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of 250 feet to accommodate larger steamships bearing bigger
cargoes. At about six million cubic yards, the sediment removed
from the floor of Baltimore’s harbor was twice the volume of
Egypt’s Great Pyramid.
Sediment arouses strong sentiment on the waterfront. Back
in Baltimore’s dark ages, a navigable harbor was so vital that
town officials deemed it a crime to throw dirt or sand into the
Patapsco, punishable by a fine of five British pounds — a whop-
ping one month’s salary in the early 18th century. The ongoing
need for harbor dredging, as well as control over the placement
of dredged material, remain problematic issues which still vex
Maryland’s maritime community in the early 21st century, and
will be closely monitored.
The second key development, a “differential” imposed by Inter-
state Commerce Commission regulators on railroad companies,
instituted a freight system in which the cost of moving goods was
made proportional to the overland distance the goods moved: For
a Chicago merchant, it suddenly became cheaper to ship goods
through Baltimore’s port as opposed to New York, reflecting the
fact that Baltimore is 90 miles closer to Chicago.
The differential — whose groundwork was laid down by John
Work Garrett and Enoch Pratt, a major investor in the B&O until
his death in 1873 — helped equalize the natural gifts enjoyed by
New York’s port, whose vast harbor adjacent to the sea, the Hudson
River and an extensive railroad network was a strategic advantage
over rival ports.
Canton was emerging as the Port’s heavy industrial arm.
O’Donnell’s 3,000-acre estate, which included all the waterfront pro-
perty from Fell’s Point to Lazaretto Point opposite Fort McHenry,
was developed piecemeal by industries enticed by the prospects
of partnering with some aspect of the Port’s lines of business.
Canton’s commercial orientation was distinctly maritime —
refineries and smelters turning out copper products that resist the
corrosive effects of salt water, and iron mills and foundries. The
Baltimore Copper Company was among the first to locate there;
with Enoch Pratt and Johns Hopkins on board as lead investors,
it was America’s largest copper refinery before being recast as
American Smelting and Refining Company. Most ships then
manufactured in America were sheathed in copper, which
accounts for the longevity of the
Constellation
in today’s Inner
Harbor. In 1848, the Booz Shipyard was established on Harris
Creek at the foot of Kenwood Avenue.
Horace Abbott’s Canton Iron Works ( first started by Peter
Cooper), capable of manufacturing the largest rolled plate in the
United States by 1850, built armor plates for the first iron battle-
ship, the
Monitor
. The Patapsco Bridge & Iron Works gained a
national reputation for its engineering feats, and built many of
the bridges spanning the Jones Falls.
Railroad and steamboat
connections to the Port profited
watermen and helped open up Chestertown, Centreville, Oxford,
Cambridge, Crisfield and Berlin on the Delmarva Peninsula by
injecting commerce and capital into the regional economy.
The Canton Company
completed the Canton Railroad
in 1914, providing direct
connections between industry
and three major railroads:
the Baltimore & Ohio, the
Pennsylvania and theWestern
Maryland lines. Today, the
Canton Railroad’s brightly
painted engines continue to
provide short line service for
CSX and Norfolk Southern.
