FULTON (AP) -- Underwater explorers have discovered an early version of a 19th-century Erie Canal boat buried beneath the Oswego River in Central New York.
Barely six inches of the 78-foot-long boat is visible above the mucky silt of the river bed midway between Syracuse and Lake Ontario.
Veteran explorers Jim Kennard and Roger Pawlowski used high-resolution, side-scan sonar technology to locate the boat in October. They believe it's the oldest Erie Canal wreck discovered so far. Its length suggests it plied the canal sometime between 1830 and 1850 when boats that size were common.
Since 1970, Kennard has helped find more than 20 wrecks in the Great Lakes and about 180 others in Lake Champlain, New York's Finger Lakes and the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
Read more on this story from Syracuse.com.
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