The horse-powered ferryboat, though patented in 1819, can trace its origin of design back to the time of the Romans. The Roman ox boat was an early war vessel propelled by a team of oxen. During the 1700’s, boats propelled by horses could be found on various rivers and canals of Europe. It was a natural course of events that those people immigrating to America from Europe would bring their knowledge of horse powered boats to our lakes and rivers. By the early 1800’s, horse powered boats could be found on Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. By the 1820’s, this mode of transportation had spread to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the Great Lakes, and to several other rivers and lakes in the Northeast. This type of vessel was generally utilized for journeys of only a few miles.
The horse powered boat was discovered by Jim Kennard and Scott Hill in the Fall of 1983. The vessel is basic in its design and construction and has a length of 63 feet and a beam of 18 feet. In 1819, a passenger wrote a description of his observations while travelling on a similar horse powered ferryboat between Albany and Troy on the Hudson River
"The ferry boat is of a most singular construction. A platform covers a wide flat boat. Underneath the platform, there is a large horizontal solid wheel, which extends to the sides of the boat; and there the platform or deck, is cut through and removed, so as to afford sufficient room, for two horses to stand on the flat surface of the wheel, one horse on each side, and parallel to the gunwale of the boat. The horses are harnessed, in the usual manner for teams - – whiffle trees being attached to stout iron bars, fixed horizontally at a proper height, into posts, which are a part of the fixed portion of the boat. The horses look in opposite directions, one to the bow, and the other to the stern; their feet take hold of channels or grooves, cut in the wheels, in the direction of radii; they press forward and although they advance not, any more than a squirrel, in a revolving cage, their feet cause the horizontal wheel to revolve, in a direction opposite to that of their own apparent motion; this by a connection of cogs, moves tow vertical wheels, one on each wing of the boat, and these being constructed like paddle wheels of steam-boats, produce the same effect, and propel the boat forward. The horses are covered by a roof, furnished with curtains, to protect them in bad weather; and do not appear to labor harder than common draft horses, with a heavy load."
During the mid 1800’s, the animal treadmill design became the preferred method of propulsion in horse powered ferryboats. Horses were yoked together on each side of the deck. Their power was transmitted directly to the paddle wheels via the treadmills. It appears that the treadmill design persisted up to the end of the horse-powered ferryboats around 1900.
In 1841, the "superior horse boat EAGLE", was running three trips a day between Basin Harbor, Vermont and Westport, New York, a short crossing of about 3 miles. It is believed that this boat utilized the horizontal flywheel design. This may be the horse powered ferryboat that we discovered. The EAGLE may have broken its mooring lines during the winter and could have been carried along with the ice drifting northward up the lake, eventually sinking in Burlington Bay.
The story of this horse powered ferry boat with many underwater pictures appeared in the October 1989 issue of National Geographic Magazine.
Location: N44° 29.12, W73° 14.58 Bouyed wreck site
Just north of the Burlington - Plattsburgh Ferry route and about 2/3's NW from north end of Burlington breakwater on a route to Lone Rock Point.