Over the last sixteen hours, Frawley had brought the canal boat George W. Lee from the Morgan sawmill in Glens Falls, and forty miles down the Champlain Canal to the Albany Basin, where he deposited the year’s last load of lumber. Despite the rain, his trip down had been uneventful, even getting well-behaved mules when he stopped for a fresh team in Schuylerville.
The crew of a canal boat is small, and everyone, from the captain down, does whatever is needed to keep the boat moving on the towpath. For this trip, along with the captain, the crew consisted of only Daniel Clancy, an experienced canaller, whose main job was steering the boat, and a hoagie, a young boy to lead the mules.
Also traveling on the canal boat for the trip was Frawley’s sixty-year-old mother, Elizabeth, and her thirteen-year-old grandson, Willie, son of the captain…