on the canals and along the coast.

Berkshire No. 7 was one of a number of barges and former canal boats used by Stewart J. Dailey to transport bulk material among New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut harbors. Dailey had worked as a mule driver on the Erie Canal and later became a partner in a Tonawanda boatbuilding firm. When he began his own business working out of New York Harbor, he brought down a number of canal boats. (The first Berkshire was a Champlain Canal boat built to fit the pre-1905 locks.) Said to have been conservative regarding his fleet, Dailey selected a traditional design when building a new barge. Indeed, the distinction between canalling and coastal work was never very definite: during the winter months when the canals were impassable, boatmen would return to New York where they would try to get work moving material in the harbor and between nearby ports. Dailey himself was one Erie boatman who spent his winters in this way.