Barge typically refers to a flat-bottomed vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion.^[2] Original use was on inland waterways, while modern use is on both inland and marine water environments. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but on inland waterways, most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels.^{[citation needed]} The term barge has a rich history, and therefore there are many types of barges.

"Barge" is attested from 1300, from Old French barge, from Vulgar Latin barga. The word originally could refer to any small boat; the modern meaning arose around 1480. Bark "small ship" is attested from 1420, from Old French barque, from Vulgar Latin barca (400 AD). The more precise meaning of Barque as "three-masted sailing vessel" arose in the 17th century and often takes the French spelling for disambiguation. Both are probably derived from the Latin barica, from Greek baris "Egyptian boat", from Coptic bari "small boat", hieroglyphic Egyptian

and similar ba-y-r for "basket-shaped boat".^[3] By extension, the term "embark" literally means to board the kind of boat called a "barque".

In Great Britain, a merchant barge was originally a flat bottomed merchant vessel for use on navigable rivers.^[4] Most of these barges had sails. For traffic on the River Severn, the barge was described thus: "The lesser sort are called barges and frigates, being from forty to sixty feet in length, having a single mast and square sail, and carrying from twenty to forty tons burthen." The larger vessels were called trows.^[5] On the River Irwell, there was reference to barges passing below Barton Aqueduct with their mast and sails standing.^[6] Early barges on the Thames were called west country barges.^[4]

In the United Kingdom, the word barge had many meanings by the 1890s, and these varied locally. On the Mersey, a barge was called a 'Flat', on the Thames a Lighter or barge, and on the Humber a 'Keel'.^[7] A Lighter had neither mast nor rigging.^[8] A keel did have a single mast with sails.^[7] Barge and lighter were used indiscriminately. A local distinction was that any flat that was not propelled by steam was a barge, although it might be a sailing flat.^[7]

The term Dumb barge was probably taken into use to end the confusion. The term Dumb barge surfaced in the early nineteenth century. It first denoted the use of a barge as a mooring platform in a fixed place. As it went up and down with the tides, it made a very convenient mooring place for steam vessels.^[9] Within a few decades, the term dumb barge evolved and came to mean: 'a vessel propelled by oars only'.^[10] By the 1890s, Dumb barge was still used only on the Thames.^[11]

By 1880, barges on British rivers and canals were often towed by steam tugboats.^[12] On the Thames, many dumb barges still relied on their poles, oars and the tide. Others dumb barges made use of about 50 tugboats to tow them to their destinations. While many coal barges were towed, many dumb barges that handled single parcels were not.^[13]

On the British river system and larger waterways, the Thames sailing barge, and Dutch barge and unspecified other styles of barge, are still known as barges.^[14] The term Dutch barge is nowadays often used to refer to an accommodation ship, but originally refers to the slightly larger Dutch version of the Thames sailing barge.

During the Industrial Revolution, a substantial network of canals was developed in Great Britain from 1750 onward. Whilst the largest of these could accommodate ocean-going vessels, e.g the later Manchester Ship Canal, a complex network of smaller canals was also developed. These smaller canals had locks, bridges and tunnels that were at minimum only 7 feet (2.1 m) wide at the waterline. On wider sections, standard barges and other vessels could trade, but full access to the network necessitated the parallel development of the narrowboat, which usually had a beam a couple of inches less to allow for clearance, e.g. 6 feet 10 inches (2.08 m) . It was soon realized that the narrow locks were too limiting, and later locks were therefore doubled in width to 14 feet (4.3 m). This led to the development of the widebeam canal boat. The narrowboat (one word) definition in the Oxford English Dictionary is:^[15]

Narrowboat: a British canal boat of traditional long, narrow design, steered with a tiller; spec. one not exceeding 7 feet (approx. 2.1 metres) in width or 72 feet (approx. 21.9 metres) in length

The narrowboats were initially also known as barges, and the new canals were constructed with an adjacent towpath along which draft horses walked, towing the barges. These types of canal craft are so specific that on the British canal system the term 'barge' is no longer used to describe narrowboats and widebeams. Narrowboats and widebeams are still seen on canals, mostly for leisure cruising, and now engine-powered.^[16]

The people who moved barges were known as lightermen. Poles are used on barges to fend off other nearby vessels or a wharf. These are often called 'pike poles'. The long pole used to maneuver or propel a barge has given rise to the saying "I wouldn't touch that [subject/thing] with a barge pole."^[17]

In the United States a barge was not a sailing vessel by the end of the 19th century. Indeed, barges were often created by cutting down (razeeing) sailing vessels.^[18] In New York this was an accepted meaning of the term barge. The somewhat smaller scow was built as such, but the scow also had its sailing counterpart the sailing scow.

The innovation that led to the modern barge was the use of iron barges towed by a steam tugboat. These were first used to transport grain and other bulk products. From about 1840 to 1870 the towed iron barge was quickly introduced on the Rhine, Danube, Don, Dniester, and rivers in Egypt, India and Australia. Many of these barges were built in Great Britain.^[19]

Nowadays 'barge' generally refers to a dumb barge.^[20] In Europe, a Dumb barge is: An inland waterway transport freight vessel designed to be towed which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion.^[2] In America, a barge is generally pushed.^{[citation needed]}

Barges are used today for transporting low-value bulk items, as the cost of hauling goods that way is very low and for larger project cargo, such as offshore wind turbine blades.^[21][22] Barges are also used for very heavy or bulky items; a typical American barge measures 195 by 35 feet (59.4 m × 10.7 m), and can carry up to about 1,500 short tons (1,400 t) of cargo.^[21] The most common European barges measure 251 by 37 feet (76.5 m × 11.4 m) and can carry up to about 2,450 tonnes (2,700 short tons).

As an example, on June 26, 2006, in the US a 565-short-ton (513 t) catalytic cracking unit reactor was shipped by barge from the Tulsa Port of Catoosa in Oklahoma to a refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Extremely large objects are normally shipped in sections and assembled after delivery, but shipping an assembled unit reduces costs and avoids reliance on construction labor at the delivery site, which in the case of the reactor was still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Of the reactor's 700-mile (1,100 km) journey, only about 40 miles (64 km) were traveled overland, from the final port to the refinery.

The Transportation Institute at Texas A&M found that inland barge transportation in the US produces far fewer emissions of carbon dioxide for each ton of cargo moved compared to transport by truck or rail.^[23] According to the study, transporting cargo by barge produces 43% less greenhouse gas emissions than rail and more than 800% less than trucks. Environmentalists claim that in areas where barges, tugboats and towboats idle may produce more emissions like in the locks and dams of the Mississippi River.^[24]

Self-propelled barges may be used for traveling downstream or upstream in placid waters; they are operated as an unpowered barge, with the assistance of a tugboat, when traveling upstream in faster waters. Canal barges are usually made for the particular canal in which they will operate.

Unpowered vessels—barges—may be used for other purposes, such as large accommodation vessels, towed to where they are needed and stationed there as long as necessary. An example is the Bibby Stockholm.^[25]

• 
  A self propelled barge carrying recycling material on Deûle channel in Lambersart, France
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  Self-propelled car barge on the River Danube
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  Barges near Toulouse, France
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  Self-propelled barge Andromeda in canal at Hanover, Germany
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  Tank barge on the River Moselle, Germany
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  Self-propelled barge carrying bulk crushed stone
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  Self-propelled barge in the port of IJmuiden, Netherlands
• 
  Deck barge^[1] carrying the Space Shuttle external tank for STS-119 under tow to Port Canaveral, Florida, United States
• 
  Self-propelled barges on the Grand Canal of China near Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China
• 
  Coal barges passing Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on the Ohio River
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  Royal Barge Suphannahong docked at Wat Arun pier, one of the Thai royal barges featured in the royal barge ceremony
• 
  Towboat Donna York pushing barges of coal up the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky, United States
• 
  Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870–73), by Ilya Repin
• 
  Tongkang or car barge, landed on Ketapang Port, Banyuwangi, Indonesia
• 
  Slipway at Portland Harbour, Dorset, England, holding a split dump barge (on right)
• 
  Barge on the river Mosel in Germany.
• 
  US Navy Water Type B ship Barge, YW-59, launched August 29, 1941
• 
  YFN-958 a covered lighter barge, non-Self-propelled. Built by Mare Island Navy Shipyard in 1944.
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  Ferrocement Barge, US-102, in the Erie Canal
• 
  WW2 concrete barge at the National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, UK
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  Sun shining into the empty asphalt barge Endeavour while under repair in Muskegon, Michigan.
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  A barge decorated to look like a pelican carrying a jumbotron display.
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  Accommodation Work Barge
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  A restored teak barge used for educational programmes on the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok

• "All craft great and small", Canal & River Trust, W. Owen, London, 2019, retrieved 21 January 2020
• CESNI (2021), European Standard laying down Technical Requirements for Inland Navigation vessels (PDF), European Committee for drawing up Standards in the field of Inland Navigation (CESNI), archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09
• Commissioner of Navigation (1905), Annual Report of the Commissioner of Navigation, Department of Commerce and Labor
• Dickens, Charles (1880), Dickens's Dictionary of the Thames from Oxford to the Nore, Charles Dickens, London
• "Evolution of the inland barge", Proceedings of the merchant marine council, vol. 15, The Merchant Marine Council of the United States, pp. 140–141, 1958
• Illustrated Glossary for Transport Statistics 4th Edition, Eurostat - ITF - UNECE, 2010, ISBN 9789282102947
• McKellar, M.W.; Hocking, H.H. (1871), "Court of Common Pleas", Reports of the Cases Relating to Maritime Law: Decided by the Admiralty, vol. III, Horace Cox, London
• Phillips, J. (1792), A general history of inland navigation, foreign and domestic, I. and J. Taylor, London
• Redman, John B. (1843), "The terrace pier, Gravesend", Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Institution of Civil Engineers, London
• Royal Commission on Labour (1893), Index to the Evidence taken before Groups A., B., & C., Her Majesty's Stationery Office
• Seymour, D.C. (1869), Proceedings of the commercial convention held in New Orleands, L. Graham & Co. New Orleans
• A Society of Gentlemen (1763), A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, W. Owen, London

• Barge Lehigh Valley 79 at the Waterfront Museum, Brooklyn, New York, United States
• Britain's Official guide to canals, rivers and lakes
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Barge" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• DBA The Barge Association
• The American Waterways Operators