Boatbuilder Abraham Lincoln Patents a Special Vessel (Video)

​Only one U.S. president has ever been awarded a patent, and that president was Abraham Lincoln. And the patent—namely No. 6469—was for a boat!

Lincoln, as it happens, was a boatbuilder. As a young man, he built two riverboats, small barges really, which he used to ferry goods down the Mississippi River. Throughout his life he maintained a keen interest in nautical subjects.

In his Old Salt Blog, author Rick Spilman writes about how Lincoln was inspired by  “Nantucket camel rides.” Here's what Spilman said:
In the early 1800s, the entrance to the harbor of the great whaling port of Nantucket had shoaled in. Fully loaded whaling ships could not cross the bar and return to the docks beyond Brandt Point. For years the ships anchored offshore and were lightered, the barrels of whale oil loaded into smaller boats which could make it across the bar. 

​To avoid the considerable time and expense of lightering, an ingenious group of Nantucketers built a camel, which consisted of a pair barges of hollow barges connected by chains, which acted as a floating drydock to lift the whaling ship up and over the bar.  The twin barges were partially filled with water, then brought on either side of the whaling ship. The chains between them were tightened and the barges were pumped dry.   The buoyancy of the “camel”  would lift the whaling ship so the camel and the ship together could cross the bar.  
A depiction of a "Nantucket camel ride" in the early 19th century.
Lincoln's Announcement and His Model
“Be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, of Springfield, in the county of Sangamon, in the state of Illinois, have invented a new and improved manner of combining adjustable buoyant air chambers with a steam boat or other vessel for the purpose of enabling their draught of water to be readily lessened to enable them to pass over bars, or through shallow water, without discharging their cargoes…”
Picture
This is a replica of Lincoln's model, which he submitted to the U.S. Patent Office. Lincoln was said to have visited his model once during his presidency.
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