The Delaware and Hudson Canal took nearly three years, from spring 1826 to fall 1828, to build, primarily with German, Scotch, and Irish immigrant labor using horses, hand tools, and black powder before dynamite and matches had been invented. At one point 2,500 men and 200 teams worked on the canal. It was originally designed to hold four feet of water, but not until 1840, after the earthen embankments had fully settled, could it hold that depth along its entire 108 miles. Boats then carried 30 tons of cargo, later 40 and 50 tons in larger boats, and finally 140 tons in the largest boats with hipped sides on the hold openings. The canal was just wide enough for two boats to pass except in basin areas such as above Lock 31, where boats could tie up on granite snubbing posts for the night or wait for another boat to lock through. Each spring, after ice melted, winter damage was repaired and the water level was raised, beginning a boating season that ran from early April until late November or December when the canal iced over. A round trip between Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and Kingston, New York, on the Hudson River and back averaged 10 days at three miles per hour. Boat traffic varied greatly over the canal's life: in the 1870's more than 1,000 boats averaged 13 trips annually, while in the 1890's only 250 boats averaged seven trips as trains, which ran all winter, increasingly carried cargo instead. Besides anthracite coal from the mines of northeastern Pennsylvania bound largely for New York City, the canal carried timber, tanners' bark, animal hides, iron, cement, materials for glass making, finished glass ware, bluestone, and general merchandise. Company rules required each boat to have at least three crew members: a captain, usually the owner; a bowman, who steered with a tiller at the bow; and a driver. The owner's wife was often counted among the three, and a young son, daughter, or homeless youth, rarely paid more than $2.50 to $4.00 a month plus room and board, often filled the third position. The driver, also called a hoggie or towboy and sometimes a towgirl, walked 15 to 20 miles a day and up to 3,000 miles in a season, keeping mules or horses out of the canal and pulling tandem in all weather, preventing towline tangles when boats passed, and otherwise feeding and watering the team, caring for it, and pumping water from the boat. The older the boat, the more water had to be pumped, leaving little time to eat and sleep. The canal closed from midnight Saturday until the usual Monday opening hour, and in 1873 fifteen lock tenders were fined and discharged for violating Sunday law by locking boats through that day. Many canal children could not swim, and children or exhausted drivers who fell overboard frequently drowned. Canal boats served as homes during boating season, with a grain bin under the forward deck, cargo occupying the middle, and a small stern cabin about twelve by fourteen feet containing narrow bunks for three adults, a drop-leaf table, and a small stove. In the 1850's a boat cost $400 to $450 to build, usually of oak, and lasted an average of five years, with captains often buying boats on time from the canal company until they needed another. Captain Jacob Hensberger's boat number 1107 left Honesdale on November 5, 1898, as the last boat to navigate the entire canal. After that, water was no longer let into the canal, and sections were filled with dirt and garbage, neglected, or built over, while attempts to revive it continued as late as 1915 but failed.