Burlington Bay Horse Ferry

The Burlington Bay Horse Ferry is a shipwreck in Lake Champlain off Burlington, Vermont, and the only known surviving example of a turntable horse ferry, a vessel type once common on American waterways in the mid-19th century. Powered by horses walking on a central turntable below deck, it used gears to drive a sidewheel, following a design patented in 1819 by Barnabas Langdon of Whitehall, New York. Discovered in 1983, the wreck was studied through the 1980s and early 1990s. Despite the loss of its forward third, its preserved hull and machinery provide an unusually clear record of a vanished form of water transport.

Burlington, Vermont · United States