Announcer> A production of South Carolina ETV.

(birds chirping) ♪ Mason Adams> May 28, 1801... 25 years have passed since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Citizens of Charleston, South Carolina are adjusting to life in a newly formed country and to a city free of the occupation forces of his majesty King George III of England.

The hated redcoats had marched from the city only 19 years earlier.

The Charleston Times is filled with the black and white manifestations of a prospering society.

In addition to the postings of ship departures, the cargoes of arriving vessels are displayed on the pages of The Times .

But as Charlestonians read the lists of linens and other dry goods, very few know that on this day economic history has been made.

Buried on the lower half of the third page is a small article announcing the arrival of William Buford to Charleston not on a four-masted, seagoing vessel, but in a boat built on his own land, loaded with his own crop.

A flatboat which had put in just north of Columbia and traveled through half the state entirely by water.

To the planters in the Upcountry, this meant a substantial savings from costly overland trips on unpaved roads.

And why was this not possible before?

The answer lies in the geography of the state itself.

Until the year before, the only way to reach Charleston was overland.

December of 1800 saw the completion of a 22 mile waterway connecting the Santee and the Cooper Rivers.

It took as many as 1,000 workers seven years to complete what became known as the Santee Canal.

♪ ♪ The Santee Canal was one of the first canals completed in the New World.

But the idea of creating a man-made waterway to help increase transportation, and therefore the economy, wasn't unique to this country.

Europeans knew about canals long before America became a nation, And the Europeans learned about these artificial waterways from their trading with the East.

The artificial diversion of water from rivers, lakes, and the seas themselves has been associated with the rise and fall of cultures and civilizations.

The earliest canals were undoubtedly used for irrigation purposes, but the old kings, pharaohs, and caesars saw the possibilities inherent in using these waterways to extend their influence over larger amounts of territory and the people who live there.

Military and economic control of vast regions could be obtained by those who controlled the waters.

There's not much known about the construction methods of the early canals.

In the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, where neither stone nor timber was readily available, rush mats, probably waterproofed with natural asphalt that oozed from the ground, lined man made channels through the loose, sandy soils of the region.

Most early canals undoubtedly were constructed on one level, but as the elevation rose, so did the level of ingenuity.

There is evidence that the Chinese invented the pound lock, the conventional chambered lock with gates at each end which impounds the water and thus raises or lowers the water levels to the desired elevation.

Unfortunately, Western historians sometimes are not cognizant of our neighbors to the East.

Leonardo da Vinci is often credited with being the inventor of the pound lock.

In France, the Languedoc Canal was begun in 1666 as part of an extensive internal improvement program financed by Louis XIV.

Meanwhile, almost 100 years later at the urging of George Washington, the young United States began to look into building her own canals.

It was Washington's idea to bypass the dangerous sections of the Potomac River with canals and thus open a new water route to the Ohio River.

Easy transportation to the Ohio River would thus help open the western frontier.

This was a project high on Washington's agenda.

In 1785, the Patowmack Company was formed with Washington as its president, a position he held until four years later he was elected our first President.

Boatmen began using the finished portions of the improved river route in the early 1800s.

Tolls were paid in gold and silver coins at first, but with not enough trusted money in circulation, barter was common.

Whiskey swiftly became a favorite toll fee.

The trip was as treacherous as the rapids that the new system was designed to bypass.

Many of the boat owners refused to attempt a return trip, and sold their boats for lumber, and walked home instead.

Some of the others tried to make sport of the whole thing by racing each other both legs of the trip.

The Patowmack Company eventually failed, but the idea of connecting the Ohio River with the Atlantic Ocean lived on.

In 1828, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company began to build a canal from Washington, D.C., to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and on to the Ohio River.

By 1850, the project had reached Cumberland, Maryland, and was formally opened to trade.

But finally, nature and the more economic steam engine took their toll on the C and O.

The canal was abandoned in 1924... abandoned, but not forgotten.

(water babbling) The 185 mile meandering waterway was acquired by the National Park Service in 1937.

While critics questioned the purchase of a century old white elephant, the Park Service restored 23 miles of the once bustling waterway.

Today remnants of Old Potomac Canal can still be seen as mule drawn boats glide once more out of Washington carrying not coal, but toll paying sightseers.

But as brave an endeavor as the Potomac Canal was, purest contend, it was not a true canal.

A true canal connects two bodies of water.

The Potomac like many of the waterways built in 18th century America consisted of short, bypassed channels around river falls and rapids.

The first true full-fledged canal in this country was the Santee Canal in South Carolina, the same waterway which brought William Buford to Charleston in 1801.

In the late 18th century, overland transportation in South Carolina was little better than uneven dirt roads.

As in many states, there were no roads fit for the hauling of heavy loads.

Travelers depended on the vast river systems as the only practical means of transportation.

One great river system drains over half the state.

Rising at the foot of the mountains in the west are the beginnings of three important rivers in this system, the Saluda in South Carolina, and the Broad and the Catawba in North Carolina.

Flowing south and east, the Saluda and Broad Rivers converge at Columbia to form the Congaree.

The Catawba enters the state near York and becomes the Wateree.

The Congaree and the Wateree, swollen by numerous tributaries, finally join to become the great Santee River, which flows across the lowlands to the sea.

It would seem that the Santee system would best serve the state.

There were, however, two major obstacles facing travelers using these waters.

Boats heavily laden with goods for market must first conquer the dangerous shoals of the Santee to reach the coast.

Once there, it was another 50 miles to Charleston on the open sea.

For the keels and flats of river trade, the voyage down the coast was dangerous if not impossible.

This meant cargoes had to be transferred to coastal vessels at the mouth of the river, a time consuming and costly proposition.

A better option existed.

Beginning in the northern corner of what is now Berkeley County, the Cooper River flows sluggishly towards the coast.

About 30 miles from Charleston, the Santee and the Cooper Rivers were only 20 miles apart.

A canal here connecting the two would not only bring trade to Charleston, but shorten the voyage of the river craft by at least 45 miles.

It's not known who first discovered this opportunity, but it was certainly before the Revolution.

In 1773, about the same time disguised colonists threw royal tea into Boston Harbor, Charleston legislators employed French educated engineer Henry Mouzon Jr. to survey several routes for a multiple lock canal connecting the Santee and Cooper Rivers.

Two years later, Mouzon returned with five possible routes for consideration.

By that time, fighting for American independence was closer to home, and plans for the great canal were delayed until 1782.

With Charleston still in the hands of the British, exiled Governor John Rutledge recommended a charter be enacted for the construction of a towpath canal to connect the Santee and the Cooper at the closest point above Charleston.

The charter was granted at the 1786 session of the General Assembly.

The names of the stockholders read like a list of who's who in South Carolina history... John and Edward Rutledge, General Thomas Sumter, General Francis Marion, H. Ralph Izard, Nathaniel Russell, and Judges Gaillard, Burke, and Grimké.

By March of 1786, these powerful South Carolinians met at the City Tavern in the now, American city of Charleston to elect a board of directors... now all of this before South Carolina had even ratified the United States Constitution.

Now came the task of actually building the canal.

General William Moultrie, then-Governor of the state and newly elected president of the Santee Canal Company, wrote his friend and canal enthusiast George Washington for advice.

The reply from Washington came on May 25, 1786.

After discussing the matter with both General Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, who was then United States Ambassador to France, this eminent trio suggested a French engineer to oversee the construction.

In spite of this recommendation, the canal company selected Colonel Johann Christian Senf for the task.

Senf, originally from Sweden, had come to America with British General John Burgoyne's troops and spent the first part of the war fighting for the British.

He was captured when Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga, and he converted to the American cause.

During the last years of the war, Senf served as an engineer with the South Carolina militia.

After the war, he became chief engineer for the state of South Carolina.

He was skilled in his craft, energetic, and he was vain.

A proud man, Colonel Senf insisted on doing things his own way, often to the consternation of his contemporaries.

An example of this is visible in his choice of a course for the canal.

Senf had in his possession the five possible routes suggested by surveyor, Henry Mouzon several years earlier.

The popular and therefore preferred path utilized the natural channels in Biggin Swamp and Fair Forest Swamp, whose junction becomes the western branch of the Cooper River.

Senf instead chose his own route, which required reservoirs to maintain water levels for the greater length of the canal.

In all fairness to the colonel, canal building was still a new enterprise in this country.

Only time would judge if his decision was correct.

In any event, construction got underway in May of 1793 with ten men using shovels and wheelbarrows.

By mid-July, the number had increased to 150 and then to 1,000 by the end of the year.

Although the number fluctuated depending on the time of year, construction proceeded well under the colonel's leadership despite enormous problems.

Most of the fieldwork was done by slaves.

Each worker was required to remove 2 cubic yards, or 54 wheelbarrows of dirt a day.

To compensate for the loss of labor, slave owners were paid 120 dollars a year for each male and 100 dollars a year for each female.

The company provided their meals.

Unfortunately, this compensation was seldom enough for some plantation owners, who often felt the more important work was in the fields.

To help alleviate this problem, Senf favored day laborers.

These short-term workers brought with them predictable wages and better quality work.

For the canal company, the financial projections, while high, were at least realistic.

♪ ♪ Meanwhile, canal stockholders, feeling the tremendous urgencies of both time and expense, put Senf under continuous pressure to hire out portions of the canal for contract work.

But the stubborn colonel undertook not just the general supervision of the overall project, but the immediate day-to-day overseeing of all the laborers instead of using plantation overseers, a tremendous task given the numbers of laborers and therefore a great waste of time, talent, and money.

Senf preferred to save the better trained laborers to build the various dams and locks along the canal route.

Anybody could dig excavations.

Dams were another thing.

Senf was also afraid that plantation overseers would favor the slave owners over the interests of the canal, a practice that might lead to litigation and, therefore, more time and expense.

To add to the colonel's labor problems, the White workers were very susceptible to malaria, and many died in the feverish summers or left as the weather turned warm.

Senf found he had to find new skilled laborers and tradesmen each year.

In an engineer's report dating from 1800 he wrote... (male speaker reading) "Every year there was a change of tradesmen and laborers, as engagements could only be made yearly or monthly owing to sickness.

The last year no tradesmen of any ability would engage to remain on the canal during the summer season when the most work could be done.

From the year 1793 to the beginning of 1800, 24 White persons died at the canal from fever, of which two were physicians."

♪ ♪ Mason> Training young men as assistant engineers was impossible.

As a result, the colonel had to oversee more of the work himself, slowing progress and increasing costs.

The original capital for the project was depleted in the first two years, and the stockholders needed to find a way to raise more money.

As president of the company, General William Moultrie appealed to the legislature for a lottery to assist in financing.

Permission was granted, and construction continued.

One of the most serious of the continuing obstacles facing Senf was the opposition of local landowners through whose property the canal passed.

The proprietors of the charter would have been glad to replace the colonel, but the technology was too new, the task too great.

No other engineers were available.

A project of this size was no simple task, even by today's standards.

Laborers brought with them their picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, and gunpowder, the principal construction tools of the time.

Progress was only a foot at a time, perhaps only a few feet a day, as workers ran into hard clay deposits, marl, and rock outcroppings... no electric power tools, no climate control.

Before the Revolution, the British government paid a bounty on indigo.

The bounty made millionaires of the state's indigo planters.

With the loss of the bounty after the war, planters found indigo of questionable profit.

At the same time, the opening of western portions of the state for heavy settlement changed the rivers and streams of the Lowcountry.

As the Upstate was cleared for planting, the natural obstacles to water flow were removed.

Streams became torrents, rivers became floods.

The economic troubles of many of the Lowcountry's plantations were eased by the wages paid for the use of their slaves on the canal.

And then in 1794, at his Northampton Plantation near Black Oak, General William Moultrie planted a new crop... cotton.

By 1800, it was the staple of the country, but the arrival of "King Cotton," while of immense benefit to the state and nation, was of no help to the final stages of the canal building operation.

As work progressed and costs increased, stockholders became more and more anxious about their investment.

Finally, in late December 1800, the Santee Canal was completed.

F. A. Porcher, a local historian, described the finished product.

(male speaker reading) "The canal is 22 miles in length, 35 feet wide at the surface, 20 at the bottom.

Depth, 5 1/2 feet with 4 feet of water, capable of carrying boats of 22 tons burden.

On each side is a draw path 10 feet wide.

It has two double and eight single locks, and in its course over the country, it lies over eight aqueducts, through which an equal number of swamp streams find a passage under its beds."

Mason> The original estimated cost totaled some 300,000 dollars.

It was a breathtaking sum of money at the time.

It was nothing compared to the accountant's final total of over 700,000 dollars.

Now at last, it was time for the canal to live.

And for the next 50 years, the Santee Canal helped breathe life into a sagging South Carolina economy.

From the time of conception in the late 18th century, the project was haunted by several ironies.

The first of these concerns her creator.

The very man who walked all 22 miles and supervised every shovel of dirt and every brick that was laid in the Santee Canal contributed to her downfall.

Unfortunately, a three year drought from 1817 to 1819 resulted in the closing of 14 miles of canal bed, shutting down the whole operation.

Two steam pumps were purchased by the frantic directors of the canal company to raise water from the river to the upper levels, but the machines weren't equal to the task, and wagon trains hauled freight along the towpaths until the rains came.

The project never fully recovered.

Senf knew nothing of the drought.

He died just six years after he saw the completion of construction.

His passing was a small moment in the state he had served.

There are no contemporary statues to Johann Christian Senf.

The Santee Canal herself stood as a monument to his tenacity.

For the planters of the Upstate, this man-made waterway was a financial lifesaver, especially for those planting cotton.

Before the canal, transporting this growing commodity by wagon cost 2 dollars per bale.

Transportation completely by water cost only 50 cents per bale.

During 1830, Charlestonians watched 1,720 boats arrive via the canal loaded with 80,000 bales of cotton.

Toll charges were set at a flat 21 dollars per boat, loaded or empty.

Ingeniously, South Carolinians figured out how to bring two boats into Charleston fully laden and then pile one boat onto the other for the return trip to avoid the double toll.

After the peak year 1830, use of the canal began generally to decline.

(whistle blowing) The steam engine found its way to South Carolina.

Steamboats could easily negotiate the Santee River to Georgetown as well as the open sea to Charleston, bypassing the canal altogether.

Riverboats could carry up to 100 bales of cotton a trip.

Planters starting in the mountainous regions of the state could only transport 65 to 70 bales on the smaller boats used on the mountain rivers.

Steamboats carried upwards of 700 bales of cotton, making these advances of the industrial age very profitable to the state's planters.

The second irony occurred around 1840 when the railroad had begun to probe the backcountry and cut into the waterway's business.

Ironically, it was some of the very same men who were the shareholders and directors of the Santee Canal Company who would cause the first railroad to be built in this country.

By 1850, the takeover by the iron horse was complete, and in that year, the water was drawn off the Santee Canal for the last time.

As far as the investors were concerned, the canal was a failure, but for 50 years it had been a vital link in the state's transportation system and it assured Charleston its preeminent position among southern ports.

Unfortunately, the canal sat unused and virtually unknown for almost 90 years.

The final irony came from a seemingly unlikely source.

During the 1930s and '40s, Santee Cooper's hydroelectric project in the Lowcountry created Lakes Marion and Moultrie, and much of the canal was flooded.

Today only a few miles of the once thriving waterway are still visible.

Ironically, the very public power utility which created the Lowcountry lakes is spearheading a rebirth of public knowledge of Colonel Senf's masterpiece.

The old Santee Canal State Park was inaugurated in 1989.

[water splashing on canoe] Visitors can walk the nature trails and perhaps even take a canoe ride to experience firsthand some of the exhilaration William Buford must have felt when he traveled these same waters almost 200 years ago.

♪ Canals, once as important as our superhighways today, are slowly being brought back into the American awareness because they are living museums of our national experience and vital links in the settlement of our vast continent.

After the Santee, there would be other longer, larger, more heavily used canals, but there can be no question that the Santee Canal in South Carolina was the inspiration for all that followed.

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