Locks

I will try my best to describe a lock for those that have never guided a boat through one. Most folks from Chicago have been through a lock if they have been on a river cruise and I imagine many others have had similar experiences. But here I will talk about the type of manual locks we have passed through on the waterways of Canada.

Yes, I said manual. Except for a few locks, the Trent-Severn and the Rideau Waterway’s locking systems are manually operated. These waterways were built in response to our (meaning the good old USA) aggression and visa-versa for the English during the formation of our republic and their Canadian Commonwealth. The waterways were built to get men and materials into the continent after the War of 1812. I might have the history a little off but that is the gist of it.

The British government reactivated Royal Engineer lieutenant colonel John By and sent him to the New World with orders to complete the Rideau and the Trent-Severn out of the wilderness of what is now northern Canada. Though from my reading of it, this area was not completely wild. Many people had already settled here. There were enough skilled workers that he was able with varying degrees of success to hire contractors to do the job.

He brought with him a small contingent of miners and sappers, the equivalent of the Army Corp of Engineers and the Sea Bees. The land was surveyed and plans drawn up to create a navigable waterway through a series of dammed river, existing and created lakes, dug and blasted canals, and interconnected rivers. And sure enough in the end, he did it.

Of course, it was over budget and time. He returned to England in disgrace and died a few years later. So much for creating four hundred miles of passable water and close to 100 locks out of granite, mud, malaria-ridden marshes, and rapids!

Carrie Rose is docked to the “up” side of Davis lock #38. It is by all accounts the most remote lock on the Rideau. Though as I look around there are five boats tied to various docks and one canoe with its inhabitants tucked away in their tent. The lockmasters house is in front of me and the shoreline has several small rustic cottages attached to it. I can see the lock gates 50 yards to my right and about a half a block away to the left is the weir. Bridging the two is the arch of the original earthen dam that the colonel built.

The lock, dam, and weir are a compact grouping built to circumvent the rapids that once raged here. The lock is fed from the lake that the dam created and the weir is like a safety valve. It is either opened to allow the abundance of spring water to flow downstream or closed to keep the lake full as the summer drought progresses. Of course, this is not an all or nothing proposition. Depending on the need the flow is regulated with large timbers that are either pull or lowered into the weir’s gate.

Yesterday as we approached the opened lower lock gates, I could feel the effects of the fast running downstream water. I am still getting used to dealing with flow and eddy of currents after spending most of my boating career in, for all practical purposes, current less Lake Michigan. This has been a particularly wet year in Canada and the current is strong. Carrie Rose is heading into it for now until we reach the zenith of the Rideau system at Newboro Lock #36 and then the flow will be behind us, pushing us towards Ottawa.

The Davis Lock gates were open because we were travelling fourth of four boats from the last locks at Jones Falls. Locks come in all sizes, though on the Rideau they are standardized. What is not standard though is how many in a row there are. Jones Falls is a series of four locks: three in a row, a turning basin, and then one more. It raised us approximately 60 feet in the hour and a half it took to negotiate it.

As I turned Carrie Rose away from the raging torrent of water coming from the lake above, there was the lock. It is often the case that locks, for being such an imposing structure, are demurely hid away around a bend. The other three boats were almost secured to its walls, so I slowed and glided in using my bow-thruster to steer.

The lock walls were dripping and covered with moss and tiny plants. They are dark with over 150 years of use but the limestone blocks still show the signs of the artisanship that went in their formation. I can see the marks of the various chisels and hear ping as the metal hit the stone.

The lockmasters have made the process of locking easier by the use of black rubberized cable attached to the top and bottom of the wall. I get Carrie Rose close enough to the wall so that Charlotte can grab onto the aft cable then I stop and step out from the pilothouse to grab a forward cable. We wrap a dock line around them and back to the boat’s cleats. This is not a time for contemplation. The lines need to be adjusted as the boat rises to meet the water level above.

The lockmaster and an assistant close the gate behind us. They crank open valves at the bottom of the lock which open to let the water flow in. There is quite a bit of turbulence when rising, so the staff lets the water in slowly at first. Once we are level with the water above, the gates are opened. We may head off to the next lock or tie up here to spend a night or two. We will do this forty-nine times on the Rideau and be lifted a total of 464 feet.

Not bad for a system completed in 1832. Alas, it was never used for military purposes and its commercial usefulness was short lived. But as a source of recreation, it is incomparable.