The Philadelphia Bay (1)
It's about sixty miles from Salem, New Jersey where the river takes an abrupt turn to the right, to Trenton, where the river takes an equally abrupt turn to the left. This is the area that would be called the Philadelphia Bay
In the days of sail, Philadelphia Bay was the main artery of commerce. The earliest commerce took advantage of the tide and the bends in the river. Flatboats filled with Garden State produce would be carried up and across the river by the incoming tide, and down and across the river by the outgoing tide. When ships, particularly steamships, came along, this was the way to carry goods of all sorts up and down the Bay. It's only five miles between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays at Odessa, so even before the old Delaware-Chesapeake Canal sailing commerce was natural from Trenton to Norfolk, Virginia, and all points in between. The next step was building canal, up the Raritan to New York Bay, up the "Main Line" to Pittsburgh and beyond. The war of 1812 blocked off ocean shipping, and then a canal carried anthracite to Philadelphia, emptying at Bristol, briefly enriching Bristol, and then reducing it to its present shriveled state. After the canals came the railroads, usually following the path of the canals, belching smoke and noise, and making a dangerous, impenetrable barrier between the land and the water beside it. Superhighways do the same thing, replacing soot with gasoline fumes. There's a river out there somewhere, but you can't get to it. It now takes a twenty story high rise to give you a river view; even that is best seen on Sunday when lessened traffic reduces gasoline haze.
It's really hard to imagine that main attractions to living on the river included not merely the view and the transportation, but wonderful fishing and hunting among the bullrushes. Down around the Delaware Chesapeake Canal, Blackbeard the Pirate used to hide his ship and merry men in the shallow marshes among the mud islands. There's a reminder of it as you speed along the elevated multi-lane highway, or maybe it's just another reminder of political correctness. If you know the way well enough to take your eye away from the traffic pattern, off the the right is a directional sign pointing to the little hamlet where pirates used to convene. It says, "Blackbird".
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Upper Delaware Bay  |
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