While doing a little background on the canal/cruising Wikipedia, we stumbled across this: Given its current state [http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/for-local-residents-a-mission-to-clean-up-the-gowanus-canal/] , one could be forgiven for not recognizing as the Gowanus, but apparently in 1851, the area looked enough like this to inspire British/