Old Bridges and Ferries, Part 1

C&D Canal’s Old Bridges and Ferries, Part 1

North view of the bridge destruction, with the old Schaefer’s store at left. July 28, 1942.

Ever since people started living along the C&D Canal, which was completed in 1829, they've needed a way to cross it to see family and friends or to conduct business. Until 1926 they had to cross two bridges, High Bridge and Long Bridge. If, for example, they lived on the North Side and wanted to go to the South Side’s Franklin Hall, they would have crossed High Bridge, which spanned the canal from Hemphill Street to just west of the Corps of Engineers’ pump house. High Bridge was a wooden, swing bridge, operated by a small electric motor.

People then would have walked west on the Causeway (one of the main streets before 1926) and cross Long Bridge, which spanned Back Creek and connected to the area that is now Pell Gardens. Long Bridge was steel, with a center-pivot span that the tender turned manually with a long, metal crank. Town boys used to swim under and around High Bridge, and sometimes they would help the operator, Rube Hevelow, rotate the heavy crank when barges were ready to go through. But, other times I’m told, when Rube made the boys mad for some reason, they would swim under the bridge and lodge a rock in the gears so that Rube couldn’t turn the crank at all.

My grandmother, Geneva Hazel, who was born in 1879, told me that she used to cross the bridges to see her sister who lived on the North Side. She said that when she was in a hurry she would take a short cut across the lock gate, which was dangerous and, indeed, illegal. The lock was used until 1926, when the canal became sea-level.

In 1926 the Lift Bridge became operational. It crossed from Lock Street on the North Side to George Street on the South. I have a vague memory of this road-level bridge. I recall sitting with my father in his ’41 Ford as we waited for the span to lower after a ship had gone through. Stories abound about how kids of the town would ride up and down on it just for fun and, indeed, I know one man who used to jump into the canal from it as it was ascending.

But then, after July 28, 1942, nobody ever jumped off it again—because at 11:38 a.m. the tanker, Franz Klassen, smashed into it, causing its steel towers and center span to collapse into the canal and onto the ship’s deck. I heard the crash, and that evening my father drove me in to the Bayard House to see the destruction: the crippled tanker, low in the water, sporting a necklace of black steel.

The accident was a major event for our town; people from many miles around came for the spectacle. One grocery store worker told me that he couldn’t sleep the night after the crash because his wrist ached from dipping so much ice cream for all the visitors.

After the bridge came down we had a succession of five vessels to ferry people back and forth. For a few days a Corps of Engineers’ tugboat transported important town officials across. The tug was similar to the one pictured below. For about a month a small yacht provided the service until the Victory, a larger launch piloted by Capt. Charles Cooling, made the run between Schaefer’s Wharf and City Dock on the South Side. Children rode the Victory to school from September of 1942, until March of 1943, at which time a large, car ferry, the Gotham, was acquired from the New York City area.

This ferry ran all day and most of the night for the next 6 ½ years, and many stories have been told about the famous Gotham. One of these, told to me by an eye witness, concerns Butch, the town bully. Butch was big and famous for beating up people, especially after he had downed a few brews at the Hole-in-the-Wall tavern. Well, one evening while riding the ferry, he made obnoxious remarks to a sailor and the sailor’s girl friend. The sailor, a small man named Red, endured the insults for a while, but then began beating up Butch so badly—blood flowed freely I’m told—that Butch broke away and jumped off the ferry into the canal. All this occurred while the ferry was underway. And, from then on, according to legend, Butch gave up drinking and fighting for good.