Ark (river boat)

Because they could be built using relatively crude hand tools, arks were built in American colonial and early republic times, primarily to carry cargo downriver on the spring freshets, and especially to carry milled lumber, charcoal and other forest products and bulk agricultural produce to a city or a port downriver.

Since by 1800, most eastern towns and cities were short on heating fuels,[1] even badly processed timber or planks could readily be sold at the destinations.

[2] But it was in the role of delivering coal as a fuel to alleviate the long-standing first energy crisis[1] in the eastern United States that the arks saw their most frequent transport uses because of the 1816 invention of Josiah White's Bear Trap Lock system.

By the time the long-delayed[a] opening of the Delaware Canal reached partial operation in 1831 and it could switch to another form of river boat, the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was annually deforesting vast timber stands reaching by then more than 16 miles (26 km) upriver through the steep-banked waters of the Lehigh River Gorge to ship enough coal to meet demand in Philadelphia.

As the men became more expert in their work and as the channel was straightened and improved, the number of sections was increased till, finally, their whole length reached one hundred and eighty feet.

During that year more than forty thousand tons of coal passed down the river, which required the building of so many boats that, had they all been joined in one length, they would have extended over a distance of more than thirteen miles.

Other river craft, usually the bateau, worked alongside the arks, ferrying the workers while the horses and bunks and supplies floated down the larger, stable structures.

Photographs of these massive vessels were posted along the Greenbrier River Trail at the town of Caldwell, West Virginia.

The author based the plot along the world of the river logging era at the turn of the century within the area of the yet-to-be-created Monongahela National Forest.

At each end, a six-foot length of space was left open, and along each side the walls were set in a scant two feet, leaving a narrow pathway alongside the building.

Seeing Duncan look closely at the posts, Warwick explained, "That's apple wood—the only wood we can find that won't grow rough from the chafing of a rope."

In it, a scaled-down mock-up version of a river ark is part of the set and is a backdrop for the historical accuracy of the project.