Etymology Barge is attested from 1300, from
Old French barge, from
Vulgar Latin barga. The word originally could refer to any small boat; the modern meaning arose around 1480.
Bark "small ship" is attested from 1420, from Old French
barque, from Vulgar Latin
barca (400 AD). A more precise meaning (see
Barque) arose in the 17th century and often takes the French spelling for disambiguation. Both are probably derived from the
Latin barica, from
Greek baris "Egyptian boat", from
Coptic bari "small boat",
hieroglyphic Egyptian D58-G29-M17-M17-D21-P1 and similar
ba-y-r for "basket-shaped boat". By extension, the term "embark" literally means to board the kind of boat called a "barque".
British river barges 18th century In
Great Britain, a merchant barge was originally a flat bottomed merchant vessel for use on navigable rivers. Most of these barges had sails. 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." The larger vessels were called trows. On the
River Irwell, there was reference to barges passing below Barton Aqueduct with their mast and sails standing. Early barges on the
Thames were called west country barges.
19th century In the United Kingdom, the word barge had many meanings by the 1890s, and these varied locally. On the
Mersey, a barge was called a 'Flat', on the Thames a
Lighter or barge, and on the
Humber a 'Keel'. A Lighter had neither mast nor rigging. A keel did have a single mast with sails. Barge and lighter were used indiscriminately. A local distinction was that any flat that was not propelled by steam was a barge, although it might be a sailing flat. The term Dumb barge was probably taken into use to end the confusion. The term Dumb barge surfaced in the early nineteenth century. It first denoted the use of a barge as a mooring platform in a fixed place. As it went up and down with the tides, it made a very convenient mooring place for steam vessels. Within a few decades, the term dumb barge evolved and came to mean: 'a vessel propelled by oars only'. By the 1890s, Dumb barge was still used only on the Thames. , Belgium By 1880, barges on British rivers and canals were often towed by steam tugboats. On the Thames, many dumb barges still relied on their poles, oars and the tide. Others dumb barges made use of about 50 tugboats to tow them to their destinations. While many coal barges were towed, many dumb barges that handled single parcels were not.
The Thames barge and Dutch barge today On the British river system and larger waterways, the
Thames sailing barge, and
Dutch barge and unspecified other styles of barge, are still known as barges. The term Dutch barge is nowadays often used to refer to an accommodation ship, but originally refers to the slightly larger Dutch version of the Thames sailing barge.
British canals: narrowboats and widebeams During the
Industrial Revolution, a substantial network of
canals was developed in Great Britain from 1750 onward. Whilst the largest of these could accommodate ocean-going vessels, e.g. the later
Manchester Ship Canal, a complex network of smaller canals was also developed. These smaller canals had locks, bridges and tunnels that were at minimum only wide at the
waterline. On wider sections, standard barges and other vessels could trade, but full access to the network necessitated the parallel development of the
narrowboat, which usually had a beam a couple of inches less to allow for clearance, e.g. . It was soon realized that the narrow locks were too limiting, and later locks were therefore doubled in width to . This led to the development of the
widebeam canal boat. The narrowboat (one word) definition in the
Oxford English Dictionary is: The narrowboats were initially also known as barges, and the new canals were constructed with an adjacent
towpath along which
draft horses walked, towing the barges. These types of
canal craft are so specific that on the British canal system the term 'barge' is no longer used to describe
narrowboats and
widebeams. Narrowboats and widebeams are still seen on canals, mostly for leisure cruising, and now engine-powered.
Crew and pole The people who moved barges were known as
lightermen. Poles are used on barges to fend off other nearby vessels or a wharf. These are often called 'pike poles'. The long pole used to maneuver or propel a barge has given rise to the saying "I wouldn't touch that [subject/thing] with a barge pole."
The 19th century American barge In the United States a barge was not a sailing vessel by the end of the 19th century. Indeed, barges were often created by cutting down (
razeeing) sailing vessels. In New York this was an accepted meaning of the term barge. The somewhat smaller
scow was built as such, but the scow also had its sailing counterpart the sailing scow. == The modern barge ==