Major William C. Barnett discovered by Coast Guard
By: Gwen Runkle
NEW HOPE What once was lost has been found.
Robert Gerenser’s tour boat, the Major William C. Barnett, was found Dec. 21 by a U.S. Coast Guardsman about a half-mile south of the wing dam on the Pennsylvania side after a weekend of heavy rain removed it from the wing dam.
The boat was reported missing Dec. 18 after being swept away from the dam on which it had been stuck for almost five months. The boat became lodged on rocks below the dam after being untied from Mr. Gerenser’s dock behind the councilman’s South Main Street ice cream shop Aug. 9.
The heavy rain during the weekend of Dec. 16-17 caused the river to rise eight to 10 feet, increasing the speed of the current and carrying along a lot of debris. Such debris ultimately freed the Major William C. Barnett from its long-standing perch.
According to Mr. Gerenser, "On Sunday afternoon (Dec. 17), eyewitnesses watching the boat saw a huge tree, like a 70-foot-tall oak tree, come down (the river)."
The tree, Mr. Gerenser said, steered into the bow and smashed into the upper deck, shattering the welds in the upper deck, causing it to fishtail. The boat then began to whip back and forth in the river until the lines parted, he said. The 5-inch nylon mooring lines securing the vessel to the rocks through a mechanical pulley system were capable of handling only 60,000 pounds of pressure per second, Mr. Gerenser said. According to his calculations, 80,000 pounds of pressure per second were hitting the 20-ton boat and stressing the lines after the river’s rise and increase in current speed.
Around 3 p.m. Dec. 17, the 65-foot-long boat was reported bobbing down river, but came to rest upside down piled with other storm debris just outside New Hope where the Delaware makes a sweeping turn, washing everything to the Pennsylvania side.
Mr. Gerenser ventured down to his boat to survey the damage and found "luckily," the damage was "mostly cosmetic."
He said, "The non-functioning smokestack and pilot house are gone, but while the paddle wheel framework is bent up, the bearings and gears are intact."
He said the hull also appears to be fine. However, all the support equipment on both the dam and the Major William C. Barnett, has been lost, Mr. Gerenser said. He estimated the loss of the machine deck, pulleys, chain hoists, pumps and other equipment to be from $10,000 to $15,000.
"But knowing with the river that nothing is ever permanently lost, I will be diving (to retrieve any lost items) in warmer weather," he said.
Mr. Gerenser purchased the boat in 1991 for $50,000 from a man in Des Moines, Iowa, and spent another $50,000 on renovations. Until 1998, when the vessel suffered hull damage after a river mishap, Mr. Gerenser used the boat for his Coryell’s Boat Rides, shuttling sightseers up and down the Delaware River.
Mr. Gerenser now plans to take the Major William C. Barnett to a shipyard and have it rebuilt "to be better than before" and operational within one year. But in order to take the boat anywhere, it has to be recovered from the river’s shoreline. Tom Scannapieco, owner of the property just south of the Waterworks condominiums and chairman of the New Hope Planning Commission, gave Mr. Gerenser permission to access his land to retrieve the vessel. Mr. Gerenser plans to "get a wrecker down there to face (the boat) downstream and flip it back over," he said.
Mr. Gerenser will be employing the services of Pendell Auto Body to use its air cushion lift to get the boat turned upright and Harvey Grey of Newtown Pa., "the best towing company for heavy rigs," said Mr. Gerenser, to salvage his boat.
This tandem project cannot be started until Mr. Gerenser is able to gain permission for access from the owner of the property immediately south of Mr. Scannapieco’s.
Ultimately, Mr. Gerenser is glad the situation has resulted in a happy ending.
"The dam is now clear of the boat and debris, there has been no pollution or damage to the river, and we got to learn about some history and the power of the river," he said. "We would have made it had we had another month of warm weather, but once it got colder, it became dangerous to work in the water and difficult to fill the pontoons with expanding foam."
By early September, Mr. Gerenser had set up a system of lines and pulleys similar to that Durham boat operators used in the early part of the 18th century to get boats over the falls, but was unsuccessful in removing it from the rocks.
Mr. Gerenser and his team continued to work through October and November to lighten the vessel by removing material from the boat and attaching pontoons in the hope of getting it home by Christmas.
But "The ‘river god’ had its own way of dealing with the problem and put it right where I can get it," he said.
Mr. Gerenser is grateful for both the new more convenient positioning of his boat and to everyone who helped in all the stages of his boat’s recovery. He sends special thanks to Bill and Frank of Pendell Auto Body, Josh Moyer, John Spiota, Iain Ashton, Ed Miller, Mitch Davis, Mark Holbrow, Arthur Griesiger, U.S. Coast Guard Senior Chief Robert Ward of the Marine Safety Office in Philadelphia and emergency services on both sides of the river who dealt graciously with the continual rescue calls by "do-gooders."