In addition to the keel, barge, and flat boat, which were in general use, many other strange craft floated on the Ohio, a few of which I shall attempt to give some account of. The boat which carried the advance guard of the Ohio Company and their provisions to the mouth of the Muskingum in 1788, was built by Jonathan Devol at Simrel's Ferry on the Youghiogheny River, and is said to have been the first decked boat that ever floated on the Ohio.[23] She was built with stout timbers and knees like a galley, with the bottom raking fore and aft, and decked over with planks. The deck was sufficiently high for a man to walk upright under the beams, and the sides so thick as to resist a rifle bullet. The steersman and rowers were thus safely sheltered from the attack of enemies on the banks. The boat was forty-five feet in length, and twelve in breadth. Subsequently gangboards were added on the outside, so that she could be pushed against the current, like a keel boat. It was at first supposed that she could be worked up stream with sail, but the variable nature and uncertainty of the winds on the Ohio River, frustrated their arrangements.[24] Emigrants were usually, at this early period, 1789, detained for several days for a boat to be made ready for their use. Such a boat, conveying settlers to Marietta, was built after the fashion of a large, oblong box, covered half its length with a roof to shelter the people and their goods from the weather, while the open space contained their teams and wagons. The waters of the Youghiogheny and the Monongahela were low, and the boat grounded on sand bars, requiring the voyagers to lean over the side into the cold water, and pry her off into the current.[25] In 1790, John Pope describes the boat in which he left Pittsburg, as "a moveable fortification having about one hundred and fifty salt pans so arranged, as to render a few men within, capable of repulsing ten times their number without."[26] In the year 1803, family boats were continually passing down the Ohio.[27] "These boats were of the largest size, and the floors were covered with rough sawed boards. In the rear a partition had been run across, in which they had stowed all their present useless furniture. Through the middle was a passage about five feet wide, on each side were small bed chambers of about twelve feet long and six wide, divided and surrounded by clean white curtains, while in front there was a large open space for the general use of the boat."[28] Emigrant families frequently passed down the Ohio in barges, "carrying with them their horses, cows, poultry, wagons, ploughs, harness, beds, instruments of agriculture, in fine, everything necessary to cultivate the land, and also for domestic use."[29]