Posted at Monday, May 16, 2005  EDT  

High-tech canoe will take students back in time

Associated Press

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. — Engineering and history are converging at Lawrence Technological University, where students are putting the finishing touches on a computer-designed canoe that will help commemorate a battle fought 250 years ago this summer.

Designed on a computer and made from wood, epoxy and fibreglass, the 24-foot-long, 41/2-foot-wide vessel is a replica of a birch-bark canoe like those used by French fur traders on the Great Lakes in the 18th century.

The canoe is a key part of a project conceived by Phil Vogt, a professor of history at the Southfield school, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the July 9, 1755, Battle of the Monongahela at Pittsburgh. France defeated Britain in that battle, fought as part of the French and Indian War.

Students will take the canoe on an eight-week trip to Pittsburgh to demonstrate Detroit's importance to the French empire in the 18th century, and it will remind people that the war between two imperial rivals "set the stage for the American Revolution," Vogt said.

The trip is to begin Saturday in Southfield, where students plan to tie up the big canoe on the Rouge River for the public to see from 10 a.m.-noon, the Detroit Free Press reported in Friday editions. Four colleagues, meanwhile, will begin a six-day journey down the Rouge in a pair of conventional plastic canoes.

The broad-beam canoe is too big to navigate the narrow, winding Rouge, which is blocked by dozens of dams and logjams. It will join the smaller canoes Thursday in the city of River Rouge — where the river flows into the Detroit River — and continue down the Detroit River and along the southern shore of Lake Erie.

The canoeists hope to reach Pittsburgh by July 8. En route, they will camp or stay with acquaintances. At some spots, they will be met by historical re-enactors, including a group portraying French soldiers at Erie, Pa.

The fur canoe weighs 400 pounds, cost about $5,000 and is designed to carry 1,000 pounds of cargo, said Lawrence Tech civil engineering professor Don Carpenter. It has no keel and a round bottom.

Chris Naida, 20, a senior from Dearborn, said he hoped the canoe could undergo some real-world testing Friday.

"It's important to have a handle on how to manage the boat in the Detroit River with the current — it's kind of rough," he said. "We gotta test-drive this thing!"