Galley Boats

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GALLEY BOATS

GALLEY BOATS were small shiplike crafts on the Ohio River designed to use both sails and oars, known after 1800 as barges. The French and Spanish maintained galleys on the Mississippi River for military purposes. In 1782, George Rogers Clark used a large galley, the Miami, to prevent British and Indian parties from crossing the Ohio; it was seventy-three feet in keel and had forty oars. During the troubles with France and Spain at the close of the eighteenth century, the federal government built two galleys, the President Adams and the Senator Ross. Other gunboat galleys were built at various points in the West during the next decade.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baldwin, Leland D. Keelboat Age on Western Waters. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1941; 1955; 1980; 1989.

Leland D.Baldwin/a. r.

See alsoKeelboat ; River Navigation ; Waterways, Inland .