On Tuesday, July 15, 2003, at 05:43 AM, Randy Cabell wrote:

> This is terrible!  I assume that they are more or less the same design
> as
> were on the James River Kanawha Canal, and would be extremely valuable
> at
> some canal museum in Richmond.
They appear not to be the same. Different designs on different rivers.
That's what makes it such an interesting field. It's not one of those,
you've seen one, you've seen them all issues.
>   Is their one?
Not yet, but if Bill Trout lives long enough, it may happen. There's
talk about having a sort of museum on the James River downtown walk,
but that's a few years off.

> I do recall that a section of
> the canal goes by the Tredegar Iron Works, so maybe that would be the
> place
> for them.
>
> How about a grass-roots program to save at least one?
We were told that the two at Maymont in 1998 couldn't be saved either.
We removed one and the other was too motheaten to do anything sensible
with, unfortunately. It's all in the will of the individuals doing the
work. They're not that expensive to either remove or preserve.

> There is an annual
> bataux festival from Lynchburg to Richmond, so maybe somebody in that
> group
> would like to 'trade up' to canal boat, at least as a stop along the
> way for
> food and drink.
Can't be done. The batteaux are basically giant canoes whereas the
canal boats are designed for slack water systems. The difference is
that the freight boats or packet boats can't navigate rapids whereas
the batteaux can do so.

Lyle

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