Image: Costumed interpreter with a mule on the canal towpath at the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Lock 20f

Description: Pic of Costumed Interpeter with boat, at Lock 20 (Great Falls Tavern) on Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Notes: The LoC's original scan of the digital transparency is flipped backwards (which has been fixed here). Also the posing in the photo is strange. The man on the lock gate and the position of the mules indicate the boat is going upstream, but the man at the tiller should be at the stern, not the bow as seen here. There is no need for the man to have his hand on the valve handle. Once the wickets are open to fill the lock, there is no need to touch the handle until the gates are almost all the way open. Then one closes the wickets so the iron valve doesn't hit the canal masonry. There is also a man on the stern blowing a horn, which is strange, since normally canallers blew the horn to warn of the boat approaching the lock; while in the lock, the horn blowing serves no purpose. Mules are not hitched up. Hitch is lying on ground. Boat is the old Canal Clipper boat, scrapped since the time of this photo.
Title: Costumed interpreter with a mule on the canal towpath at the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Lock 20
Credit: This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID highsm.15394. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information.
Author: Highsmith, Carol M., 1946-, photographer
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No