The Untold Story of the ICW

The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway keeps boats safe from the open ocean, provides great cruising, and has played a role in American history for more than 200 years.

Most mariners navigating along the Atlantic Coast spend at least part of their passage in the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (AICW). Some people call it The Ditch, but that moniker doesn’t do it justice: The AICW is a 1,244-mile combination of bays, creeks, sounds, rivers, canals and a little bit of ocean that stretches from Norfolk, Virginia, to Key West, Florida. It provides commercial, military, fishing and recreational traffic with a route safe from Atlantic storms and, in wartime, the enemy’s navy. Navigation is easy if you pay attention, the bottom is mostly soft if you don’t, and there are plenty of boatyards if you need repairs. The AICW is a trip every boater should make at least once. Allow plenty of time for gunkholing.

The AICW is part of the 3,000-mile-long Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), which starts in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and runs to Brownsville, Texas. (Other sections are the short-and-shallow New Jersey ICW and the 1,300-mile Gulf ICW, heavily trafficked by tugs and barges.) There are several offshore passages on the ICW, both in New England and along the coast of Florida; any of them can be boisterous under the right (or wrong) conditions. The Delaware and Chesapeake Bays are also part of the ICW, and they can get nasty, too—so don’t confuse “intracoastal” with “inland” or “calm,” at least not for the ICW’s entire length. But from AICW Mile Marker Zero in Norfolk, where most folks consider the AICW starts, it’s usually a tranquil passage to the sunny South. You won’t need the ocean again until you reach the Florida Keys.

Today’s AICW was first envisioned by Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury for Presidents Jefferson and Madison. In 1808, Gallatin proposed the idea of an inland waterway from Boston to Georgia’s southern border (Florida was still Spanish then), linking the many natural bodies of water along the route with man-made canals. Water was the most efficient, fastest way of moving goods, and the eastern states were blessed with lots of protected waterways along the entire Atlantic seaboard. It was simply a matter of connecting the dots with canals—not so easy, since this was before steam-powered dredges and diggers, but doable with enough men, shovels, time and money.

Four Canals

Gallatin suggested building four major canals: One through Cape Cod so vessels could sail from Boston to Buzzards Bay without going around Provincetown, one linking New York City with Philadelphia via the Delaware and Raritan Rivers, one connecting Delaware and Chesapeake Bays at their headwaters, and one connecting Norfolk, at the southern end of the Chesapeake, with Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. A few smaller canals would be needed farther south, and the route would require dredging to provide sufficient water depth. Gallatin wanted the federal government to pay for this project because of its national importance, estimating it would cost $20 million and take 10 years to complete.

Naturally, nothing happened—not until the British blockaded American ports and captured American ships during the War of 1812. The Royal Navy made it too risky to ship goods by sea; the only option, and an inefficient one, was by roads and inland waters—Gallatin’s intracoastal waterway. There were shortages of goods, including food and consequently skyrocketing prices. Citizens, deprived of rice and flour, were understandably upset. The need for an alternate means of transport was now apparent, so in 1815, after the war ended, President Madison re-introduced Gallatin’s proposal (probably taking credit for it himself; politicians don’t change much), including the provision for funding the project with federal funds. Again, the project stalled, the states unable to agree that it would be a proper use of tax dollars. However, one of Gallatin’s canals had already been built, by a private concern, and it proved the value of building and maintaining a system of inland waterways.

In 1819, John C. Calhoun, formerly a Congressman from South Carolina but now Secretary of War, and always a proponent of Gallatin’s waterway, charged the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with creating a national system of defense—Calhoun expected another war with Britain—that included efficient land and water communications. (Today, the Corps of Engineers is responsible for maintaining the Intracoastal Waterway.) In 1824 Congress passed the General Survey Act, giving the President the authority to carry out surveys preparatory to building canals and roads for national defense, including Gallatin’s canals; the Corps of Engineers performed these surveys.

Eventually, all of Gallatin’s canals were built by private concerns; three of the four are still in operation, now owned and administered by the federal government. But not until passage of The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1909 was there an official government policy for completing the ICW as we know it today—a century after Gallatin first proposed it. The AICW was finished in 1940; the final sections of the Gulf ICW weren’t completed until 1949. By then, some of the AICW had been in operation for more than a century.

Capt. Grandy and the Swamp

The 22.5-mile-long Dismal Swamp Canal is the oldest canal on the AICW, and the oldest continuously operating canal in the United States. Running along the eastern edge of the Great Dismal Swamp, on the Virginia-North Carolina border, the canal was first suggested in 1730, to tie Chesapeake Bay with Albemarle Sound via the Elizabeth and Pasquotank Rivers. Digging started in 1793—this being the South before the Civil War, the workers were slaves—and the canal opened in 1805. In places it was less than two feet deep, but could handle small barges. In 1814, the owners of the canal opened a feeder ditch from Lake Drummond, in the middle of the swamp, increasing the depth somewhat.

History books say the lack of depth made the Dismal Swamp Canal less than useful for commerce, but Capt. Moses Grandy disagreed. Grandy was a slave, but had a pass that allowed him to work for himself, and pay his “master” some of his earnings. His book, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of America, published in London in 1843, mentions the value of the Dismal Swamp Canal during the War of 1812. “At that time the English blockaded the Chesapeake,” wrote Grandy, “which made it necessary to send merchandize [sic] from Norfolk to Elizabeth City by the Grand [Dismal Swamp] Canal, so that it might get to sea by Pamlico Sound and Ocracock [sic] Inlet. I took some canal boats on shares … I gave [the owner of the boats] one-half of all I received on freight; out of the other half, I had to victual and man the boats, and all over that expense was my profit.” With the money he earned on the canal, Grandy was eventually able to purchase his freedom.

By 1828, the Dismal Swamp Canal had been deepened and widened enough for larger boats. Another redesign and renovation of the canal in the mid-1890s increased the depth and removed most of the locks, leaving today’s configuration of one at each end. (Originally, there were seven locks on the canal; two were removed in 1828.) However, the canal was superseded by the deeper and wider Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal, opened in 1860. It was dug by steam-driven machines, not slaves with shovels, which cut easily through roots and other obstructions. The Albemarle and Chesapeake is still the primary route between Norfolk and points south, the Dismal Swamp Canal now almost exclusively used by pleasure craft.

Maintaining the Waterway

It’s one thing to build a waterway, and another to maintain it. According to Brad Pickel, Executive Director of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway Association (AIWA), an organization that advocates for the AICW and educates lawmakers, politicians and the public on its importance, the annual cost of operating and maintaining the waterway is about $61.5 million. That’s assuming the waterway is already at its authorized dimensions, including a controlling 12-foot depth for most of its length—which anyone who’s transited the AICW recently can tell you isn’t the case: In many places, it’s much shallower. In fiscal year 2023, federal appropriations for the waterway total just $52.8 million—better than in FY22, but still not enough.

Unlike most things in Washington, D.C., the AICW has bipartisan support, with yearly appropriations tending to increase—although so far there’s not enough cash on hand even to maintain the waterway, much less bring it back to spec. But, said Pickel, the situation is improving: While the cost of catching up with dredging and other delayed maintenance is still around $65.5 million that amount is $60 million less than it was in 2016. “Both parties see the value of the AICW,” said Pickel.

The government doesn’t spend this kind of money so we can go boating; it’s all about commerce, jobs and tax dollars. (In Florida alone, the AICW generates an estimated $4.4 billion in tax revenues, according to AIWA.) The AICW is U.S. Department of Transportation-designated Marine Highway 95, and since the DOT predicts freight movement to increase by 45 percent by 2040, the AICW requires enough funding to manage its portion of this increased freight. According to a report issued by AIWA, commercial vessels on the AICW carry fuel oil, including jet fuel for military bases, asphalt, fertilizers, sand and gravel, soybeans, various kinds of product, electrical machinery—the list goes on. Shipping by water produces less of a carbon footprint than by truck or train and has almost 400 percent more hauling capability on a fuel-usage basis. In carrying capacity, one barge can replace more than 60 trucks. If it doesn’t have to be there tomorrow, water is the smart way to ship.

The Swamp and the Poet

The Dismal Swamp Canal gave us one of America’s best-loved poets, sort of: In November, 1894, not-yet-published Robert Frost, his heart broken by the love of his life, decided the Great Dismal Swamp would be a good place to commit a dramatic suicide. Frost boarded a steamer in New York and traveled to Norfolk, determined to disappear into the Great Dismal Swamp and die for love, a victim of drowning, poisonous snakes and/or whatever else lives in the swamp that can kill you. At least, that’s what he told his biographer, many decades later.

While a morose Frost was walking along the canal en route to his demise, the crew of a passing steamboat convinced him to join them—they were going duck hunting. Apparently Frost decided a tragic lover’s death wasn’t really for him, jumped aboard, enjoyed a few days in Elizabeth City and the Outer Banks, then made his way back home to Massachusetts. In 1956 Frost published a poem, “Kitty Hawk,” that included lines about a hunting trip he took with “some kind of committee/from Elizabeth City.” In December, 1895, Frost married Elinor White, the girl who dumped him the year before. They were married until her death in 1938. Frost died in 1963.

The Delaware and Raritan Canal

At one time, vessels could travel from New York City to Philadelphia and then into Delaware Bay via the Delaware and Raritan Canal, suggested by Albert Gallatin in 1808 and opened in 1834. Vessels entered the Raritan River at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, near the southwestern tip of Staten Island, picked up the canal a few miles inland at New Brunswick and followed it 44 miles to the Delaware River at Bordentown. A 22-mile-long feeder canal supplied the main canal with water to maintain its seven-foot depth. The Delaware River empties into Delaware Bay not far from the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal (completed in 1829), so the D&R Canal made for a much shorter trip from New York to Baltimore and the Chesapeake vs. today’s route south along the New Jersey coast and then back north on Delaware Bay. Unfortunately, the Delaware and Raritan Canal closed in 1933; today, the site of the canal is a New Jersey State Park. That’s too bad: It would be the preferred route for most pleasure craft, avoiding the sometimes-tedious Delaware Bay and the offshore passage from Cape May to New York.

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This article originally appeared in the December 2023 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/voyaging/the-untold-story-of-the-icw