By river barge.
"I have an ancestor who worked on a grain barge in Russia."
Not enough information to answer. Additional factors: * What material is the barge made of? * What construction method was used? * Is there a cover or is it an open barge? * Is there anything in it?
Assuming that your barge weight was 500 long tons, lightship, and by 18 feet deep, you meant from the keel to the deck, you could theoretically load the barge with 8,439 metric tons, which would completely lower your deck to the waterline. If you wanted a draft of 9 feet then you could load 3,976 metric tons.
A barge master is a person who is in charge of transport on a barge.
Either can travel faster than the other depending on the load.
they resist stress and spread the load over the length of the board
It depends; Monterrey in Mexico is nowhere near the ocean; so you need to transport all that load from Monterrey to a city in the sea, such as Tampico.
It could be argues that there is no "typical" barge. Barges range in size from small ones used on canals to large floating "tubs" that are filled with grain or other cargo. But, fortunately, our friends at Wikipedia have a "related" answer: a typical barge measures 195 feet by 35 feet (59.4 meters by 10.6 meters), and can carry up to 1500 tons of cargo. The light tonnage (empty weight) was not given, but this barge might weigh in the neighborhood of 650 tons. Need a link? You got it.
Ed Barge's birth name is Edward J. Barge.
A barge pole is a variety of quant pole used to propel a barge through the water.
I believe it was a 200-grain lead round nose bullet.