The first barges from the upper Lehigh River became lumber in
Philadelphia.  The first navigation of the river, which was more of a
flume waterway than a canal, took anthracite down the river in barges
that were designed to be broken apart and sold as lumber.

As for shipping bricks, they are a bit too valuable to be treated as
ballast. There were bricks shipped out as cargo, however. The Dutch
Fort Casimir on the Delaware obtained bricks from Albany (which we
found) to be used as hearths.

There was a series in the Magazine Antiques,  many years ago,
debunking the story of bricks brought from England being used to
build houses in colonial America. I don't have the reference, but it
was back in the sixties.

There are plenty of well-documented ballast banks near the heads of
navigation of rivers and on the boundaries of harbors in America.
Ships from Britain to Virginia, for example, brought lightweight
manufactured goods and returned with pig iron, tobacco, lumber, and
other heavyweight products.  As a result, they came to America "in
ballast" that was dumped in Virginia. At Bermuda Hundred on the
James, a railroad pier was later built over an eighteenth-century
ballast dump. At the head of the Indian River in Delaware is a
similar ballast bank known from earliest times as a ballast point.

The Chesapeake iron industry was founded on the ballast business. The
business plan called for the furnaces to ship their pig iron to the
heads of navigation of the Virginia rivers.  There, after the ships
dumped their ballast, the iron companies would load their pig iron
for cheap freight to England. Using this method, the Bristol and
London iron merchants were able to get a price advantage over the
Swedes, and the Brits were able to get an iron industry in their
colonies, not subject to European wars.

So, in connection with the iron industry, look for large English flint cobbles.


At 2:31 PM -0400 4/25/02, Lyle E. Browning wrote:
>Perhaps not ships, but definitely boats: Bill Trout has demonstrated that
>batteaux descending the Shenandoah River in VA were intentionally dismantled
>and used in the construction of houses in Harper's Ferry on the Potomac River.

--
*****[log in to unmask]****************************
*                                            *
*  Good news is like when they tell you      *
*  that Hollywood is going to make a movie   *
*  about your life.                          *
*                                            *
*  Bad news is when they decide to cast      *
*  Jack Nicholson in the title role.         *
*                                            *
**********************************************