Old Iron Scow attracts worldwide attention

Park officials continue to monitor century-old barge dislodged by storm

A rusty century-old barge appears to have captured the attention of the world.

The boat known as the Iron Scow had been lodged in the rocks of the upper Niagara River, around 600 metres from the Horseshoe Falls, since 1918.

That was until Halloween, when a fierce wind storm flipped the vessel over and moved it about 50 metres closer to the brink.

“The poor old thing, what’s left of it, has spun around and tipped over,” said Jim Hill, superintendent of heritage at Niagara Parks.

“It really wasn’t so much as a boat anymore than it was a wall,” he explained.

“It had been facing Canada, so we had this great view of what looked like a relatively intact boat but it was really more like a metal façade of a boat.”

Since Thursday, media agencies from around the world have reported on the incident, and the scow’s dramatic history. The story has been feature in the New York Times, The Daily Mail in the UK, CBC and CNN both reported on it and it has earned a paragraph on Wikipedia.

The scow appears to have grounded itself once again and Niagara Parks officials are monitoring situation, but officials say there’s no way to predict if the vessel will, if ever, be on the move again.

“We’ve had our engineers look at it and it’s really hard to say what will happen next,” Hill said.

The story of the scow is one of the most dramatic events in Niagara Falls history.

On Aug. 6, 1918, the scow, used for dredging and dumping, broke loose from a towing tug about 1.6 kilometres up river.

As it drifted towards the edge of the falls, the two men on board opened the bottom dumping doors to flood the compartments and slow down its approach to the falls.

It worked, as the scow got wedged

in rocks in the shallow rapids, but it left the men marooned in the torturous upper rapids.

What followed was a dramatic 17-hour rescue of the two men by legendary Niagara river man William ‘Red’ Hill Sr.

A lifeline cannon, rushed to the scene by the U.S. Coast Guard, shot a line from the roof of a nearby powerhouse out to the stranded men.

Later, a breeches buoy — a canvas sling suspended from a pulley — was put in place on the heavy rope.

Part way out, the breeches buoy stopped due to a tangle in the ropes.

Hill Sr., who had recently returned to Niagara after having been wounded in France while serving in the First World War, volunteered to climb out to fix the problem.

With the beam of a search light following him, Hill made two trips out to untangle the lines.

The company that owned the scow, the Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company, still exists.

“Even immediately after the incident they realized they weren’t interested in recovering their sand barge,” Hill said. “It just wasn’t worth risking peoples’ lives to try to get it out of the rushing water.” To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the rescue, several new interpretive panels overlooking the site were unveiled in August.