Barge

The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but on inland waterways, most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels.

Bark "small ship" is attested from 1420, from Old French barque, from Vulgar Latin barca (400 AD).

[3] By extension, the term "embark" literally means to board the kind of boat called a "barque".

For traffic on the River Severn, the barge was described thus: "The lesser sort are called barges and frigates, being from forty to sixty feet in length, having a single mast and square sail, and carrying from twenty to forty tons burthen."

[5] On the River Irwell, there was reference to barges passing below Barton Aqueduct with their mast and sails standing.

[9] Within a few decades, the term dumb barge evolved and came to mean: 'a vessel propelled by oars only'.

During the Industrial Revolution, a substantial network of canals was developed in Great Britain from 1750 onward.

These smaller canals had locks, bridges and tunnels that were at minimum only 7 feet (2.1 m) wide at the waterline.

From about 1840 to 1870 the towed iron barge was quickly introduced on the Rhine, Danube, Don, Dniester, and rivers in Egypt, India and Australia.

[20] In Europe, a Dumb barge is: An inland waterway transport freight vessel designed to be towed which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion.

[citation needed] Barges are used today for transporting low-value bulk items, as the cost of hauling goods that way is very low and for larger project cargo, such as offshore wind turbine blades.

As an example, on June 26, 2006, in the US a 565-short-ton (513 t) 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 after delivery, but shipping an assembled unit reduces costs and avoids reliance on construction labor at the delivery site, which in the case of the reactor was still recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

[23] According to the study, transporting cargo by barge produces 43% less greenhouse gas emissions than rail and more than 800% less than trucks.

Environmentalists claim that in areas where barges, tugboats and towboats idle may produce more emissions like in the locks and dams of the Mississippi River.