Throughout the weekend visitors to the Lockport Locks were greeted by the recently launched Seneca Chief.
Throughout the weekend, hundreds were hopping on and off of the boat while it made its first stop in its roughly-week long “sea trial” along the Erie Canal.
Edward Knibloe, exhibits and collection manager at the Buffalo Maritime Center, is part of the crew that has embarked on the trip that will see the boat make a round trip from Buffalo to Rochester.
“We’re really excited that people have come out to see our project and so many of them are excited about the canal. We’re excited about really visiting all of the towns on the canal and kind of sharing all of this,” Knibloe said.
While some finishing touches will be added to the boat before it travels through the canal for its bicentennial, Knibloe said that the replica already largely resembles what the original vessel would have looked like nearly 200 years ago.
Greg Dudley, woodworker, carpenter and master boat builder was one of multiple Buffalo Maritime Center personnel on hand to give visitors an inside look at how the vessel was constructed, largely using many of the same tools and methods in which the original boat would have been built in the 1820s.
“There’s a lot of wisdom in the ways they were doing these things back then and it still works,” Dudley said.
The original Seneca Chief, measuring 73 feet long and 40 tons, was the first vessel to float from Buffalo to New York City on the canal in 1825. In 2025, the replica will make that same voyage as part of the bicentennial celebration of the “wedding of the waters” from Lake Erie and New York Harbor as the Erie Canal was opened.
The replica boat was first launched on May 7 from the Longshed Building at Canalside in Buffalo after four years of construction by a largely 200-person volunteer workforce under the direction of the Buffalo Maritime Center.
The vessel will be in Rochester on Tuesday before making its trip back to Buffalo.
It will pass through the Lockport Locks and dock again on Saturday. The boat will be open to the public for free tours again that day from 4 to 7 p.m.