Navigation - Past and Present

The Ancient Egyptians used ships and barges on the Nile River to travel and to carry cargo from one end of their empire to the other. "Cargo" means the things being carried by the ship. When people travel or move cargo by water, they are using water transportation. The Egyptians may have used water transportation on the Nile River to move some of the enormous stones they used to build the Great Pyramids.

Another ancient people, the Phoenicians, were famous sailors. They were known for trading, or buying and selling things, among the countries of their ancient world. The Phoenicians are also known because they were the first people to use an alphabet, instead of pictures to write.

The Vikings were a group of famous shipbuilders and sailors from Northern Europe. They were explorers, traders, and conquerors. They settled in many of the lands that they conquered. It is believed that they were the first Europeans to travel to North America.

At first, early sailors could only go where the rivers and ocean were naturally deep enough. But, water transportation became so important to people that they started to dig waterways of their own. A waterway is like a highway for boats. Rivers are natural waterways; a canal is a man-made waterway. The Egyptians, the Romans, and the ancient Chinese all built canals to connect the sea to their cities and to connect the cities to the countryside.

Early History of Water Transportation in the United States
Native Americans used the natural waterways, like rivers, lakes, and oceans for travel and trade. Native Americans used canoes, kayaks, and rafts for water transportation. Later, the settlers used rivers to explore, settle, and trade in North America.

Many rivers were important to the early settlers, but one of the most important and most famous is the Mississippi River. On it, people, their animals, and cargo could travel from the upper Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico. The long river was shallow in many places, so the boats and rafts that traveled on the Mississippi had to be shallow draft. Mark Twain wrote about the great Mississippi River in the many adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

The early settlers also built many canals, mostly in the northeastern states. One of the most famous canals built was the Erie Canal. Upon completion in 1825, it was 363 miles long, and went from Albany, New York to Buffalo, New York. With the opening of the Erie Canal, there was a domestic route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. It became an important route for westward migration of settlers and supplies, and brought the fruits of the Midwest farms and range lands to the Atlantic ports. On the Erie Canal, people, food, and supplies could travel back and forth between the Northeast United States and the Great Plains.

Horses that walked beside the canal on a road, called the tow path, pulled along flat-bottomed boats and barges, called packets. For a long time, the Erie Canal was a very busy waterway. But it and many of the old canals were not used as much after railroads were built across the country. Most of the old canals in this country are no longer used. Many of them have been cleaned up and saved by people interested in the canal history of the United States.

Modern Water Transportation in the United States
Today, people in the United States can use barges, ships, trucks, trains, or airplanes for travel or moving cargo. Many of our country's natural waterways have been deepened for the big barges and ships used today. We use the rivers to move supplies and products between cities on the interior of our country to the port cities on the coasts. The rivers and canals in the interior of our country are called inland waterways. The waterways along the seacoasts are called coastal waterways.

Although the old canals built long ago are no longer used, there are a few modern canals that are still very important to water transportation in the United States. One is called the Panama Canal. It cuts through a narrow piece of land between North and South America, called the Isthmus of Panama. It is a shortcut for ships going from one side of our country to the other. It is a coastal waterway.

Another modern canal is the Tenn-Tom Waterway in northeastern Mississippi. It connects the Tennessee River to the Tombigbee River and is a shortcut for boats and barges that use those two rivers. The Tenn-Tom is an inland waterway.

The inland waterways navigation channels have been called our nation's underwater highways. Ships, boats, and barges travel on the inland waterways, carrying products to and from the world's marketplaces. The complex network of connections between coastal ports, inland ports, rail, air, and truck routes is responsible for the United States' great economic wealth.

Instead of road maps, navigators use nautical charts. Navigation channels are marked and described, along with other information necessary for safe passage through the waterway. Channel boundaries are marked with buoys, lights, and other navigation aids. The location and description of buoys and other channel markers, the location of rocks and underwater hazards, the location of port docks and even the location and height of bridges can be found on nautical charts. People depend on the information on the charts for the safety of their vessels and cargo.

Today's large ports are very busy places, with cargo being loaded and unloaded on its way all around the world. The inland waterways lead to ports, and so do railroads and highways. Trains and trucks are also used to carry freight to and from the ships. Then, ships travel around the world, taking products made in our country to other places and bringing products from other countries to us.

The buying and selling between countries is called international trade. When we sell and send goods made in this country to another country, it is called exporting. Some of the things our country exports are farm products, like wheat and corn, lumber from our forests, and computer chips. When we buy things made in another country and bring them to the United States, it is called importing. Some of the things our country imports are oil, cars, and televisions. Ships carry most of the cargo imported to and exported from our country.

Ports handle a variety of cargo types, including bulk or loose cargo; breakbulk cargo in packages such as bundles, crates, barrels, or pallets; liquid bulk cargo like petroleum; dry bulk cargo such as grain; and general cargo in large steel boxes called containers.

Building and Maintaining Waterways Today
Building and maintaining our country's system of waterways is a major job. There are 11,000 miles of navigation channels in the United States. Access channels serve over 260 coastal and inland ports. There are nearly 500 grain loading docks along the river channels. On the rivers, there are 275 navigation locks. Keeping it all in good repair is an important task.

It is the responsibility of the Corps of Engineers and the local Port Authorities to design, build, and take care of the nation's waterways. The Corps typically takes the lead in the study and design of channel improvements, building and maintaining the channels, and building and maintaining locks and dams. The Port Authorities must make sure that all the buildings and equipment on shore can handle the products moving through.