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Economic Aspects In The Evolution Of The Great Lakes Freighter

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Economic Aspects In The Evolution Of The Great Lakes Freighter

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Content ECONOMIC ASPECTS IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE GREAT LAKES FREIGHTER by John Myron McCarty A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Economics) January 1971 71-21, im McCARTY, John Myron, 1933- ECONOHIC ASPECTS IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE GREAT LAKES FREIGHTER. University of Southern California, Ph.D., 19 71 Economics, history U niversity M icrofilm s, A XEROX C om pany , A nn Arbor, M ichigan k.1 Copyright by JOHN MYRON McCARTY 1971 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 0 0 0 0 7 T h is d iss e rta lion, w rit I e n by John Mj^ron Me Ca r ty under the direction of h . i D i s s e r t a t i o n C o m m ittee, an d a p p r o v e d by all its m em bers, has been presented to an d a cce p ted by T h e G r a d u ate School, in partial fulfillm ent of require ments of the detjree of D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y D a te.uary 3A 1971 DISSERTATION COMMITTEE C {j£*< UV I C.h i TABLE OP CONTENTS LIST OP TABLES.................................. iv LIST OP ILLUSTRATIONS........................... vi Chapter I. THE INTRODUCTION......................... 1 The Prologue The Problem The Hypotheses A Review of the Literature Topography Methodology Organization of the Remainder of the Dissertation II. THE RUDIMENTARY PERIOD................... 17 The Griffin The First Phase of the Fur Trade Boats for the Pur Trade III. THE AGE OP SAIL............................ 48 The Last Phase of the Fur Trade From Fur to Fish to Copper Windj ammers on the Lower Lakes The Effect of Canal Building on the Schooner Fleet IV. THE ASCENDANCY OF STEAM AND THE DEMISE OF S A I L ......................... 101 The Sidewheelers The Propellers The Steam Tug and the Demise of the Sailing Fleet ii Chapter V. THE BULK FREIGHTER...................... 149 A Canal at Sault Sainte Marie The Prototype Bulk Freighter The Whaleback The Development of the Modern Bulk Freighter VI. THE TIME OF TRANSITION 1959-1968 208 The Exodus The Harbinger of the Future Fleet On a Course Toward Equilibrium VII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.................. 249 The Summary The Conclusions BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................... 262 iii LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Northwest Company Receivals - 1798 .... 36 2. English Canal Authorizations ............. 74 3. Receipts of Grain at Buffalo.......... 79 4. Immigration to the U.S., 1820-1860 .... 80 5. Tonnage of Vessels on the Lakes, 1830-1860 ............................... 87 6. Conveyances of Vessels................ 97 7. Freight Rates.......................... 99 8. Steamers on the Western Rivers, 1817-1855 . 107 9. Railroad Growth in Great Lakes States, 1845-1861 ............................... 118 10. Iron Ore Shipments, the Marquette Range, 1856-1880 ............................... 161 11. Great Lakes Shipment of Bulk Freight, 1929-1943 ............................... 191 12. Index of Great Lakes Traffic, Freight Ton-Miles............................ 192 13. Growth of the Great Lakes Bulk Freighters . 194 14. Iron Ore Shipments, Gogebic and Vermilion Ranges.............. 216 15. Iron Ore Shipments from EastemCanada Via the Seaway...................... 218 iv Table Page 16. Scale Effect in Bulk Freighters........... 231 17. Loading and Unloading Statistics, Iron Ore Cargoes....................... 244 18. Cargo Statistics, Iron O r e ............... 246 v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. The Great Trace........................... 32 vl CHAPTER I THE INTRODUCTION The Prologue The decade of the 1950s was one of smooth sailing for the maritime industry on the Great Lakes. Despite the fact that the average age of the vessels that com prised the fleet was nearly fifty (with some approaching their sixtieth year), the ships were able to haul each season over one hundred million tons of cargo through the locks on the Saint Mary*s Palls Canal — a total greater than the combined tonnage that annually passes through the Panama, Suez, Manchester, and the Kiel Canals. The vessels that moved this mountain of freight are longer than two football fields placed end to end; slim and flat bottomed, they are designed to carry the maximum cargoes through the narrow channels and over the shallow rivers that form the connecting links in the chain of lakes. Their elongated hulls are made to twist and flex under strain; in a storm, they slither through the waves like sea serpents. ^Dana Thomas Bowen, Lore of the Lakes (Daytona Beach, Fla.: Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1940), p. 24. 1 2 Near the close of the decade, shipyards situated on both the Canadian and American shores of the Lakes had firm orders for bottoms Whose keel3 would just surpass the 700-foot mark. When used in the iron-ore trade, these new vessels could pack over twenty-five thousand gross tons of the rich-red earth. When sailing in the grain trade, each could carry well over a half a million bushels of wheat from the golden prairies of the Dakotas — enough grain to be able to bake 4,500,000 loaves of bread. But as this halcyon decade drew to a close, mina tory clouds began to appear on the horizon. On the sea side of Lake Ontario the roar of exploding dynamite sounded like the roll of summer thunder, as the Saint Lawrence Seaway was blasted through beds of Laurentian granite. And up on Lake Superior, there was a before-the- blow hush that lingered over the ancient and humpbacked hills, as the veins of specular hematite began to play out in pit after pit on range after range. Rumor mongers in the fo^’s'les of the long ships said the trade would be dead in another five years. In the 1960s Great Lakes shipping ran into heavy weather. When the sluice gates were opened on the Saint Lawrence, the water that surged forth washed away the last natural barrier into the industry. The inland sea 3 fleet was in a state of disequilibrium. For the first time, it was forced to compete for cargoes with ships flying foreign flagsj ships whose construction and insur-, ance costs were approximately half of U.S. costs, and whose seamen earned less than one-quarter of the pay re- ceived by the men who manned the American freighters. The typical foreign-flag ship that sailed through the Seaway cut through the sweet water seas with a rapier bow, pushed forward by throbbing diesel engines? while the average stubby-stemmed lake steamer was what is known in sailing circles as an "armstrong job," in whose stoke hold a pair of brutish firemen, one armed with a number ten shovel and the other with a slice bar, battled with the gluttonous flames that roared beneath a bank of Scotch boilers, while their watch partner, called a "coal passer," rolled shining chunks of anthracite from the bunkers with an antiquated wheelbarrow. Clearly, if the steamship firms on the Great Lakes are going to successfully weather this storm, a new vessel must be developed for domestic use — one designed for the taconite trade but endowed with enough versatility that ^Walter Havighurst, "Coda,1 1 The Great Lakes Header, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New York* McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1969), p. 419. 4 cargoes of coal, stone, sand, and gypsum can be carried at a profit. This ship of the 1970s will be singular Indeed — but then the vessels on the Great Lakes always have been. The Problem Since antiquity, the contrivances for carrying commodities over the storm-swept Great Lakes have been historically unique on the waters of the world. This paper poses, and seeks the solution to, two interrelated problems: They are: 1. Describe the characteristics peculiar to com mercial craft on the Great Lakes; and 2. Uncover and examine the economic factors that have caused the merchant vessels on the Lakes to differ from their sisters that have contemporaneously worked the Western rivers and sailed the salt waters. The Hypotheses In reviewing Harry J. Carman*s magnum opus, Good rich, one of America's great economic historians, has written the following: Some of the new economic history shows a marked reluctance to consider the effects of government action, except in the currently fashionable field 5 of education; and important issues of public policy are sometimes sidestepped by such locutions as "transportation facilities developed" or "millions of acres were purchased from the government." Yet, if the primary purpose of economic history is to attempt to explain economic development, it can no more exclude government action — distasteful or not, "exogenous" or not — than any other set of determinates.3 With this observation in mind, this inquiry into the economic evolution of the Great Lakes freighter will be founded upon three hypotheses. Exterior Dimensions The growth in the exterior dimensions — the siz ing — of the ships has been paced by the extent of river and harbor improvements, especially the lengths, breadths, and depths of the locks on the Saint Mary1s River and at the Welland Canal. Spar Deck and Superstructure The design of the spar deck and the placement of the superstructures have historically been determined by by innovations in loading and unloading techniques that are peculiar to the shores of the Great Lakes. ^Carter Goodrich, "On Rereading Harry J. Carman's Social and Economic History of the United States," The Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XII, No. 2 (June 1969), p. 427. 6 Navigational Equipment and Safety—at—Sea Gear Navigational equipment and safety-at-sea parapher nalia (including government regulations, as well as ship- to-shore telephones, life rafts, and upbound-downbound course agreements) have developed as a result of maritime disasters. Calamity, rather than mere necessity, is the father of invention in the merchant marine. A Review of the Literature No systematic work has ever been initiated, nei ther by historians nor by economists, that has as its purpose to trace the evolution of the Great Lakes1 freighter from LaSalle's Griffin to the modern self-un loader and to elucidate the economic determinants in that evolution. There are several excellent books on the general history of the Great Lakes from which much information for this study was gleaned. By far the best example of the type of literature is Walter Havighurst's The Long Ship's Passing. Havighurst wields a pen that, in non fiction writing, is unsurpassed for beauty and clarity of exposition. For technical excellence Dr. Hatcher's The Great Lakes is not far behind Havighurst's work. The 7 ■books of The American Lakes Series, edited by the late Milo M. Quaife, are sprinkled with tidbits of economic information, but they are out of date and heavy going ex cept to the most avid "lake buff." While assembling data for this work, the writer scoured the bookstores in most of the ports on the Great Lakes. Upon a "bum boat" (a small craft that ties up alongside the bulk freighters and sells the seamen work gloves, beer, and "girlie books") operating in the harbor of Lorain, Ohio, was found a seminal contribution in the form of a trilogy by Dana Thomas Bowen. These books, Lore of the Lakes. Memories of the Lakes, and Shipwrecks of the Lakes, published at the author's own expense, proved to be indispensable in making this study. To date the writer has been able to find no study that has been undertaken to show the change in the equi librium position of the fresh-water fleet due to the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The only book that touches upon this subject is a collection of excerpts edited by Havighurst called The Great Lakes Reader. By far the most interesting and informative portion of this book is Havighurst*s Introduction to the various articles. The preponderance of data on the adjustment of the Great Lakes fleet to the intrusion on their domain by the for- 8 eign—flag ships was culled from the Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association 1968, which the writer received from Mr. Oliver T. Burnham, Vice President and Secretary of that fine combination of vessel operators that has done so much to make the Great Lakes a safe place for a seaman to work. Because the history of the Great Lakes is filled with fires, explosions and collisions, a copious quantity of this sort of literature is available. Seldom have the authors evinced the changes to procedures, regulations or equipment that have evolved as a result of these catas- tropes. The best of this type of writing is William Ratigan's Great Lakes Shipwrecks and Survivals. Only one author has attempted to describe in a scholarly manner the cost in lives and equipment lost in a storm on the Great Lakes. That author is Frank Barcus and his book, Freshwater Fury, which records the effect of the Great Storm of 1913, is unique in the literature of the Great Lakes. Topography In the aggregate the Great Lakes constitute the largest body of fresh water in the world.^ These elon— ^Harlan Hatcher and Erich A. Walter, A Pictorial 9 gated troughs that the gelid hand of the glacier ripped into the heart of the continent contained, prior to pollu tion, 67 trillion gallons of crystalline water. These shimmering seas cover 95,000 square miles — an area greater than that of England, Scotland, and W a l e s .^ In deed, half of the sweet water in the world is found in these lovely laXes. As every schoolboy who has thrilled to the adven tures of Longfellow's "Hiawatha" Xnows, the Algonquin name for LaXe Superior is "Gltche Gumee," which means "Shining Big Sea Water.This largest body of fresh water in the world sits an imperious 602 feet above the level of the ocean. It is 350 miles long, 160 miles wide, and has a water surface of 31,200 square miles. It is a frigid 1,333 feet deep. According to Doctor Hatcher, this great est of the Great LaXes rises and falls three inches with the tug of the moon.8 History of the Great LaXes (New YorX: Crown Publishers, Inc. , 1963) , p^ T“ . ^Dana Thomas Bowen, Memories of the LaXes (Daytona Beach, Fla.: Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1946), p. 6. ^Bowen, Lore of the LaXes, p. 27. "^Hatcher and Walter, op. cit. , p. 3. 8Ibid. 10 Lac super!eur or "upper lake," as the French ex plorers first called it, is found twenty-one feet above the water level of both Lake Michigan and Lake H u r o n . ^ It is connected to the latter by the Saint Marys River. The Saint Marys is a tortuous 63-mile long stream which forms a portion of the boundary between the United States and Canada. The northern third of the river, from Point Iroquois to Sault Sainte Marie, is situated on the same level as is Lake Superior. At the 1 1 Soo," as steam ship men call it, the river drops twenty feet in about one mile, causing the unnavigable Sault Sainte Marie Rapids. The lower river, from Sault Sainte Marie to the bunker dock at Detour, is dotted with islands and consti tutes the narrowest link in the chain of lakes.^ The Saint Marys River flows into the northern end of Lake Huron. Lake Huron is the secc.id largest of the Great Lakes, having 23,800 square miles of water surface. Tx is 206 miles long, 183 miles wide and has a maximum d of 750 feet. Two bays are found on its rock shores. Tt*j 9Ibid. l°Charles Moler Davis, "Saint Marys River," Ency clopaedia Britannica, Vol. XIX, p. 918. 11 smaller, Saginaw Bay, is an indentation on the western shore and it forms the thumb of the fabled "Michigan Mit ten, " i.e., the lower peninsula of the State of Michigan has a configuration that appears like a "chopper" mitten, with the thumb sticking out into Lake Huron. The largest bay, named Georgian Bay, is found on the Canadian side of Lake Huron, and is made up of Georgian Bay proper, which is a body of water nearly as large as Lake Ontario, plus the North Channel, which is the rock-strewn top of Geor gian Bay. The top of Lake Huron is connected to the top of Lake Michigan by the Straits of Mackinac, and the bot tom of Lake Huron is joined to Lake Erie by a sequence of waterways which includes the Saint Clair River, Lake Saint Clair, and the Detroit River. Lake Michigan is the only one of the five Great Lakes that is found to be entirely within the ambit of the United States. It is 300 miles long, 118 miles wide, and has a maximum depth of 925 feet. Lake Michigan has a water surface of 22,450 square miles. Both Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are 581 feet above sea level. Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes? it has a maximum depth of only 210 feet. It is 214 miles ■^Bowen, Lore of the Lakes, p. 24. 12 long, 57 miles wide and "has a water surface of 9,960 square miles, every drop of which is so saturated with pollution that Lake Erie may well be the first body of water mortal man can walk upon. Lake Erie sits 573 feet above sea level and 326 feet above Lake Ontario, to which it is joined by the Niagara River. Lake Ontario is the least of the lakes. It is only 193 miles long, 53 miles wide, and 804 feet deep. This little lake sits 247 feet above tidewater. Lake Ontax~io is connected to the Atlantic by the Saint Lawrence River, the greatest North American river that pours into the ocean. Measured from Kingston to Gaspe, the Saint Lawrence is 725 miles long.-1 -3 Methodology This study is a composite of data garnered from printed sources, interviews with seamen, and personal ex perience on salt and sweet-water vessels, and placed with in the framework of comparative statics. The scheme followed in this Investigation has been first to segregate the history of transport on the Great Lakes into a series of periods which represent the tech 1 2 Hatcher and Walter, op. cit., p. 9. 13Ibid., p. 11. 13 nology used during these eras. Examples of segments of this primary structure are The Rudimentary Period and The Age of Sail. Each of these major periods will contain several types of conveyances. I'or example. The Rudimen tary Period encompasses La Salle's Griffin, the canoe, the bateau, and the Mackinac boat. Next, a system for classifying changes in tech nology has been developed. This system includes the fol lowing: Synchronous Changes — This category identifies changes that occur simultaneously on the Great Lakes, the oceans, and the Western Rivers. Demand Changes — This part includes all changes that result from upward or downward shifts in the demand schedules for the commodities being carried. Endemic Changes — This subset segregates innova tions in transport technology which constitute an adjust ment to strictly local conditions. For example, changes to the configuration of vessels resulting from the intro duction of new techniques in loading and unloading that are peculiar to the shores of the Great Lakes are in this class. Exogenous Changes — This category includes initi ation, modification, or termination in methods of trans- 14 port as a result of actions beyond the natural transporta tion system. The alteration of steam design as an adjust ment to a governmental decision to construct a canal would be in this category. Cyclical Changes — Changes in transport brought about as a result of fluctuations in the business cycle are in this class. Catastrophic Changes — This segment of the system contains changes in technology that are a consequence of maritime disasters. In the final step, changes in the contrivances historically used in marine transportation on the Great Lahes — both minor changes within the intervals and the major changes between periods — are analyzed according to the system previously described for classifying such occurrences. The results of these analyses are subse quently used to test the hypotheses of the dissertation. Organization of the Remainder of the Dissertation It is the overall purpose of this study to examine the economic aspects in the evolution of the Great Lahes freighter. Pursuant to this purpose, the study begins with an examination of the construction and maiden voyage 15 of the Griffin, the square-rigged vessel that was the cor nerstone of the commercial empire that Robert Cavelier de La Salla sought to establish in North America. The study then follows the fortunes of the great fur-trading companies and traces the voyageur1s canoe through three configurations. The effect that the North west Fur Company's canal at Sault Saint Marie had upon the bateau and Mackinac boat is considered as is the transi tion from these small craft to the centerboard schooner. The economic rationale for the use, by the fur magnates, of a vessel with fore-and-aft rigging, rather than one with square sails, is then explored, followed by a description of how a change in fashion in Europe caused the schooners operating on Lake Superior to enter the fish business. The changes brought about by the Panic of 1873 to this trade are subsequently portrayed. The roles that the Erie and Welland Canals played in marine technology are highlighted, as is the economic relationship that the fore—and-after had with the steam tug, a relationship that was instrumental in ending the schooner's dominance. The effect of the Panic of 1857 upon the railroad- owned sidewheeler is the next topic scrutinized, followed 16 by the emergence of its successor, the propeller. How the Chicago Fire and the Panic of 1873 termi nated the reign of the centerboard schooner — after which the modern bulk freighter attained supremacy over lake transport — is then discussed. The effect that canal construction, innovations in loading and unloading equipment, and marine disasters have had upon the evolution of the bulk freighter is ex amined in depth. The study concludes with an analysis of both the disequilibrium in the Great Lakes' fleet that resulted from the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway and the factors that were instrumental in shaping the first ship i of the 1970s, CHAPTER II THE RUDIMENTARY PERIOD The Griffin The Construction In 1666, fifty-one years after Samuel de Champlain had first followed the Ottawa River to Lake Nipissing and thence to Lake Huron/ Rene Robert Cavelier Sleur de La Salle immigrated to New Prance to take possession of a seigniory that had been given to him by the Seminary of Saint Sulpice. Three years after his arrival in America, he led his first major expedition into the wild, only to lose to Joliet by a handful of days the glory of discover ing Lake Erie.^ His dash and daring brought his name to the atten tion of Count Frontenac, the new governor of Canada, who was under constant pressure to find wealth to fill the ■^Irving S. Kull and Nell M. Kull, A Chronological Encyclopedia of American History (New York: Popular Li brary^ 1952), p. 22. 9 Harlan Hatcher, Lake Erie, in The American Lakes Series, ed. by Milo M. Quaife (Indianapolis: The Bobbs- Merrill Company, 1944), p. 27. 17 18 royal coffers. Frontenac enlisted La Salle's aid and be came his patron. Their first expedition consisted of a journey up the Saint Lawrence River. Their party included over 400 men sailing an armada of 150 canoes, plus two flatboats bearing supplies. Following an arduous trip against the current and over the long Sault Rapids, the boatmen dis embarked at the head of the river and there commenced the construction of Fort Frontenac, which was erected on the site of what is now Kingston, Ontario. In 1674, the Governor sent La Salle back to France to defend the building of Fort Frontenac, which the Count had accomplished with royal funds on his own Initiative. Of this period in La Salle's life, Doctor Hatcher states in his compelling prosei Like Champlain before him, La Salle had to use up more time and energy in breaking through the petty court j ealousies and the unimaginative re strictions of the bureaucrats and politicians in France than in launching his broad enterprises in the Great Lakes wilderness. He had to go back and forth across the Atlantic time after time and cool his heels in Paris anterooms while fussy men who had scarcely set foot outside the capital consid ered the advisability of his bold plans for ex panding the Empire and enlarging trade.4 3 Clara Ingram Judson, St. Lawrence Seaway (Chicagox Follett Publishing Company, 1959), p^ 25. ^Harlan Hatcher, The Great Lakes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944) , p. 107. 19 He must "have been a very persuasive spokesman, for on bis first visit to Paris, La Salle not only rational ized Frontenac*s building of the fort to the satisfaction of the court, but he was also granted the seigniory at Fort Frontenac. The latter drove him deeply into debt. For the privilege of commanding the fort, La Salle agreed to sheathe it in stone, support (at his own expense) a garrison of armed men that was equal in strength to that maintained by the Crown at Montreal, found a colony under the aegis of the fort, and build a church and support one Recollect friar.5 In attempting to discharge these obligations, La Salle incurred a myriad of mortgages that were destined to become a crushing burden. La Salle shifted the center of his operations from the Lachine Rapids to Fort Fronte nac, where he conceived of a bold plan to free himself from the web of obligations in which he had become en meshed. In 1677, he was again in Paris to seek authoriza tion and money that would turn his vision into reality. He returned with a charter from Colbert that permitted him, among other things, to build ships with which to 5Ibid., p. 108. 20 carry on commerce on the Great Lakes. He also brought back from the Continent large quantities of canvas, ropes, guns, and iron, in addition to the tools of the ship wright's trade, such as adzes, rip saws, anvils, and hammers. Upon arriving at Port Frontenac, La Salle led his band of adventurers (which consisted of a mixture of Nor mans, Flemings, and Italians, plus one gray friar named Father Hennepin) in the building of three small sloops, each of ten-ton displacement. These were slated to be used for hauling supplies and shipwright's equipage from Fort Frontenac, on the extreme eastern end of Lake On tario, to the mouth of the Niagara River, which is located on the southern shore, near the western end of this small est of Great Lakes. While they were the first sailing ships upon the inland seas, they were to play a minor part in La Salle's overall scheme. Too large to either be por taged over the Niagara escarpment or to navigate the Saint Lawrence River, they were destined to ply only the tran quil waters of Lake Ontario. When the first of these cockleshells was com pleted, she was sent on her way with Father Hennepin shipping as observer. The first week of December found her pulling into the mouth of the Niagara River, where sat 21 a Seneca village. While the crew turned to the cargo, the Recollect friar set out to explore the wilderness. He followed the river as far as a canoe could go; then, he began the arduous climb up the face of the escarpment. Finally, he found himself standing before Niagara Falls — the first white man to view this thundering cataract. After stopping long enough to make a detailed sketch of the phenomenon, Hennepin joined his compatriots in scouting for a place to start a shipyard. They se lected a site on the Cayuga Creek, where now sits the town of La Salle, New York, located between Niagara Falls and Black R o c k .^ They were joined by others and work began. The large vessel began to take shape. Compared to the three little sloops, the ship was a veritable levi athan for, according to the recordings of the Recollect friar, she was a full sixty feet in length and between fifty and sixty tons burden. La Salle christened her the Griffin, after that mythological being with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. It was the sil houette of this creature that graced both Count Fronte- nac's shield and the prow of the vessel. She was commo— Dana Thomas Bowen, Lore of the Lakes (Daytona Beach, Fla.t Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1940), p. 31. 22 dious relative to the salt water ships of the day, and she carried an "anchor that required four men ‘well stim ulated with brandy' to carry it over the falls,"7 Her armament consisted of five cannons. The Maiden Voyage On August 7, 1679, La Salle and his crew made sail. With the fleur-de-lis flying from her stern, the first merchant ship above the Falls stood to sea. Her destination — the fur-filled forests on the northwestern shore of Lake Michigan. La Salle, then thirty-five and a thirteen-year veteran in the battle with the elements, intended to carve an empire out of the wilderness with peltry as a resource base. Pursuant to this goal, La Salle had sent out 15 men from Fort Frontenac as the vanguard of his commercial operations. The first night out, the ship became shrouded in dense fog and almost grounded on that arm of land now known as Long Point that stretches out for ten miles into Lake Erie. Sixteen days later, the ship was nearly lost in a storm off the Michigan mitten. "^Hatcher, Lake Erie, p. 31. 23 After the seas went down, the Griffin passed through the Straits of Mackinac and sailed out into the northern realms of what the Indians then called the "Lake of the Illinois," which is now known as Lake Michigan. Soon the pilot brought the vessel about Washington Island, which stands at the entrance to Green Bay. Ashore they were greeted by the traders La Salle had sent into the north from Fort Frontenac. These men were not remiss in their duties, for they had a fortune in furs ready to be hoisted aboard. They also knew the location of other Indians who would be more than glad to part with the fruits of their winter's work for an assort- ment of beads, baubbles, and blankets that the Griffin held in her hold. Soon, the vessel was loaded to the gunwales with pelts. Weighed down by debt and the wages of his men over a year in arrears, La Salle decided to send the Griffin around the Michigan mitten and on to the Niagara River with naught but a skeleton crew, while the remainder of the party made an expedition into the wilderness. On September 18, 1679, with five men under the command of a pilot, the Griffin sailed through Porte Des Morts Passage. A round was fired from her cannon in farewell, and then she sped into the gloaming — never to be seen again. 24 The Last Remains What happened to the Griffin? That is a question that has piqued the imagination of hoth seamen and histo rians since she sailed away in mid-September, 1679. Father Hennepin rendered the following judgment! They sailed the 18th of September with a westerly wind. . . . The ship came to an anchor to the north of the lake of the Illinois [Lake Michigan] where she was seen by some Savages, who told us that they advised our men to sail along the coast and not towards the middle of the lake, because of the sands that make the navigation dangerous when there is any high wind. Our pilot [Luke] as I said before, was dissatisfied and would steer where he pleased, without hearkening to the advice of the Savages who, generally speaking, have more sense than the Europeans think at first; but the ship was hardly a league from the coast when it was tossed up by a violent storm in such a manner that our men were never heard of since; and it is supposed that the ship struck upon some sand and was there buriedl^ While there is a great diversity of opinion as to the fate of this two-master, all experts agree that La Salle was gambling against Insurmountable odds when he sent a shorthanded ship out on the lakes only four days before the autumnal equinox, a period when the weather is very changeable. While the shores of the Great Lakes 8 Dwight Boyer, Great Stories of the Great Lakes (New York* Dodd, Mead and Company, 1966), p^ 219. 25 are literally strewn with the hones of old sailing ves sels, two hulks found on Lake Huron seem to be the leading contenders for the title of the Griffin1s last remains. The first of these was discovered on a lonely strand at the top of Manitoulin Island, which separates the waters of the North Channel of Georgian Bay from the expanse of Lake Huron. It was not until the 1880s that pioneers first attempted to carve a home in the extreme northern portion of the island. Those that did found an ancient hulk washed up on the beach near the black waters of the Mississagi Strait. Being practical people, they scavenged the wreck for anything useful. The fishermen used her lead caulking to fashion net weights; the farmers used her iron bolts for harrow teeth. After her bones had been picked clean, the skele ton was ignored until just before the beginning of the twentieth century, when other bones were found. The keeper of the Mississagi light and his assist ant were walking near the ravaged wreck when a rabbit bolted before them and then bounded for the nearest hole. While attempting to uncover the animal, the assistant un earthed the entrance to a cave which contained the last remains of six men — which was precisely the number of 26 hands manning the Griffin when she vanished.9 On the floor of this natural crypt were found a silver watch, some French coins, and a wealth of brass buttons. The remains of the second vessel were found on Russell Island, which lies just off the northern tip of the Bruce Peninsula, an arm that forms the southern en closure of the Georgian Bay. The Russell Island wreck site is also on the western shore of Lake Huron and lies only 90 miles away from the hulk on Manitoulln Island. The Russell Island remains are much more meager than those found further north, for they consist only of a 40-foot keel, together with sternson and stemson. Attached to the keel were a large number of ribs that formed the port side of the vessel. The starboard side is completely missing. These last vestiges have been removed from Russell Island and taken to Tobermory, a hamlet on the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, by commercial fisherman Orrie Vail, whose father first found the wreck years ago. Each wreck has a following of historians and ma rine experts that believe it to be the hallowed bones of the Great Lakes' first merchantman. 9Ibid., p. 222 27 The 1930s brought a surge of Interest to the wreck on Manltoulin Island. In 1931, C. H. J. Snider, who was an authority on ancient methods of ship construction, went to great lengths to analyze the remains of the wreck. It was his contention that the timbers and planking that re mained of the ship that had been driven up on Manitoulin Island were too ponderous to have come from a craft the size of the Griffin, and that the main members did not bear appropriate markings to indicate that they had been hewn and dressed by broadax and adze. However, a metal lurgist, named G. E. Plummer, stated that her ironwork indicated that it had been formed using processes preva lent in seventeenth-century Europe. Wood and iron from the wreck on Russell Island were examined by experts from the Dominion Government Forest Product Laboratories and the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology? these specialists concurred in the belief that the remnants could be well over three hundred years old. A Canadian artist with a wealth of maritime ex perience, Rowley W. Murphy, studied both pile ups and, after making detailed sketches and comparing these with drawings of the Griffin that appeared in Father Hennepin * s 28 book, came to the conclusion that the Russell Island wi^ck is the authentic one. In hopes of solving this problem of legitimacy, descriptions, pictures, and measurements of both wrecks were forwarded to the Marine Museum of Paris, for review by two world authorities on marine archaeology, T. Vichot and M. Denolx. Based upon a naval survey made in 1672, these savants stated that at the time of the Griffin1s construction, the French used iron bolts entirely to se cure the timbers in their hulls, while the English and the Dutch used a great many wooden pegs in their construc tion techniques. There were no wooden pegs present in the hulk that was found at the entrance to the Mississagi Strait, but wooden pegs were found in abundance at the site of the Russell Island wreck. Vichot, the director of the museum, wrote that the iron bolts that were found in the Manltoulin Island wreck were a distinguishing characteristic of French ship building prior to 1673. Each of these threaded bolts had a slot cut in it, over which a washer was placed, and after which an iron wedge was driven into place. This method of fastening, dating as far back as the days of Caesar, Indicates that the ironwork in the Manltoulin 29 wreck was of an earlier vintage than that found in the hulk on Russell Island.3,0 The opinions of these Gallic scholars were further substantiated by recent waterfront excavations at King ston, Ontario. These diggings unearthed the moldering hulks of ancient French ships. The structure of their timbers was identical to those found on Monitoulin Island — heavy main members which supported ribs that are placed closely together.^ The sea had won the first joust. it would take seventy-five years for man to muster enough courage to attempt to sail a merchant vessel the size of the Griffin across Lake Erie*s treacherous waters. In spite of this ill-starred beginning, massive ships and mountainous car goes waited just over the horizon. Father Hennepin, who served as the Griffin1s his torian as well as her chaplain, had a glimpse of this fabulous future for he wrotet It were easy to build on the sides of these great Lakes, an Infinite Number of considerable Towns which might have Communication one with 10Ibid., p. 228. 11Ibid., p. 224. 30 another by Navigation for Five Hundred Leagues together, and by an inconceivable Commerce which would establish itself among them.12 While this vision waited to become a reality, the field was abandoned to the canoe, the bateau, and the Mackinac boat. The First Phase of the Fur Trade In his beautiful book, The Long Ships Passing. Havighurst quotes Bancroft as writing that during the ex ploration of the northern lakes and their environs ’ ’not a cape was turned, not a river entered, but a priest led the way.The fur trader was never more than one step behind for there were fortunes to be made "in the bush." After the loss of the Griffin, these men who felt compelled to seek their fortunes in uncharted places used rivers as arteries to enter the heartland of the continent. Because the waterway to the southern lakes was blocked first by the Niagara Escarpment and then by the fierce warriers from the five nations (the Iroquois, the the mortal enemies of the French), the voyageurs turned their eyes to the forests that encompass Lake Superior. 12 Walter Havighurst, The Long Ships passing (New Yorki The Macmillan Company, 1961) , p. 20. 13Ibld., p. 11. 31 While the acquisitive English commenced to clear and cul tivate the stony strip on the Atlantic seaboard, the inquisitive French were cruising over the rivers and lakes of half a continent; hence, "Sault Sainte Marie is older than Philadelphia and Green Bay had a settlement fifty years before the founding of Baltimore. The Great Trace Known to the Indians since antiquity and used by Samuel de Champlain when he discovered Lake Huron, the Great Trace started with the waters at Lachine, above Montreal and near La Salle's original seigniory (see the dashed line on Figure 1).*^ Leaving the Saint Lawrence, the voyaqeurs paddled their canoes up the Ottawa River. After passing many a putrid pond where the swamp flies came boiling up in dense black clouds, and after portag ing their long canoes over the many spots where the Ottawa runs thin over the rocks, the voyaqeurs entered the Mat- tawa, which spills into the Ottawa from the west. The Mattawa leads to Lake Nipissing, which appears on contem- 14 Walter Havighurst, "Voyageurs1 Tales," The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New York: McGraw- Hill Book Company, 1961), p. 3. ■^Henry Beston, "The Golden Age of the Canoe," The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1961), p. 33. Figure 1 The Great Trace Source: Clara Ingram Judson, St. Lawrence Seaway (Chicago: « Follett Publishing Company, 1959. 33 porary maps like a puddle that splashed over when Lake Huron was formed. From Lake Nipissing, it was only 50 miles via the French River to Georgian Bay. After leaving Georgian Bay, the canoe crews worked their way westward on Lake Huron to an enchanting little island that sits at the very peak of the Michigan mitten, which the Ojibways call ed Mitchimakinak, which the French called Michilimacklnac, and which is now called Mackinac, which means the "Great Turtle" in any language. Mackinac soon became the fulcrum of the French fur trade. Beston describes this action elegantly as follows* All summer long the pretty island was a scene of bustle and activity. Goods were transshipped, crews sorted out and reassembled, the sick at tended to, and canoes repaired. standing on the heights at night, looking out into the vast dark ness above Huron, one could see fires burning all up and down the lower beach, each glow of fire crowded close about with its own company.16 The spring thaw brought the voyageurs trudging down to Mackinac with their winter's take strapped into great bales. From Mackinac the convoy of canoes, each one loaded to the gunwales with peltry, would start the long trek over the Great Trace back to Montreal, where the first trading companies were headquartered. 16Xbid. 34 The Trading Companies The profits to be made in the fur trade were enor mous. When France dominated North America, square-rigged Gallic merchantmen sailed up the Saint Lawrence to Mon treal and there loaded entire cargoes of furs for France. On the continent, the French Company was paying its stock- 1 *7 holders 40 percent on their investment. Twenty-five years after Brule discovered Lake Superior, Radlsson, age eighteen, and his brother-in-law, Groseilliers, set out for the wild in search of adventure and wealth. Two-thousand miles later, they arrived at Quebec at the head of a caravan of 360 canoes loaded with hides.I® In 1670, Radisson formed the Hudson's Bay Trad ing Company and his fortune was assured. In 1759, the French hegemony In the New World was brought to an end. But the bell that tolled the end of an empire merely rang in another group of entrepreneurs to the fur trade: the voyaqeurs — some French and some half-breeds — still paddled the canoes and trapped the animals, but now it was the Scots that made the millions. The fur trade flourished.^9 l^Havighurst, The Long Ships Passing, p. 19. 18Ibid. ■^■^Beston, op. clt. . p. 31. 35 In 1783, British interests in Canada organized the Northwest Company to work the forests in the northwestern portion of the Great Lakes. Since the Hudson's Bay Com pany restricted its efforts to the white wilderness "beyond the watershed of the Great Lakes, the Northwest Company is considered the first of the Juggernauts that endeavored to monopolize the fur trade.20 Having twenty-three partners, including such famous gentlemen as Sir Alexander Mac kenzie, the Company was capitalized at over a million dollars, employed a work force of over 2,000 men, and was protected by typical merchantilist legislation that granted the Company exclusive trapping and trading rights within the ambience of Lake Superior.2^ The Company was an immediate success. Table 1 shows the Northwest Com pany's receivals of skins and hides during the year of 1798. In order to partake in the profits of the fur trade, another Canadian syndicate, the Mackinaw Company, was formed to exploit the Wisconsin territory and the Upper Mississippi Basin, with the hub of its operations located on picturesque Mackinac Island. It was capital ized at $800,000. 20natcher, The Great Lakes, p. 198. 21Ibid. 36 TABLE 1 NORTHWEST COMPANY RECEIVALS — 1798 106,000 Beaver skins 2,100 Bear skins 1,500 Pox skins 4,000 Kit fox skins 4,600 Otter skins 17,000 Musquash skins 32,000 Marten skins 1,800 Mink skins 6,000 Lynx skins 600 Wolverine skins 1,600 Fisher skins 3,800 Wolf skins 700 Elk hides 1,950 Deer hides 500 Buffalo robes Sourcex Walter Havighurst, The Long Ships Passing (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1961), p. 19. 37 After the Americans had won their independence, it was only natural that the Yankee businessmen would want to share in the business. The man who would soon become the young nation’s first multimillionaire by organ izing a great monopoly to engage in this trade was a butcher’s son. Born in Germany in 1763, John Jacob Astor left the village of Waldorf at the age of sixteen. Of this first of the "robber barons," Doctor Hatcher, who has a flair for tongue-in-cheek narration, has this to sayi Legend has it that he stopped outside his village to make his pledge "to be honest, to be industri ous, and never to gamble.1 1 Except possibly for a few slumps in his driving energy, he did fulfill the second of the articles of his pledge.22 His first job in America was selling cakes for his brother, but this enterprising immigrant soon realized that the fur trade was more profitable. He left his brother and took a job with a New York furrier; soon he went out on his own. His rise was meteoric. After twenty-four years in the trade, he was able to muster one- million dollars of his own money to provide the capital for his American Fur Company. 22Hatcher, The Great Lakes, p. 199, 38 Boats for the Fur Trade There were three small craft used by the fur mag nates to carry their precious cargoes — the canoe, the bateau, and the Mackinac boat. The Canoe While all of the Algonquin tribes of the northeast constructed canoes, the contrivance reached its zenith in the hands of the Chippewas. Historian and naturalist, Beston wrotet Living in the heart of the old canoe-birch country, every man of the nation with his eye and mark on some great tree, the tribe united as no other a special skill in design with the finest of materials. The lovely curve of bow and stern remains for us their sign. Every Indian nation of the birch region had its own native and tenacious image of that bold symme try. Some made of it a quasi-perpendicular, some put the depth here, others there; a stranger could be placed by the line of his canoe as easily as by the cut of his mocca sins. To the Chippewas alone was reserved the sense of the curve in its perfection, in its unique and beautiful rightness. Strong, well-made, capable of carrying heavy loads yet easy to portage, the Chippewa model like the covered wagon is a part of the history of the continent.23 There were three types of canoes used in the fur trade. The largest was named the Montreal canoe (canot ^Beston, op. cit. , p. 32. 39 du maitre). This style was developed for hauling large quantities of furs from the trading posts to the major transshipment points. As such, they were found shirting the shores of the northern lakes or slipping through the waters of the larger rivers. The Montreal canoe's length lay between 30 to 40 feet, and she carried a crew of four teen men.24 The smallest type used in the trade was known as the north canoe (canot du nord). This type was designed for use "out in the bush." Its size, averaging about 25 feet, allowed it to be portaged over rough terrain when the voyaqeurs ran out of water. The north canoe carried a crew of eight.25 The intermediate canoe was called the bastard (le batard) and was used for general purpose hauling, usually between the trading posts and the encampments in the wil derness. The bastard was constructed to carry a crew of 0 ten. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrotet 24ibid. 25Ibid. 26ibid. 40 Thus the Birch Canoe was bullded And the forest's life was in it, All its mystery and its magic All the lightness of the birch—tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews; And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, Like a yellow water-lily.27 In no other vehicle of transport is there to be found such strength in concert with beauty as in the birch bark canoe and nowhere had these attributes been put to more rigor ous a test than in the wild waters of Lake Superior. Grace Lee Nute notes that "for ages it was the only craft on the lake,"28 In 1826, Thomas McKenney witnessed the building of a canoe on the shores of Lake Superior and has de scribed the process for posterity: I have attended the progress of the work in building this canoe. It is curious enough. Stakes are driven in the ground at certain dis tances, along each side of where the canoe is to be built, and for the entire length of it. Pieces of bark are sewn together with wattap (small rootlets of a coniferous tree), and placed between, from one end to the other, and made fast to them. When the bark is thus in, it hangs loose, and in folds, and looks, with out its regularity, like the covers of a book 97 Grace Lee Nute, Lake Superior, in The American Lakes Series, ed. by Milo M^ Quaife (Indianapolisx The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944), p. 113. 2®Ibid. 41 with its back downwards, its edges up, and the leaves out. Next, the cross pieces are put in, pressing out the rim, and giving to the upper edges the form which the canoe is to bear — then the ribs are pressed in, the thin sheath ing, in strips, being laid between them and the bark, and these [the ribs], press out the bark, and give form and figure to the bottom and sides of the canoe. Weights [large stones] are put on the bottom of these ribs, which had been pre viously soaked, and kept there till they dry. The next process is to remove the stakes, gum the seams, and the fabric is complete. There remains no more to do but to put it in the water, where it floats like a feather. This canoe is thirty-six feet long, and five wide across the middle.29 McKenney did not specify the exact type of wood that was used in the building of the canoe. According to authoress Nute, the frame was always of white cedar with paddles hewn from red cedar. Evidently the Frenchmen became very proficient with those red-cedar paddles for, with fair weather and no headwind, canoe crews have been known to journey up to 80 miles a day. One historian speaks of the canoes skimming through the waters propelled by voyaqeurs that averaged 40 strokes of the paddle to the m i n u t e .^0 The most skilled paddlers were placed in the bow and stern of the 29Ibld., p p . 113-114. ^Beston, op. clt. , p. 34 42 canoe and their recompense was twice as much as the re- Q 1 ward received by the "middlemen." In the decade before the start of the nineteenth century, a Scot named McTavish canoed over the tortuous 900 mile trail from the Sault to Montreal in just seven and three-quarters days. Some years later, George Landon, having the help of both a hand-picked crew and a following wind, shaved twelve hours off McTavish's time to set a new record.33 Beston states that people who had been transported by the voyaqeurs remembered most vividly their singing; for as their gaily painted canoes sped along, the sound of the old Norman ballads, whose cadence seemed to capture the sound of the stroke of the paddle, came wafting over the water.33 Talented singers received extra pay.34 Yet one must not think of the voyaqeurs as a waterborne carol society, for working the Great Lakes has always been a dangerous business. Hatcher quotes Alexander Henry, a fur ^Hatcher, The Great Lakes, p. 147. ■^Havighurst, "Voyageurs* Tales," p. 4. 33Beston, op. cit.. p. 35. 34Harlan Hatcher, "Sails," The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New Yorki McGraw-Hill Book Com pany, 1961), p. 353. 43 trader who had traveled over the Ottawa-Niplssing-Georgian Bay route, as observing that "so many men were ruptured, strained, or injured for life that a fund had to be estab lished at Montreal for the relief of 'disabled and decayed voyageurs.*"35 But, there were fortunes to be made in the fur trade and so, obvious to the dangers, caravans of canoes headed northward. As the European demand for American furs in creased, it did not take long for the tycoons of the trade to realize that voyageurs paddling birch bark canoes, however picturesque, were far from the most economical method of transport. The first improvisation on Lake Superior was the use of red oars in place of paddles.^ In 1849, Louis Agassiz. Harvard University's great Swiss- born geologist, zoologist, and teacher, made an expedition to the upper lake, during which he made the following observation* . . . _ While on the lake the canoes are not usually paddled, but rowed, the same number of men ex erting greater force with oars than with paddles. By doubling the number of men, putting two on a seat, more can be accomplished with paddles. The gunnel of a canoe is too slight to allow the ■^Hatcher, The Great Lakes, p. 147. 3^Nute, op. cit., p. 114. 44 cutting of rowlocks, or the insertion of thole pins; so a flat strip from a tree, with a branch projecting at right angles, is nailed to the gunnel, and a loop of rawhide attached, through which the oar is passed.37 While the use of oars was an Improvement, it was not a significant one and soon, in response to the need for greater cargo capacity, the bateau and the Mackinac boat evolved. The Bateau The bateau was built of wood from the red cedar, a tree endemic to the shores of Lake Superior. It had a raked bow and stern, distended sides, and a flat bottom. It was about the same size as the type of lifeboats, known as "double enders," that are carried by modern bulk freighters.-*8 According to Nute, the bateau was "merely the white man's version of the canoe."88 Designed for transporting goods on the open lake, rather than on the rivers and streams, it was built a good deal sturdier than its illustrious ancestor. The price paid for this addi ■*^Nute, op. cit. , pp. 114-115. 88United States Coast Guard, Manual for Lifeboat— men and Able Seamen. Qualified Members of Engine Depart ment. and Tankerman (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1955), p. 3. -*^Nute, op. cit. , p. 116. 45 tional strength was that the bateau became too ponderous to be portaged. So that the bateaux, heavily loaded with bales of blankets and barrels of brandy for trading with the Indi ans, could make the transition from Lake Huron to Lake Superior without being carried around the Saint Marys Rapids, in 1797, Canada's Northwest Fur Company con structed a canal on the northern (Canadian) side at Sault Sainte Marie.The lock was 38 feet long and 8 feet, 9 Inches v/.ide. A towpath was cut alongside of the bank so that oxon could move the bateaux in and out of the cham ber. The wooden gates were opened and closed by a hand- operated windlass. The lift provided by the canal was only 9 feet; the remaining 12 feet between the two largest lakes could be negotiated by the bateaux.^ This first lock at Sault Sainte Marie was de stroyed, except for its timberfloor and miter sills, dur ing the War of 1812 by an American force up from Mackinac Island under the command of Major Holmes.^2 ^Judson, op. cit. , p. 41. ^Harlan Hatcher and Erich A. Walter, A Pictorial History of the Great Lakes (New Yorki Crown Publishers, Inc., 1963), p. 248. ^Elmer Eckroad, The Soo Locks (Sault Sainte Marie, Mich.r Elmer Eckroad, Publisher, 1957), p. 14. 46 The Mackinac The Mackinac boat takes its place in between the canoe and the bateau; because of its heavy frame, it could take more punishment than the canoe, but it was light enough that four strong men could lug it around obstruc tions.^ Built of red or white oak boards, it had a pointed prow, a flat bottom, and a square stern. The larger versions of the Mackinac boat were 30 feet long, 7 feet wide, and had a carrying capacity of over four tons,^ Like the bateau, the Mackinac boat had accommoda tions for a mast and carried a sail when the wind was right. Nute quotes one old voyaqeur as follows: "With a mild breeze these boats will sail from 60 to 70 miles per day, while they cannot be propelled by oars more than half that distance."45 At first, the sails were made of tanbark and were carried on a small yard that ran across the width of the boat. Later canvas replaced tanbark and the sail was set in fore-and-aft fashion.46 Milo M. Quaife, Lake Michigan, in The American Lake Series, ed. by Milo M. Quaife (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944), p. 175. ^Nute, loc. cit. 45ibid. 46ibid. 47 Prom the Mackinac boat with fore-and-aft rigging, it was only a short step to the Great Lakes schooner. CHAPTER III THE AGE OP SAIL The Last Phase of the Fur Trade Schooners vs. Square Riggers When comparing the windj ammer days upon sweet water with the salt water experience, it is obvious that there is more disparity than similarity. On the oceans of the world, the square-rigged vessel (a ship carrying canvas stretched on yards fastened at right angles to the heel) held sway, while on the Great Lakes the schooner (a ship with two or more masts upon which is fixed tri angular canvas running parallel to the keel) has always been the most popular form of wind propelled cargo car rier. There are two reasons for this diversity. The first Is due to the variation in military history between sweet and salt water. Because of the high incidence of piracy experienced by the ocean-going merchant navies, as well as the frequent outbreak of war between rival maritime nations, the concept of the fighting merchantman 48 49 (i.e., the merchant ship that was armed and capable of defending herself) has been in fashion on the high seas since the days of the Phoenicians. Square sails are a must for the merchantman that might be pressed into mili tary duty. The advantage of a square rigger is that she will carry approximately sixteen separate sheets of can vas, much of which could be shot away and the ship would still have enough sail aloft to allow her to maneuver.^ The schooner, with her large triangles running nearly from bow to stern (hence the name "fore-and after") , is highly vulnerable to attack. Because the in land seas have had a comparatively peaceful history, it is only natural that the schooner-rigged ships would pre vail there. The battles that have taken place on the Great Lakes were usually between square riggers con structed for that purpose. For example, in the Battle of Lake Erie, September 10, 1813, the Detroit, which func tioned as the flagship for the British fleet, was a square-rigged frigate, while the American Lawrence. Niagara, and Caledonia were brigs, i.e., two-masted ves sels with square sails. •^Harlan Hatcher, The Great Lakes (New York* Oxford University Press, 1944) , pi! 210. 50 The second reason for the difference between the salt water and sweet water experience during the days of sail is economic. Because square-rigged ships have so many sheets of canvas billowing in the breeze, they re quire many hands to man them. As a result, square-rigged vessels are very expensive to operate. For the fighting merchantman, for whom square sails are required for sur vival, cost is not the prime consideration. But to an independent operator on the peaceful Great Lakes, one facing stiff competition for cargoes, crew costs might make the difference between prosperity and bankruptcy — especially since seamen*s wages were significantly higher on the Great Lakes than on the ocean (sailors* earnings will be discussed later in this chapter under the sub title, "Wages and Rates") . As a result, from the days of the fur trade until the adjustment in the maritime indus try following the Panic of 1873, the schooner maintained mastery over the Great Lakes. The square-rigged ship held hegemony on salt water until the opening of the Suez Canal slashed the distance to the East, and substantially increased the competitive posture of the steamer by reducing the length of the run between coaling stations, thus minimizing the percent of 2 carrying capability required for bunkers. As the age of steam approached, sailing masters on the Atlantic began to reduce crew costs by building bark en tines — ships with the foremast rigged square and the other two masts rigged in fore-and-aft fashion. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, some very large schooners were built for deep water and several square riggers were re-rigged as schooners with many masts. Many ocean-going sailing ships were lost during World War I and were not replaced. The last British-owned sailing ship, the Garthpool. was lost in 1929. As late as 1949, a handful of Finnish-owned sailing vessels still carried grain from Australia.3 Because of the economy of operation, it was not surprising that, when the fur trade outgrew the bateau and the Mackinac boat, well-managed firms like the Northwest Company and the Hudson1s Bay Company would opt to use schooners to carry furs and supplies on Lake Superior. The first two of these vessels were the Mackinac and the De Peyster. both of which sailed between Grand ^Roger Charles Anderson, "Ship," Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. XX, p. 405. 3Ibid., p. 406. 52 Portage and the Sault for the Northwest Company.^ They were followed by the schooners Discovery, Invincible. Otter, Mink, and Recovery.8 Theirs was an ephemeral exist ence. During the War of 1812, both the Discovery and the Otter were wrecked while attempting to run the rapids at Sault Sainte Marie in an endeavor to evade the advancing American army.8 The fifty-ton Mink survived the journey over the rapids only to be captured along with a valuable cargo of furs by the Americans on Lake Huron.7 The ninety- ton Recovery was owned by the Northwest Company and com manded by a captain with the Improbable name of McCargo.8 During the hostilities, she was hidden in a deep bay (McCargo Cove) on Isle Royale, which lies off the north shore of Lake Superior. Writes Havighurst, "Her spars were removed and her decks covered with evergreen boughs and brushwood. With ice frozen around her and snow drift ing over, she looked as harmless as a blown-down tree."9 ^Grace Lee Nute, Lake Superior. in The American Lakes Series, ed. by Milo M. Quaife (Indianapolis* The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944), pp. 117-118. ^Walter Havighurst, The Long Ships Passing (New York* The Macmillan Company, 1961), p. 161. 6Ibid. 7Nute, op. cit., p. 119. 8Ibid. ^Havighurst, loc. cit. 53 Following the cessation, of hostilities, the Recovery was put bach in the fur trade. In 1829, she shot the rapids, a remarkable accomplishment for a vessel her size, and she spent the remainder of her useful days in the commerce on the lower lakes. The schooner, Invincible, outlived the war but was wrecked off Whitefish Point in 1823,^ Despite the first heroic efforts by the schooner sailors, after the Recovery ran the rapids, transport on Lake Superior regressed; between 1829 and 1835 only ba teaux and Mackinac boats plied the turbulent waters of the upper lake.H After forty years of advancement, this re turn to a simpler and less-efficient form of conveyance was necessitated by reasons that had strong economic roots. Astor*s Victory One of the results of the War of 1812 was that Congress, with ample prodding by John Jacob Aator's lobby ists, passed a law that restricted fur trading within the confines of the United States to licensed-American citi zens. The law further stipulated that any furs that were taken by unlicensed foreigners would be promptly confis- l0Nute, op. cit., p. 118. ■^Havighurst, op. cit. , p. 162. 54 12 cated. This piece of legislation was obviously aimed at the representatives of the Northwest Company, a firm that was at this time locked in deadly combat with Astor's American Fur Company for the monopolization of the lucra tive fur trade on Lake Superior. Shortly after that victory, Astor won another when the International Boundary between Canada and the United States was redrawn. The statesmen placed the line down the Pigeon River, a few miles to the east of Grand Portage, the Northwest Company*s bastion on the northern shore of Lake Superior. ■ * • 3 The Canadian company was forced to re treat to Fort Williams on Thunder Bay and in the shelter of the massive mounds of granite that lakemen call "the Sleeping Giant." The Northwest Company, still smarting from the de feat at the hands of Astor, then took on its other rival, the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1811, Lord Selkirk, a Scot who then controlled the Hudson's Bay Company, received from that firm a tract of 116,000 square miles of land in the basin formed by the intersection of the Red River, near the site of what is "^Hatcher, op. cit., p. 202, 13Ibid., p. 203. 55 now the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Selkirk used this grant to establish a colony of his canny countrymen, who would be sympathetic to the interests of the Hudson's Bay Company. Since the Lake Winnipeg-Lake Manitoba area had previously been the trapping and trading ground of the French and half-breed voyageurs from the Northwest Fur Company, it was only natural that trouble would ensue. In the summer of 1816, this enmity erupted in a shoot out between the rivals, called the Battle of Seven Oaks, in which Governor Semple of the Hudson's Bay Company and nineteen of his servitors were killed.^ A fur-trader war followed. In 1821, the British government ended the inter necine competition between the Northwest Fur Company and the Hudson's Bay Company by fusing the two together under the aegis and charter of the latter concern,^ The new Hudson's Bay Company that resulted from the forced merger was given an exclusive license for twenty-one years to trade "in Rupert's Land and as well in the northwest ter ritory beyond Rupert's Land and on the Pacific slope. ■^"Red River Settlement," Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. XIX, p. 32. ■^^William Lewis Morton, "Hudson's Bay Company," Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. XI, pp. 807-808. 16Ibid., p. 808. 56 After the shotgun marriage of the two firms, the Hudson's Bay Company moved the hub of its operations to Winnipeg and from there ruled a commercial empire of 1.5 million square miles of wilderness.-*-7 The firm's interest in the Great Lakes' watershed waned. It pulled its ships off the upper lake and sent its men north. It should be noted that today the Hudson's Bay Company is still very much alive, with annual sales run ning in excess of $500 million, and that while it is now highly diversified — operating department stores, ex ploiting mineral holdings, and running oil producing divi sions — it has not foresaken its original source of riches, the fur trade. In 1970, the company operates 137 trading posts scattered over 3 million miles of wilderness that it claimed after retreating north from the Great Lakes' watershed after the merger with its rival, The Northwest Company in 1821. In keeping with a tradition first practiced when the voyageurs glided Algonquin canoes over the glistening inland seas, the company often "grub stakes” its customers before they trudge through the tundra toward their traplines.^8 17Ibid. ^•®News item in The Wall street Journal. April 29. 1970. 57 The Termination of the Great Lakes Fur Trade After the Hudson1s Bay Company withdrew from the Great Lakes' watershed, Astor*s monopoly of the trade was complete. In September, 1827, he wrote that in one day, he sold 200,000 muskrats at public sale, and 350,000 at private sale.3 - 9 Mrs. Astor, who could spot a prize pelt a mile away, sorted furs for her husband and received nri $500 per hour for her effort. Money poured in like a great green river. In 1835, six short years after the schooner, Recovery, slipped gracefully over the Sault, it was all over. The demand for fur is as old as human history. The Chinese were supposed to value them as early as 3,500 years ago. The Romans received their love of fur from the Greeks, who made them part of their mythology, e.g., Jason and the Golden Fleece. During the Middle Ages only mem bers of the nobility were allowed to wear certain furs. In Chaucer's England, "beaver" was a synonym for "hat."21 IQ Hatcher, op. cit.. p. 205. 20Ibid., p. 204. 21 Charles E. Kellogg, "Fur," Encyclopaedia Bri- tannica, Vol. IX, p. 1031. 58 The Industrial Revolution, which had its beginning in 9 9 England in 1783, brought wealth to western Europe and fanned the flames of the bourgeoisie's desire for furs.23 Yet fashion is fickle, and in the beginning of the 1830s, the demand for North American furs fell sharply as silk replaced beaver in hats. Then nutria, a light- brown fur from the coypu, an aquatic rodent from South America, captured that portion of the market that had been held by muskrat fur.24 While the demand faded like lake fog before the summer sun, the supply side was little better off, for expanded settlement, in combination with a history of profligate trapping methods, tended both to reduce the supply and to produce an inferior product.25 Of this period Judson observed: Bateaux piled with furs lined the docks of Montreal, Quebec, and other Saint Lawrence port cities. As word drifted back up the lakes, fur—laden canoes no 22w. w. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth (London: Cambridge University Press, 1960) , pT 9"! 23jcellogg, loc. cit. ^George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revo lution 1815-1860 (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1951), p. 385. 25Ibid., p. 384. 59 longer shot the rapids at Sault St. Marie during spring and summer, and far back in the wilderness there was hunger and disappointment and dismay.26 Astor was sagacious enough to spot an unfavorable trend; he first sold his trading post at Mackinac and then in 1835, left the moribund trade completely.2^ He entered another activity that was even older than the fur trade, one that was experiencing vigorous demand in the decades after the War of 1812.28 That activity was fishing. From Fur to Fish to Copper The John Jacob Astor In 1834, trees that had been hacked from the for est that grew alongside Lorain, Ohio's Black River, where the yards of the American Shipbuilding Company now sit, were hewn and fashioned in such a manner that when they were fitted into place they would form the main timbers of a large schooner.29 These prefabricated members were O £ Clara Ingram Judson, St. Lawrence Seaway (Chicagoi Follett Publishing Company, 1959), p. 66. 27 Hatcher, loc. cit. 28 Taylor, op. cit., p. 385. 2^Harlan Hatcher, Lake Erie, in The American Lakes Series, ed. by Milo M. Quaife (Indianapollsi The Bobbs- Merrill Company, 1944), p. 143. 60 then placed aboard another vessel and shipped to Sault Sainte Marie, where they were portaged around the rapids and then delivered to a make-shift shipyard that stood on land that is now used for Sherman Park.30 The men of the American Pur Company then proceeded to assemble a vessel of 113 tons which was christened the John Jacob Astor. During the launching, she stuck on the skids and it took three days and much effort to free her. On July 30, 1835, she splashed into the water and then rode at anchor in Whitefish Bay. In the middle of August, the John Jacob Astor sailed into the far reaches of Lake Superior with Captain C. C. Stannard (one of three broth ers — the others being J. J, Stannard and B. A. Stannard — who would attain fame as Great Lakes mariners) in com mand. During this maiden voyage, when the vessel was sailing thirty miles off the south shore, a dark object, that was awash and looked like an overturned bateau, was sighted. Captain Stannard investigated and found a rock shoal rising from the depths of the lake. Stannard Rock Light, which can be seen for fifteen miles, now warns Q 1 seamen of this menace to navigation. Boom years for the fishing industry on Lake Superior were 1835 and 1836. •^Havighurst, loc. cit. 31Ibid. 61 Major fishing stations were established at Grand Portage and La Pointe; minor ones were placed at Encampment Is land, near the present iron-ore port of Two Harbors; at L'Anse, which is located on Keweenaw Bay; at Whitefish Point, and at other places. Isle Royal alone had five different stations to process and pack the trout, siscowet, and whitefish that abounded in the waters about the is- 3 2 land. In the first two years of operation, the normal catch of the station at Grand Portage was between 300 to 500 barrels, the take at Isle Royal during the same period was in the neighborhood of 2,000 barrels of fish.33 These barrels were loaded aboard the busy little John Jacob Astor for transportation to Sault Sainte Marie, where they were portaged around the rapids and then placed aboard another schooner bound for the lower lake ports. Ramsay Crooks, who served as the American Pur Com pany's executive officer after Astor stepped down in 1833, made a tour of the fisheries and, in a letter brimming with optimism, he told an associate* There is therefore much more encouragement than ever to prosecute the fisheries with vigour. . . . Next year should give us 2,000 Barrels, and 1838, 2,500 to 3,000.34 ^Nute, op. cit. , p. 117. 33Ibld., p. 177. ■^Quoted by Nute, op. cit.. p. 179. 62 The next year brought a record catch and the Panic of 1837. The Effect of the Panic of 1837 In 1836, President Jackson issued his infamous Specie Circular which stated that only gold would be ac cepted for lands purchased from the government. This had the effect of contracting credit in the nation, as well as making the notes of the western banks appear dubious at best.33 The following summer, Congress decided to distrib ute a treasury surplus of twenty-eight million. This money had previously been held in western banks, and this removal from these depositories had a further contracting effect on the money supply. Subsequently, a financial panic in England brought a contraction of international credit and a concomitant outflow of specie from America.36 The economic health of the nation went from bad to worse when American agriculture was beset by crop fail 33Francis G. Walett, Economic History of the United States (New York* Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1954), p. 110. 36Ibid. 63 ures In 1835, 1837, and 1838, which made it impossible for many farmers to meet their financial obligations.37 The result of these many contracting influences was a sharp downturn in economic activity. For the American Fur Company, the upshot of it all was many fish and few customers. According to economic theory, when supply outstrips demand, the price falls. Fish market prices acted in concert with this theory. In July, 1837, a barrel of trout was selling for $11.00, by October the price had fallen to $10.50, and still later in the year, it went to $10.00.3® The representatives of the company started beating the bush for buyers. Even the gallant Captain Stannard left his quarterdeck and went down the Ohio and the Missis sippi to try to drum up business. As the economy moved farther into the trough of the cycle, buyers were as scarce as fish were plentiful. Wrote one of the fishery managers, "At present we are engaged in fishing, and I try to get as few as possible."39 37Ibid. 38Nute, loc. cit. •^Quoted by Nute, loc. cit. 64 In 1842, still with an abundance of salted fish, the "northern department" of the American Fur Company failed*4^ liquidation followed. The schooner, John Jacob Astor, started carrying miners and their equipment from the Sault to the Keweenaw until she was wrecked at Copper Harbor in the fall of 1844. The man the schooner was named after took the for tune that he made in furs and placed it in Manhattan real estate. When he died in 1848, he did so secure in the knowledge that his family had been amply provided for; his bequest was valued in excess of twenty million dollars.4^ Schooners for Supe rior^ Copper On the upper inland sea, first fur held sway, fish followed, and then came copper. In 1838, the fifty-ton schooner, Algonquin, was built in Cleveland for the North ern Lake Company. The next year, she was sold to a group of prospectors that called themselves the Boston Mining Company. It was that firm,s intention to work the ancient 40Ibid. 41 Frank Thlstlethwaite, "From Wildcatting to Mo nopoly, 1850-1914," The Experience of Economic Growth, ed. by Barry E. Supple (New York* Random House, Inc., 1963), p. 299. 65 copper deposits found on Isle Royal. They decided to portage the vessel around the rapids. The job was given to Achille Cadotte. He moved the steamer as one might move a house. Using a team of horses and a set of smooth logs, he hauled the vessel out of the Saint Mary’s River and proceeded to roll the schooner up what is now Sault Sainte Marie’s Water Street.43 It was slow going; while the snows of winter whirled about the ship, it created down the frozen road at the rate of five ship lengths a day. The mile long portage took three and a half months to complete. In April, she went into the water where she enjoyed a prosperous career. She was wrecked in 1856 and for fifty years her remains rotted in the marsh land near Duluth.44 She was the first of "the fleet that sailed on land."45 The portage interests at Sault Sainte Marie re ceived a fillip when a big strike was made in 1845 at the Copper Cliff Mine at Eagle River. That year, six ^Havighurst, op. cit.. p. 163. 43Ibid. 44 Alida Malkus, Blue-Water Boundary (New Yorki Hasting House, Publishers^ 1960), p. 167. ^^Havighurst, loc. cit. 66 schooners hearing such vibrant names on their prows as Ocean, Fur Trader, Chippewa, Florence, Swallow, and Merchant, together with two steamers, made the long haul around the rapids to satisfy the derived demand for trans port. The eloquent Professor Havighurst describes this portage activity as follows: That winter the capstan was busy and the rollers grew battered as a fleet of vessels crawled overland beside the frost-rimmed rapids. Mallets hammered in the cold air, the capstan creaked, the frost-white cables taunted. Men shouted orders, their voices jetting white in the bitter air. The horses leaned into their collars and tramped out dark circles in the hard-packed snow. There were no sails filling and no engines turning over, but the jib-booms of the schooners and the upright steamers1 stems inched their way toward Lake S u p e r i o r .46 Before Harvey started to direct the work on the locks at Sault Sainte Marie, fifteen vessels, with a total displacement of 3,000 tons would take the overland trek around the rapids, 47 an<3 an WOuld meet with a violent end.4® But the potential profits to be made from the red earth that these fore-and-afters carried in barrels of wood, to the Sault for transshipment, would galvanize men of vision to search for a more efficient system for trans porting the produce from Michigan's mines and mills. 46Ibld. 47Ibid. 4®Malkus, loc. cit. 67 Windjammers on the Lower Lakes Lakers Prior to the Revolution After La Salle's disasterous experience with the Griffin, 'che French clung to the canoe and the bateau for the prime vehicles of transport on the lower lakes. The only exception was that for a time Cadillac, who both founded the settlement at Detroit and was the commander of its garrison, owned a ten-ton sloop (a small, one- masted vessel that was fore-and-aft rigged, with a jib and a mainsail) that shuttled between Detroit and the Niagara River.49 After the eclipse of the French empire in the New World, the British allowed only ships owned by the crown to ply the waters of the Great Lakes. Of this period in the nation's development the economic historian from Smith College, Harold Underwood Faulkner, has this to say, "If one is to understand colonial agriculture, or, for that matter, any phase of colonial economic life, he must al ways remember that he is dealing with a world dominated by a mercantilist philosophy. Laissez-faire was utterly foreign to the minds of seventeenth- and eighteenth- ^Havlghurst, op. cit.. p. 61. 68 century rulers."^ And, againi "Fallacious In theory and disastrous in practice, mercantilism in Europe was in the saddle; and it was left to the mainland colonies of Eng land in America to strike the first hlow against it."^^ The British wished to prohibit the colonists "from trading and intriguing with the Indians.Pur suant to this desire, a series of Draconian regulations were promulgated which included the confiscation of all privately-owned vessels on the Great Lakes by representa tives of the King. During their colonial reign, the English built a pair of sloops, the Oswego and the Ontario, for use on the lowest of the Great Lakes. They went down the ways in 1755. These two were followed by the first square-rigged vessel, the London, which was launched by the British in 1756 on Lake Ontario.54 ^°Harold Underwood Faulkner, American Economic History (New Yorki Harper and Row, Publishers, 1960), p. 69. 51Ibid., p. 119. S^Malkus, op. clt.. p. 159. ^Dana Thomas Bowen, Memories of the Lakes (Day tona Beach, Fla.t Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1946), p. 15. ^Ibld. 69 Lakers After the Revolution The Revolutionary War freed the American economy from the fetters of merchantilism, and soon small ship yards began to burgeon before the hardwood forests. The first vessel built by an American shipyard was named, appropriately enough, the Washington.55 She was launched at Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1797. A yard at Buffalo com pleted a 25-ton schooner named the Surprise in 180 4, and in 1808 Cleveland made its first contribution by building the 45-ton Zephyr.^6 It is interesting to note that in 1814, a brig of 96 tons was constructed for the commerce on Lake Erie, but was soon abandoned because it wa3 con sidered too large to successfully handle the trade.^7 The culmination of the War of 1812 gave impetus to com merce within the sphere of the lower lakes and, by 1817, there were as many as nineteen merchantmen trading between the ports of Lake Erie.^8 55ibid. 56Ibid. 57Ibid., p. 5. 58Malkus, loc. cit. 70 In 1809, the first steamer sailed on sweet water, aB the Accommodation worked her way from Montreal to Quebec. In 1816, the Canadian side-wheeler Frontenac was launched for service on Lake Ontario and steam came to the chain of lakes. In spite of this early start, three-quarters of a century would pass before the use of steam would triumph over the use of sails in the commerce of the Great Lakes. At the time of the Civil War, all but 7 percent of the vessels on the lakes were propelled by wind captured in canvas.^ According to Bowen, the palmy days of the sail ing schooner did not begin until 1864.60 in the year 1860, there were 1,200 sailing vessels of approximately 255,000 tons operating on the Great Lakes.Hatcher de scribes the activity in the "storied era of sailing ships" as follows: Hammers, saws and adzes pounded and burred and swished in a hundred shipyards on the lakes. Every town had one yard or more. Ships slid down the ways 59Ibid. 6C*Dana Thomas Bowen, Lore of the Lakes (Daytona Beach, Fla.: Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1940), p. 15. ^Gilbert C. Fite and Jim E. Reese, An Economic History of the United States (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), p. 191. 71 at Sackets Harbor, Sandusky, and the little Ontario river and lake towns; at Detroit and Saginaw? at Milwaukee, Manitowoc, and Chicago. Ropes, cables masts, spars, and acres of canvas lay on the wharves. The smell of tar and sawdust and damp lumber hovered over the waterfronts. The harbors and wharves were a forest of masts interwoven with halyards and riggings.62 While several economic factors contributed to this proliferation of sailing ships, the most significant stim- ulous came from the mania for canal building that swept through the country during the first half of the nine teenth century. Both the Americans and the Canadians caught the malady from the English. The Effect of Canal Building on the Schooner Fleet British Canals and Mr. Brindley The first canal to be built in Britain was the Worsley Canal, which was completed in 1761. The third Duke of Bridgewater performed the entrepreneurial func tion, while technical direction was provided by his able engineer James Brindley. The Duke was the owner of a coal field near the hamlet of Worsley that was situated a scant ten miles from the city of Manchester. In spite of ®2Hatcher, op. clt.. p. 209. 72 the proximity of the point of production to the point of consumption, because of rudimentary methods of transport, the price of coal at the mouth of the pit more than dou bled by the time it has been hauled on horse back to the city. It was the nobleman1s contention that if a canal could be cut between his mine and the Irwell River, which flows to Manchester, the price of delivered coal would fall from the prevailing rate of S^d. to 7d. per cwt. to a figure not more than 4d, per cwt. 64 in 1760, Parliament acquiesced in the plan and soon Brindley was going about his business filling up valleys, leveling hills and mak ing earthworks impervious to w a t e r .65 The Worsley Canal was a smashing success; it cut the delivered price of coal in Manchester by half and made a handsome profit for its owners.66 63christopher I. Savage, An Economic History of Transport (London: Hutchinson and Company, Ltd., 1959), p. 17. 64Ibid., p. 18. 65Ibid. 66 John B. Lansing, Transportation and Economic Policy (New York: The Free Press, 1966), p. 81. 73 As a result of this success, the Duke and Brindley launched a larger canal scheme, this time one joining Man chester tc the budding port of Liverpool. It was called the Bridgewater Canal, and of this canal, it has been said: It galvanized into activity then unknown both Manchester and Liverpool, and formed the start ing point for the whole system of water com munications by means of which the Industrial Revolution could be made e f f e c t i v e . 6 7 The magnificent Brindley soon found himself di recting a legion of canal schemes; he died of overwork in 1772.^® By the time of his demise, the canal boom was under way, and by 1792-1983, it reached such proportions that economic historians have come to refer to it as "canal mania." In 1793, Parliament passed as many as twenty enabling acts to authorize the construction of new canals.^ A measure of the Intensity and length of this canal mania that caused the British to cut up their coun tryside may be seen in Table 2. 6*7 Savage, loc. cit. 68Ibid., p. 21. gq Lansing, op. cit., p. 82. 74 TABLE 2 ENGLISH CANAL AUTHORIZATIONS Year Number of New Canals Authorized by Parliament Capital Authorized (pounds) 1789 2 131,000 1790 1 90,000 1791 6 663,000 1792 6 941,000 1793 20 2,914,300 1794 10 2,037,900 1795 4 375,900 1796 3 585,000 1797 1 18,000 Sourcei John B. Lansing, Transportation and Economic Policy (New York: The Free Press, 1966), p. 82. 75 The Brie Canal and the Centerboard Schooner On the North American continent, canal mania was prevalent between the War of 1812 and the Panic of 1837. The Erie Canal, started in 1817, was not the first canal to be built in the United States (small canals had been constructed in Virginia, North Carolina, and Massachusetts prior to this adventure by the state of New York), but it was the most successful.^-*- The entrepreneurial talent for the Erie Canal was furnished by the governor of the state of New York, De Witt Clinton; the chief engineer on the project was Ben jamin Wright, but the prime problem solver was a young mechanical genius named Canvass White, who had walked beside the more than 2,000 miles of English canals in order to learn the subtleties of successful construc tion.^^ The canal ran between Buffalo, located on the eastern end of Lake Erie, and Albany, where it connected to the Hudson River that flows down to New York City and the Atlantic. 70Walett, op. cit., p. 70. 71paulkner, op. cit., p. 268. 72Ibid. 76 In 1810, De Witt Clinton journeyed to Washington in an attempt to solicit federal funds, but the Congress of the new nation was feeling somewhat less than munifi cent and he left the capital empty handed. Seven years later, the state legislature voted to go it alone and subsequently authorized the expenditure of $7,000,000, based on the credit of the state.73 In the fall of 1825, Governor Clinton poured a cask of sweet Lake Erie water into the briny Atlantic to signify the confluence of the two bodies, and the Erie Canal was open for business. "Clinton's Ditch" was an immediate success; tolls amounted to $8,500,000 after the first nine years of oper ation. The cost of shipping cargo from Buffalo to New York plunged from $100 to $15 per ton, and the elapsed time was shaved from twenty to eight days.74 The states that bordered the Great Lakes found a voracious market in the East for the produce of their for ests and fields; produce that formerly was shipped down 7 - ^ R o b e r t Edwin Albright, "Erie Canal," Encyclo paedia Brltannlca, Vol. VIII, p. 678. "^Faulkner, op. cit.. p. 269. 77 the Mississippi.75 The Eastern merchants found a strong demand for manufactured goods in the new ports on the shores of Lake Michigan. In the first five years of oper ation, the canal experienced an average value of traffic of approximately $15 million a year. By 1855, the value of traffic had climbed to an annual figure of $204 mil lion. Because prices were relatively stable in the per iods under examination, it is safe to surmise that the difference between the two values results from a substan tial increase in volume of cargo passing through the Erie Canal. Governor Clinton's gamble turned the emerging ports of the Great Lakes into veritable beehives of activ ity; Buffalo received the largest jolt of economic adren alin. The quantity of lake ships that pulled in and out of Buffalo harbor Increased by 150 percent in the first two years of the canal's operation.77 Land values in Buffalo rose, new houses sprang up like mushrooms, hotels were crowded to over flowing and goods of all kinds piled up on her wharves and in her warehouses. For Buffalo was the gateway city;on Lake Erie.78 75Donald L. Kemmerer and Merlin H. Hunter, Eco nomic History of the United States (Totowa, N.J.i Little field, Adams and Company, 1967), p. 48. 76Flte and Reese, op. cit., p. 233. 77Albright, op. cit., p. 679. 78natcher, Lake Erie, p. 116. 78 The schooner fleet sailed into the harbor and deposited great waves of golden grain on the docks; they then pulled out again, carrying vast hords of Immigrants heading for new homes in the heartland of the nation. The growth in this two-way traffic was astounding. The amount of flour shipped into Buffalo in 1860 was thirty times greater than it was in 1836.” ^ Table 3 depicts Buffalo's grain receipts from the West between 1836 and 1860. While flour poured down the Erie Canal, people poured up. Fast pas senger barges, pulled by relays of horses that took the tow paths at a trot, cut the time required to travel the length of the canal to a mere two days.80 magnitude of immigrants into the United States between 1815 and 1860 is shown on Table 4. Since the Erie Canal, whose dimensions were thirty feet wide and four feet deep, was designed to ac commodate thirty-ton barges pulled by oxen,®-*- it did not have an effect on "sizing" the vessels of the Great Lakes; but by providing a plethora of passengers and freight, it did spur the shipyards to design more efficient vessels. *^Flte and Reese, loc. cit. Albright, loc. cit. ®-*-Faulkner, op. cit., p. 268. 79 TABLE 3 RECEIPTS OF GRAIN AT BUFFALO 1836 — 1860 Year Grain In Bushels 1836 ............... 543,461 1837 ............... 550,660 1838 ............... 974,751 1839 ............... 1,117,262 1840 ............... 1,075,888 1841 ............... 1,852,325 1842 ............... 2,015,928 1843 ............... 2,055,025 1844 ............ . 2,335,568 1845 ............... 1,848,040 1846 ............... 6,493,342 1847 ............... 9,868,187 1848 ............... 7,396,012 1849 ............... 8,628,013 1850 ............... 6,635,905 1851 ............... 11,449,661 1852 ............... 13,892,919 1853 ............... 15,574,741 1854 ............... 18,512,465 1855 ............... 20,788,673 1856 ............... 20,129,467 1857 ............... 15,348,930 1858 ............... 20,005,044 1859 ............... 15,229,060 1860 ............... 31,441,440 Source: Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States 1790-1860 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1961) , p. 253. 80 TABLE 4 IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES 1820 — 1860 Year Number Year Number 1820 8,385 1840 84,066 1821 9,127 1841 80, 289 1822 6,911 1842 104,565 1823 6,354 1843 52,496 1824 7,912 1844 78,615 1825 10,199 1845 114,371 1826 10,837 1846 154,416 1827 '18,875 1847 234,968 1828 27,382 1848 226,527 1829 22,520 1849 297,024 1830 23,322 1850 369,980 1831 22,633 1851 379,466 1832 60,482 1852 371,603 1833 58,640 1853 368,645 1834 65,365 1854 427,833 1835 45,374 1855 200,877 1836 76,242 1856 200,436 1837 79,340 1857 251,306 1838 38,914 1858 123,126 1839 68,069 1859 121,282 1860 153,640 Sourcei Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States 1790-1860 (New Yorki W. W. Norton & Company, 1961), pi 245. 81 While a myriad of diverse types of sailing ships have graced the waters of the Great Lakes since La Salle's Griffin first sailed out of the Niagara, the design that was most efficacious came out of William Bates's shipyard located at Manitowac, Wisconsin.The problem facing the early builders was one of structuring the ship so that she could carry a profitable payload while maintaining minimum draft and maximum stability. Because the ship would be calling at shallow, unimproved ports, it was es sential that the vessel did not draw any more water than was necessary; because the ship would have to face the sudden squalls that the lakes are noted for, it might be a matter of life or death that the ship be built so it neither yawed nor drifted leeward when a nor'wester came roaring down from Lake Superior. Bates came up with a novel solution to the problem which was incorporated into the design of the Challenge, a clipper-type schooner which represented the "first dis tinctive type of sailing ship to appear on the Lakes.,l83 She was built with shallow draft, which assured entrance to the undredged harbors, but she was given stability by ^^Hatcher, The Great Lakes, p. 210. 83Ibid. 82 means of a centerboard in the keel. This device consisted of a large board that was housed in the keel and pivoted on an attachment at the sharp end of the ship. A large weight was attached to the stern end of the board. After the ship had worked her way out of a shallow harbor and was again sailing in deep water, the stern end of the board was lowered into the water by means of a tackle. Thus, the ship had a ventral fin which kept it from sway ing dangerously in a blow.84 ' r^ie Challenge, which Hatcher calls a "clipper- centerboard schooner" and which a purist would categorize as a hermaphrodite brig, was a two master, the foremast rigged square and the mainmast rigged in schooner style, which became the prototype for a whole fleet of lake ships.8^ As cargo began to stack up at Buffalo, the three- masted schooner became the minion of the owner-master. These ships kept the centerboard and often carried square top sails. Of this breed of vessel, Doctor Hatcher has this to say: 84Ibid., p. 211. 85Ibid. 83 The Lakers, as they were so often called, were longer and narrower in the beam than salt-water ships. They were also a little more rakish in sil houette. On an Atlantic "tern schooner" all three masts were of approximately equal height — about 91 to 93 feet. But a Lake schooner would have a 98-foot foremast, a graceful main that reached up to 102 feet, and a mizzen that dropped down to a- bout 86 feet. And when a Huron breeze swelled the jib, outerjib, and flying jib well out beyond the bow to complete the sweep of the full sail, these Lakers were about the finest examples of harmony and grace of movement to be seen on any body of water anywhere.86 Schooner Unloading Equipment The schooner fleet on the Great Lakes received a shot in the arm from a man who was appropriately named Dart. At the end of the 1830s, the little harbor of Buf falo was stacked full of vessels awaiting an opportunity to discharge their cargoes. Since the opening of the Erie Canal, the conundrum of how to most efficiently un load cargo went unsolved, and by 1841, the facilities in the Port of Buffalo were virtually swamped by a glut of grain — 2,000,000 bushels. At the heart of the problem was the fact that methods of cargo handling had not changed since the days of the Phoenicians — the grain was shoveled into barrels 86Ibid., pp. 211—212. 84 and then hauled hand-over-hand out of the hold with block and tackle; it was then weighed by scales placed on deck; and finally, it was placed in bags or baskets to be 87 lugged into the warehouses by a swarm of laborers. ' In the ports of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston, this method was still in use until the end of the Civil War,®® Joseph Dart realized that unless a more ex peditious method could be found for discharging cargo, Buffalo would never be able to fulfill her promise of be coming miller to the Midwest. Dart proceeded to build a grain elevator on the crowded waterfront which incorporated an apparatus made by American inventor, Oliver Evans, which consisted simply of a bunch of buckets attached to a long-leather belt that rolled over a series of pulleys. Just after the close of the Revolutionary War, the Ellicott mill at Baltimore decided to try Evans1 invention in the movement and mil ling of flour, and it had proved extremely profitable. But, it had never been used in the unloading of vessels. This was to be Dart's contribution to s o c i e t y .®9 Despite the admonishments of a friend who main 8^Hatcher, Lake Erie, p. 228. 88Ibid. 89Ibid., p. 230. 85 tained that, "Irishmen's hacks are the cheapest elevators ever built,"90 Dart continued with the project. The schooner, John S. Skinner, served as the test bed. Early one afternoon, she pulled up to Dart’s dock, bearing 4,000 bushels of wheat from the fields outside of Milan, Ohio. Evans' contraption was put to work.91 The schoon er was relieved of her burden, loaded with a cargo of salt and then sent out on the lake before nightfall. The salt was pulled out at Milan, another cargo of wheat was poured aboard, and the schooner again was unloaded before Dart's elevator. When the John S. Skinner pulled out of Buffalo for the second time, she sailed proudly along with vessels who had entered port on her first trip down. They had Just finished unloading their first cargo in the conventional manner. The Hibernian elevators proved less efficient than Joseph Dart's mechanical one.92 Oliver Evans' elevator and conveyor was instanta neously adopted by the other millers in the port city, and soon they were improving upon the original design. The first belt had its buckets spaced at twenty—eight 90Ibid., p. 229. 91Ibid., p. 230. 92Ibid. 86 Inch intervals. Then a belt came out with the buckets twenty-two inches apart, which was shortly replaced by one with the buckets spaced only sixteen inches apart. As the interval grew smaller, the buckets grew larger. "By the close of the Civil War, buckets holding eight quarts spaced a foot apart were raising nearly 7,000 bush- q a els an hour and weighing the load correctly,1 1 With the advent of mechanical unloading devices, the popularity of vessels with schooner rigging seemed to soar on the Lakes because, unlike their square-rigged sisters, the schoon ers running gear was easy to stow, and their booms could quickly be moved out of the way to allow the unloading machinery a clear path.9^ since the days of Dart's entre preneurial activity, the spar-deck structures have been a function of mechanical loading and unloading equipment. Breaking the bottleneck at Buffalo gave great im petus to both shipbuilding and grain elevator construc tion. Table 5 shows the total tonnage of vessels employed in the Great Lakes' trade from 1830 to 1860. By 1865, Buffalo could boast of twenty-seven stationary elevators and two floating elevators which were capable of storing 93Ibid. 9^Hatcher, The Great Lakes, p. 212. 87 TABLE 5 TONNAGE OF VESSELS ON THE LAKES 1830 I860 Year Tonnage 1830 7 728 1846 1831 8 879 1847 1832 12 738 1848 1833 15 226 1849 1834 19 044 1850 1835 29 709 1851 1836 32 000 1852 1837 37 480 1853 1838 49 159 1854 1839 46 935 1855 1840 48 262 1856 1841 54 569 1857 1842 58 808 1858 1843 66 938 1859 1844 73 124 1860 1845 86 071 Year Tonnage 101,545 134,659 160,250 177,077 186,790 200,507 221,235 251,492 286,564 339,193 369,950 398,709 395,140 422,381 450,726 Sourcei Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth in the United States 1790-1860 (New Yorki W. W. Norton & Company, 1961), p. 252, 88 6,000,000 bushels of grain.®5 By 1945, Buffalo*s storage capacity had mushroomed into space for 44,718,500 bushels. One Interesting aspect of maritime economics on the Great Lakes is that with the coming of the large steel freighter the winter storage capacity of Buffalo has been signifi cantly increased. It is quite a common practice, espe cially during the days of vast grain purchases by the Federal Government, that just prior to loading for the last trip of the season, the ore freighters that belong to the fle^t of common carriers wash down their cargo holds with fire hoses and then load grain at one of the Lake Superior ports. The ships then sail to Buffalo, where they tie up for the winter with their cargo of grain dry beneath well battened—down hatches. During the long winter months,' instead of incurring dockage costs, the shipowner earns storage revenues. When the April sun, with an assist from the Coast Guard Cutter, Mackinac, opens the river at Sault Sainte Marie, long ships that have been functioning as er satz grain elevators will pull under the unloading tubes at General Mills* Frontier elevator or the like, discharge their golden cargoes, and then return to the iron ore and coal trades.9G ^Hatcher, Lake Erie, p. 230. 96Ibid., p. 232. 89 The Welland Canal Begets the Canallers While the Erie Canal goaded Great Lakes ship builders into constructing a sizable fleet, it has never played a part in determining the exterior dimensions of these ships; however, the Welland Canal played such a role at its inception and it continues to do so to this day. Economically, the Erie Canal was nearly as detri mental to the Canadians as it was beneficial to the Americans, since, prior to the completion of Clinton's Ditch, a great share of the commerce of the western United States was previously shipped through that old fur depos itory, Montreal. Indeed, a pair of Canadian economic historians, W. T. Easterbrook and Hugh G. J. Aitken, main tain that as a result of the opening of the Erie Canal, Montreal's "economic hinterland" was reduced by half.^7 The Canadians retaliated by constructing two canals. The first one was built at the Lachine Rapids on the Saint Lawrence, near the spot where La Salle first made his home in the New World. It was, finished in 1825, the same year that the Albany to Buffalo canal was opened. Like the American canal, the canal on the Lachine Rapids 97Lansing, op. cit., p. 114. 90 was designed for barges to be pulled by oxen lumbering along a tow path; consequently, again like the Erie Canal, the canal at Lachine was only four-feet deep. The second, the Welland Canal, was the brain child of a promoter named, William Hamilton Merritt, who was short on economic and engineering sense, but long on per suasive ability. When Merritt was discharged from the Canadian Army following the War of 1812, he built a flour mill on Twelve Mile Creek, which ran near Saint Catharines, a town at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment and a short distance from the southeastern shore of Lake Ontario. The mill was extremely profitable for it allowed the farm ers in the ambit of his enterprise to ship flour to Montreal instead of grain and thus minimize transportation costs. All went well until Twelve Mile Creek, whose water moved the millstones that pulverized the grain, went dry. Merritt proposed to his neighbors and fellow millers that Twelve Mile Creek might again flow if a ditch were dug connecting it with the Welland River. His audience was enraptured with the idea and someone sug gested that a survey of the task be made so the results Q Q 3°Judson, op. cit.« p. 47. 91 could be presented to the people of Saint Catharines. By a curious twist of semantics, the word "ditch" was sup planted with "canal."99 The canal would both supply water to Twelve Mile Creek and provide a means whereby schooners would be able to climb the escarpment between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Saint Catharines would be come a boom town. At first, the ships of the schooner fleet were to be pulled up the escarpment by a series of "slides" where oxen would pull the ships up the 326-foot grade. Upper Canada gave Merritt a charter and the pri vate firm called the Welland Canal Company was formed in 1824. The first plans were scrapped and the second ver sion, which included thirty-five wooden locks with a depth of eight feet to replace the slide mechanism, was signed in 1825. The builders ran into almost insuperable problems including quicksand. Costs soared. The proj ect, which was capital poor from the start, was placed in straits. Notes Judson, "Workmen agreed to take pay in notes — a kind of scrip or promise to pay later — which local merchants agreed to honor so the men could eat. "ibid., p. 49. 92 Contractors took all pay in stock."100 When attempts to secure additional private capital failed, repeated ap peals for public funds were made.101 The Welland Canal was completed at a cost of $7,700,000 and was opened to traffic in 1829.102 While the Erie Canal was an instantaneous success, the Welland was something else again. Comments, such as, "Economy and the Welland Canal are as far apart as earth and heaven," and, "The Welland Canal has been a hoax from first to last," are common in the writings of the peri od. 103 Because the project was capital-starved from the start, shortcuts were taken in the construction of the locks that produced exorbitant maintenance costs. Also the surge of traffic that Merritt had forecast failed to materialize. If the canal that Upper Canada had previ ously constructed had been made to schooner draft (eight feet), rather than barge draft (four feet), a significant increase in trade between the Atlantic seaboard and the midlands might have been engendered, since it has been 100Ibid., p. 50. ■*•0-^-Lansing, op. cit. , p. 115. 2Jack Hough, "Welland Ship Canal," Encyclo paedia Brltannica. Vol. XXIII, p. 392. lO^Lansing, loc. cit. 93 noted that about the same time the cost of shipping a ton of goods up the river from Montreal to Prescott was two and one-half pounds. The Canadian Government purchased the Welland Canal Company's interest in the locks at the Niagara Es carpment in 1839. Reconstruction began almost at once. The thirty-nine lochs of wood, which handled schooners up to 100 feet in length bearing cargoes of 165 tons, were replaced by stone locks which could receive vessels of 140-feet long, hauling 750 tons of cargo.105 This en largement, which is called the "Second Canal," was com pleted in 1850. What is Important for this study is that the dig ging of the Welland Canal brought into being a breed of vessels, known in sailing circles as "canallers," which were built especially for trading between the ports on the shores of Lake Ontario (Hamilton, Toronto and King ston, Ontario, and Oswego, New York) and the cities situ ated on the other four lakes. Of the canallers, Doctor Hatcher says: 1Q4Ibld. lOSThe Saint Lawrence Seaway Authority Annual Re port 1966 (Ottawa, Canada: The Queen's Printer, 1967), p. 38. 94 They were purely functional. There was nothing trim about them — no rakish sweep of cutwater bow with a carved and ornamented figure under the bowsprit bespeaking the pride of the captain in his vessel. They were heavy, stubby, and square Hollander- type ships. Their bottoms were flat and their bows nearly perpendicular like a box, designed to fit snugly into the tubby locks of the canals.106 One of the first of these canallers, the Illinois. sailed from the Lake Ontario port of Sackets Harbor on a spring day in 1834. She was an Immigrant ship heading for the little settlement where the Chicago River spills into Lake Michigan. At the start of the year 1833, the "Windy City" had a scant 200 inhabitants. That year, a wave of 20,000 immigrants descended upon the port and then fanned out to the adjoining wilderness made safe by the Black Hawk War.l^n It took a full month for the Illinois to reach Chicago. She dropped anchor outside the sandbar that had been formed at the mouth of the Chicago River. Her cargo of seasick passengers was then shuttled ashore in the ship's lifeboats. Their furniture, wagons, and imple ments were floated ashore on rafts. After the ship had lO^Hatcher, The Great Lakes, p. 210. "^Hatcher, A Pictorial History of the Great Lakes, p. 185. 95 been relieved of her burden and was riding high in the water, this topsail schooner was then pulled over the sandbar by both seamen and landsmen manning ropes.108 The next year, there were 255 sailing-ship ar rivals recorded in the annals of the "sacker of wheat" on the Chicago River.10® Wages and Rates Among the people who made up the flood of immi gration into the Great Lakes region were windj ammer seamen from salt water who were attracted to the schooner fleet because of the high wages. So many of these were Scandi navians that one wag called the American Merchant Marine the "Norwegian Navy." Just prior to the Civil War, a seaman on a Norwegian square rigger made the equivalent of $3.00 a month. On the Chain of Lakes, prior to the War Between the States, a seaman was paid $1.25 to $2.50 a day.110 The Civil War provided a strong tonic to ship ping on the lakes. Grain shipments nearly doubled in the 108Hatcher, The Great Lakes, p. 208. 109Ibid. 110Knut Gjerset, Norwegian Sailors on the Great Lakes (Northfield, Minn.j The Norwegian-American His torical Association, 1928), p. 5. 96 first two years of the conflict.m During the hostili ties, when much of Mississippi traffic was re-routed through the Great Lakes, seamen's wages rose to $3,50 to $4,50 per day. After the war, they retreated to more nor mal figures. In 1870, a sailor's pay was between $1.25 to $2.25 a day. During this entire period, seamen's wages also fluctuated according to the season of the year. For example, during the summer months of 1873, when sea men were plentiful and storms were few, the wage rate hovered about the $1.75 figure; however, in the late fall, when the weather becomes malevolent and the "fair-weather sailors" seek safer employment, the daily wage in response to changes in supply rose to $4.00. During the 1870s, the pay of the captain of a schooner ranged from $80.00 to $100.00 per month. I-*-2 At such wages, it was not impos sible for a thrifty seaman to save enough money to allow him to purchase part interest in a lake schooner, for a fore-and-after of 180 to 200 tons sold for approximately $5,000. Table 6 shows a sample of schooner purchases during the 1870s. ^^^Hatcher, A Pictorial History of the Great Lakes, p. 185. ll^Qjerset, loc. cit. 97 TABLE 6 CONVEYANCES OF VESSELS Date Schooner Name Sales Price 1873 Champion $2,350.00 1873 Cashier 1,000.00 1873 R. B. Hubbard 3,000.00 1874 Christiania 250.00 1875 Cuyahoga 8,000.00 1875 1/3 of C. M. Filer 4,000.00 1875 1/4 of Coral 2,000.00 1876 1/2 of Barbarian 2,500.00 1876 Ingeborq M. Forest Unknown 1876 1/3 of Carrier 1,500.00 Source: Knut Gjerset, Norwegian Sailors on the Great Lakes (Northfleld, Minn.r The Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1928), p. 8. 98 Until the first half of the 1870s, the master- owner made money with his windj arnmer, The freight rates for wheat were generally high, as is shown in Table 7, though they were subject to the vagaries of peace and war. Ships carrying grain to Buffalo usually brought back coal cargoes at freight rates that fluctuated from $1.00 to $1.50 a ton.1^-3 Doctor Gjerset, writing for the Norwe gian-Am eric an Historical Association, quotes Captain Arthur N. Nelson, master of the schooner, White Mary, as stating that in 1872, the net earnings for that vessel were $6,000, In 1869, there were 1,752 sailing ships, and 837 steam vessels plying the vitreous waters of the Great Lakes and upon their heavily loaded wharves was freight enough for all.^4 Four years later, the Panic of 1873 came roaring through the maritime industry with full-gale force. The copious cargoes of the previous decade began to vanish in the depression that followed on the heels of the financial crisis. Competition became cutthroat. Between 1873 and 1883, the sailing masters and the 113Ibid., p. 14. 114Ibld.. p. 75. 99 TABLE 7 FREIGHT RATES (Wheat, Chicago to Buffalo) 1850 10 cents per bushel Civil War Period 20-30 cents per bushel 1866 13-30 cents per bushel 1873 15 cents per bushel Source: Knut Gjerset, Norwegian Sailors on the Great Lakes (Northfield, Minn.: The Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1928), p. 12. 100 steamer skippers "found themselves locked in a life and death struggle of competition in which only the fittest could survive."115 in order to elucidate the economic aspects of this battle that brought about the demise of the schooner fleet, it is necessary to trace the evolve- raent of the steam ship on the Great Lakes. 115Ibid., p. 90. CHAPTER IV THE ASCENDANCY OF STEAM AND THE DEMISE OF SAIL The Sidewheelers Shortly after the War of 1812, seven Canadian shippers, who viewed with alarm the elan possessed by the nascent maritime industry on the American side of Lake Ontario, raised 12,000 pounds to finance the construction of a steamship with which they hoped to capture their fair share of the traffic that was beginning to flourish on the lowest of the Great Lakes.^ The first steamship to sail on the Great Lakes bore the felicitous name of Frontenac over her stern, after La Salle's patron. She was an immense vessel — 170 feet long, 32 feet at the beam, and a capacity of 700 tons. Her paddle wheels, mounted slightly forward of mid ships, were driven by a 50-horsepower engine that had been o shipped all the way from Birmingham, England. She was a ■^Harlan Hatcher, The Great Lakes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 175. 2Ibid. 101 102 money maker from her launching in 1816 until she was con sumed by fire while in the Niagara River in 1827.^ In an effort to remain competitive, an American firm at Sackets Harbor commenced the construction of the sidewheeler, Ontario. She went into water of the lake she was named after just six months subsequent to the Fronte- nac1s launching. She was about one-third the size of her Canadian r i v a l . ^ After a successful career, she was fi nally dismantled in Oswego, New York, in 1832.^ The Walk-in-the-Water The third paddlewheeler on the Great Lakes, and the first one to travel the chain from Lake Erie to Lake Michigan, was christened the Walk-in-the-Water in honor of a great chief of the Wyandotte tribe, whose name stood for "turtle,1 1 a creature the Indians believed to possess the power to walk upon the water.6 Dana Thomas Bowen, Lore of the Lakes {Daytona Beach, Fla.r Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1940), p. 9. ^Harlan Hatcher and Erich A. Walter, A Pictorial History of the Great Lakes (New York* Crown Publishers, Inc., 1963), p. 64. ^Bowen, loc. cit. ^Walter Havighurst, The Long Ships Passing (New Yorki The Macmillan Company, 1969), p. 121. 103 Like La Salle's Griffin, the Walk-in-the-Water was built at Black Rock on the Niagara River. She was built for the Lake Erie Steamship Company by an illustri ous naval architect from New York named Noah Brown. Noah Brown, whose Christian name was most apropos for a boat builder, was the genius who had designed and supervised the construction of Oliver Hazard Perry's fleet prior to the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812. The Walk-in-the-Water. a combination passenger and freight carrier went down the ways on the 28th of May, 1818. Like her two predecessors on Lake Ontario, she car ried canvas to supplement her steam power. She had two masts, fore-and-aft rigging, two great paddleboxes, and a smoke stack that protruded forward of midships. She was 150—feet long, had a 30-foot beam and an 8-foot draft. Her gross tonnage has been estimated to be 338 tons. On her prow, she carried the figurehead of Commodore Perry.^ Again, like La Salle's Griffin, once in the Niag ara River, the Walk-in—the—Water found that the combina tion of both sail and steam were insufficient to carry her forward against the water rushing in from Lake Erie. ^Harlan Hatcher, Lake Erie, in The American Lakes Series, ed. by Milo M. Quaife (Indianapolist The Bobbs- Merrill Company, 1944), p. 109. 104 Her captain's solution to this dilemma was very similar to the one selected by La Salle — the Walk-1 n- th e - Wa t er re ceived an assist in the form of what the early mariners dubbed "a horn breeze.Towing hawsers were stretched ashore and attached to twenty yoke of oxen, and these lum bering beasts towed the steamer up the river and on to Lake Erie. Since she drew too much water to dock in Buffalo, the Walk—in-the—Water stood off shore and loaded mail and passengers. On her first run, she carried twenty-nine passengers, including the Earl of Selkirk who had previ ously founded the Red River settlement at Winnipeg. The fare was $15 from Buffalo to Cleveland, and $24 from Buf falo to Detroit. After the vessel had been in operation for a while, these fares were reduced to $10 and $15, respectively.9 The sidewheeler spent three profitable years in the precarious passenger and package freight trade be tween the frontier towns. On the last day of October, 1821, the Walk-in-the-Water ran out of luck. She had just left Buffalo and was off Point Ablno when she began to be ®Bowen, op. clt.« p. 43. ^Hatcher, Lake_J3rle, p. 108. 105 buffeted by one of the sudden storms for which Lake Erie is notorious. Her light construction could not take the pounding and soon water was seeping in through cracked seams. When it became apparent that the pumps could not keep up, the captain let the wind take her and she was fetched up on Point Abino. All the passengers and crew made it ashore safely in one of the ship*s boats, but the steamer was a total wreck. Her engine was removed and placed in the side wheeler Superior, which was built at Black Rock the next spring. The Superior proved to be a fast vessel; she would travel at eight miles an hour while her gluttonous fires ate a cord of wood every fifty minutes.She, too, ended as a wreck and the engine was again salvaged and placed aboard the Charles Townsend. When that ship was dismantled, the engine, after an adventurous marine ca reer, found commercial employment ashore. In 1902, eighty—six years after the launching of the Walk-in-the- Water, the main cylinder of the old engine was still serv ing as a blowing cylinder at an engine works in B u f f a l o . -*-2 ^Bowen, op. clt. , p. 48. •^Havighurst, op. clt. , p. 124. l^Bowen, loc. clt. 106 In spite of the fact that the Walk—in—the—Water made an early debut (1818) on Lake Erie, in comparison to the experience on the Western Rivers of the United States, steamers were slow to multiply on the Great Lakes. By 1826, only six sidewheelers were sailing on the Great Lakes, while on the western rivers, there were 75 steam boats of 12,500 tons spewing their smoke on such arteries of commerce as the Mississippi.13 Table 8 shows the growth of steamers on the Western Rivers for selected years between 1815-1855. By 1833, six more steamboats were added to the Great Lakes fleet, bringing the total to eleven, but it was not until the great spate of immi grants came rolling up the Erie Canal that the steamer came into its own. This happened just after Black Hawk's rebellion in 1832. After this Insurrection was put down, in one year (between 1833 and 1834), thirty—four steamers were added to the fleet on the Great Lakes, bringing the total to forty-five ships in all. In 1836, approximately 3,000 canal barges were engaged in shuttling immigrants from Albany to Buffalo. Prom there, steamers carried them and their possessions to the promised land in the West. •^Gilbert C. Fite and Jim E. Reese, An Economic History of the United States (Bostoni Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), p. 191. 107 TABLE 8 STEAMERS ON THE WESTERN RIVERS 1817 — 1855 Year Number 1817 17 1820 69 1823 75 1836 381 1845 557 1855 727 Source: Gilbert C. Fite and Jim E. Reese, An Economic History of the United States (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), P* 151. 108 Business was so good that in the year 1836, sidewheelers earned profits equal to between 70 and 80 percent of their construction costs.14 pQr the next twenty years, fortunes were to be made in the steamboat business. Catastrophe Causes Control According to the economic historians from the University of Oklahoma, Fite and Reese, while ownership of the lake schooner was usually vested in the men who sailed her, "steam traffic on the Great Lakes seems to have been controlled by corporations from almost the very first." There are two good reasons for the use of the corporate form. In the first place, the average cost of a sidewheeler was $50,000, or about the cost of ten new schooners.15 To own and operate a fleet of these ships required a relatively large amount of capital; capital that was more easily mustered using the corporate form of business enterprise. Second, the corporation provides a facile method for spreading the risk of a venture — and heyday of the immigrant trade, on both the Western Rivers l^Havlghurst, op. clt., p. 127. 15Milo M. Quaife, Lake Michigan, in The American Lakes Series, ed. by Milo M. Quaife (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944), p. 164. 109 and on the Great Lakes, the risk of loss due to fire and storm was enormous. On the Western Rivers, between 1816 and 1848, ap proximately 1,500 people were killed by explosions alone. To this day, the vessels that carry both pas sengers and package freight on the Great Lakes are known as floating fire traps around the shipping halls. It was during the great influx of immigrants that the paddle- wheelers first earned this egregious reputation. In 1830, this item appeared among the shipping notices: First Steamboat Explosions — In September, the boilers of the Peacock exploded soon after her de parture from Buffalo, which resulted in the loss of fifteen lives, mostly emigrants. Captain John Flee- harty was in command. This is recorded as the first explosion on the American side of the Lakes. The steamer Adelaide. Captail Christie, which was also running this year between Chippewa and Amherstburg, exploded in June, killing three persons. She was 230 tons burden, and low p r e s s u r e . 17 It was a presage of the carnage to come. The Erie, wearing a glistening coat of fresh paint, threw off her lines and wheeled out of Buffalo's harbor on the afternoon of August 9, 1841. She carried ■^Flte and Reese, loc. cit. ■^William Ratigan, Great Lakes Shipwrecks and Sur vivals (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Vttn. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1960), p. 152. 110 200 paid passengers, including 140 Swiss and German immi grants. All went well until early in the evening. Among the passengers was a group of ships' painters, who had just finished working on the Erie and were on their way to Erie, Pennsylvania, to paint another vessel. When the passengers* cargo was stowed, the painters' paraphernalia including jars of turpentine and varnish, were inadvert ently placed on the deck directly above the sidewheeler1s bank of boilers.18 At eight in the evening, the first container ex ploded, setting off a chain reaction. Flames ate their way forward. One hour after the first bottle burst, the steamer, De Witt Clinton, pulled alongside to render assistance, but by that time, the once elegant Erie was reduced to a floating cinder. Twenty-eight men and one woman were found clinging to the floating wreckage and were saved. One hundred and seventy-five persons either drowned or were burned to death in the conflagration. The Clinton attempted to tow the charred hulk ashore, but she went down in eleven fathoms of water four miles from the beach. Fourteen years later, a salvage 18 Hatcher, The Great Lakes, p. 235. 19Ratigan, op. cit., p. 156. Ill crew raised the wreck from the bottom and towed her to Buffalo. It was reported that $200,000 in specie "in sovereigns, and rubles and marks and kronen and five-frank pieces" were recovered from the hulk.20 As the number of steamboats on the Great Lakes increased so did the frequency of the disasters. In the decade between 1840 and 1850, over a thousand people died as a result of explosions and fires on Great Lakes steam ers. Lake Erie has always been particularly accident prone and in the year 1850, nearly four-hundred people died on her shallow waters. Twenty days after the begin ning of the navigation season, twenty-two people died when a boiler exploded aboard the steamer Troy. Less than a month later, the Anthony Wayne blew up just after leav ing Sandusky and sixty-nine were killed.21 on Sunday morning of June 6, 1850, the immigrant ship, G. P. Grif fith, steamed out of Buffalo Harbor with a passenger list of 326 persons, the majority new arrivals from England, Ireland, and Germany. Near four o'clock in the morning, the mate on watch reported smoke emitting from the hold where freight and luggage was stored. Since the ship was 20Ibid., p. 166. 21Ibid., p. 161. 112 only five miles from shore, about twenty miles to the east of Cleveland, Captain C. C. Roby elected to make a run for the beach. He ran up full ahead and exhorted the chief engineer to give him more steam. The drafts caused by the vessel's speed spread the flames through the ship. A half a mile from shore the big sidewheeler struck a sandbar. Fetched up on the bar, she quickly burned to the waterline. Two hundred and ninety-four people perished in the holocaust. Thirty men and one woman made it to shore to tell of the tragedy. This last disaster brought a wave of public in dignation in its wake. A series of open meetings were held in Cleveland for the purpose of instigating govern ment regulation of vessels on the Great Lakes, as well aB procedures for licensing navigators on the inland water ways.22 That regulation and licensing was sorrily lack ing, there can be no doubt. Doctor Hatcher quotes an inveterate traveler who wrote in the middle of the nine teenth century as follows: Were it not for the almost criminal carelessness or recklessness of many of the owners and masters of steamers navigating these lakes, whereby hun dreds of valuable lives have been lost and millions 22 Dana Thomas Bowen, Shipwrecks of the Lakes (Day tona Beach, Fla.i Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1952), p. 21. 113 of property destroyed, no more safe, instructive, or grand excursion could be found on the face of the globe.23 Finally, the pressure of an angry populace was felt in Washington, and in August, 1859, the Congress passed a series of navigation laws which provided for the inspec tion of both hulls and boilers, plus other precautions. Disaster elicited regulation; it was to become the normal sequence of events in the maritime industry on the Great Lakes. The regulations promulgated by the lawmakers al layed the problem but were not a panacea — the fires continued. On April 9, 1868, the sidewheeler, Seabird, caught fire while on Lake Michigan. By the time the charred ship had drifted ashore near the town of Lake Forest, Illinois, between sixty-eight and one-hundred pas sengers and crew were dead.2^ The early steamboats were also prone to catas trophe caused by collision. In the heyday of laissez- faire, steamer captains were not fettered by restrictions such as prescribed up-bound and down-bound courses. In deed, it has been noted, a famous steamer captain sailed 2^Hatcher, Lake Erie, p. 168. O A Bowen, Shipwrecks of the Lakes, p. 50. 114 the Lakes for twenty years (1860-1880) and never had a chart in his hands.^5 The result was often disasterous. Atlantic, loaded with 200 Norwegians heading for Quebec, was sailing from Detroit to Buffalo. On the night of August 20, 1852, they ran into dense fog off Long Point, just as the Griffin had encountered so many years before. While La Salle's quick thinking had averted disaster, the Atlantic was not so fortunate. She was rammed by the steamer Ogdensburg on the port side just forward of the wheel. The Atlantic went down in 160 feet of water, carrying more than 300 with her.26 Eight years later, the Lady Elgin, the finest sidewheeler on Lake Michigan, was cut open by the sharp prow of the schooner Augusta on the black night of Septem ber 8, 1860. The schooner, which was running without lights, then sailed away to leave the Lady die in the dark. She foundered ten miles off Winnetka, Illinois, and went down so fast that the crew could not get her boats away. Two hundred and ninety—seven lost their lives, most of them Irishmen and their colleens from ^Dana Thomas Bowen, Memories of the Lakes (Day tona Beach, Fla.i Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 19 46), p. 11. 26j3atcher, Lake Erie, p. 165. 115 Milwaukee's Third Ward, who were returning from a gala excursion to Chicago. An investigation into the Lady Elqin-Augusta col lision was initiated. On the finding of the tribunal, Bowen, doyen of Great Lakes researchers, has this to say: The law of the sea was held to blame. A laxity in the navigation rules permitted the Augusta to be operated without lights, as was the current custom among sailing vessels. The prevailing law made it Incumbent upon the steamers to keep out of the way of sailing vessels under all circumstances. The regulations were subsequently changed to remedy such situations by requiring sailing vessels to carry proper lights.27 While the master and crew of the schooner were exonerated by the board at the inquest, their footsteps seemed to be dogged by Nemesis, the goddess of retributive justice. They quit the Augusta and shipped in the schoon er Mahor. They all perished when that ship was lost a few years later.28 The owners of the Augusta changed her name to the Colonel Cook and hastily sailed her to salt water in order to avoid the wrath of the Third Ward Irish, who were plot ting to put the torch to the killer ship.29 some years 97 'Bowen, Shipwrecks of the Lakes, p. 45. 28Ibid. 29:Havighurst, op. cit. , p. 69. 116 later, after tears had dried and tempers cooled, the Colonel Cook came back to the Lakes. She was wrecked in a bad blow in 1894 near Cleveland.30 But, it was not the fires nor the collisions nor the founderings (the Alpena vanished on Lake Michigan with one hundred and one aboard, and the Waubuno turned turtle on Georgian Bay and killed twenty-four)3^ that precipi tated the decline of the sidewheelersy instead, like the American Fur Company's fishing venture on Lake Superior, the "sidewinders'" growth was laid low by a financial crisis. The Railroad Ships and the Panic of 1857 From the launching of the Walk-in-the-Water in 1818, steamers increased in number and grew in both size and magnificence. Railroad construction, which was pro ceeding at a frantic pace in the states that are contigu ous to the Great Lakes, actually stimulated growth of the maritime industry on the Great Lakes.3^ According to North: 30Bowen, Shipwrecks of the Lakes, p. 45. 3^Fred Landon, Lake Huron, in The American Lakes Series, ed. by Milo M. Quaife (Indianapolis: The Bobbs- Merrill Company, 1944), p. 320. 3^Hatcher, Lake Srle. p. 231. 117 It was large-scale Investment in transporta tion which resulted in the opening up of new areas of market production. The river improve ments and canal building in the 1830s made possi ble large increases in supply of western foodstuffs in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. In the 1850s the railroad accomplished the same result in conjunction with the expansion of Great Lakes traffic.33 Table 9 shows the growth in railroad mileage in selected Great Lakes' states from 1845 to 1861. After covetously eyeing the profits being made by the sidewheelers, the railroad magnates decided to enter the steamship trade. Soon ships of the Michigan Central were plying the waters of Lake Erie, bringing passengers and freight to their terminal in Detroit where their crack trains loaded for Chicago. Not wanting to be left behind, the Michigan Southern and the C. C. & C. Railroad soon had their own fleets working the same waters. It was under the auspices of the railroad interests that the side- wheeler reached its vertex.In 1854, the Michigan Cen tral placed into service two sidewheelers, the Plymouth Rock and the Western World. These twin sisters made their rivals look like banana boats. These two 2,000 tonners 33 Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States 1790-1860 (New Yorki W. W. Norton and Company, 1961), p. 143. 3 4 Hatcher, The Great Lakes, p. 231. 118 TABLE 9 RAILROAD GROWTH IN GREAT LAKES STATES 1845 — 1861 (In miles) State 1845 1850 1852 1854 1856 1858 1860 1861 Ohio 84 575 756 1317 1807 2651 2946 2946 Michigan 238 342 431 444 501 642 779 810 Indiana 30 228 756 1317 1807 2014 2163 2175 Illinois 22 111 412 788 2235 2781 2790 2917 Wisconsin 20 71 97 276 826 905 933 Source: Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States 1790-1860 (New York: W. W. North and Company, 1961) , p^ 142". 119 were 348-feet long, had three-hundred staterooms complete with "rosewood bedsteads, marble-topped washstands and embroidered lounge chairs."33 Each had been built at a cost of $250,000.33 These beauties had been in service only for three years when they ran into the Panic of 1857. This crisis was as a result of an overinvestment in west ern railroads.3^ The panic was triggered by the failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company in August, 1857.38 In the depression that followed, stock and com modity prices, wages, and employment all dropped sharply. By 1860, 13,000 firms had failed and many banks had sus pended specie payment.3^ it also ended the sailing ca reers of those lovely ladles of the lakes, the Plymouth Rock and the Western World. Found to be too expensive to operate when the de pression squelched nonessential travel, the pair were 33Havighurst, op. cit., p. 140. a Quaife, op. cit., p. 163. 3^Harold Underwood Faulkner, American Economic History (New York* Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960), p. 162. 38Ibld„ 38Franc±s G. Walett, Economic History of the United States (New Yorki Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1954), p. 112. 120 layed up on the Detroit River next to the sidewheeler, Mississippi, another large lovely that was only four-years old. For years they sat in sullen silence, with their fires out, their salons dark, and their ballrooms bereft of dancing feet. At last, the railroad men sold them to the shipbreaker, who pulled their power plants and placed them in ships bound for the Orient. The great hulls of these antebellum beauties were converted into dry docks for the ports of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Bay City. Forty years would pass before such elegant passenger ships would cruise over the sweet waters of the inland s e a s y ^ O how ever, these new vessels would not be sidewheelers, but, rather their successor in the chain of nautical evolution called "propellers." The Propellers The concept of a propeller to drive ships through the waves was a contribution to marine engineering by the Swedish genius John Ericsson, who received popular acclaim as the designer of the Monitor, which successfully fought a celebrated battle with the Southern ship Merrimack. ^Quaife, loc. cit. 121 In 1841 a sloop-rigged ship, christened the Vandalia, slid down the ways at the Lake Ontario port of Oswego. She was the first commercial steamer in the world to use Ericsson's propeller wheel.41 she was soon taken through the Welland Canal and put to work on Lake Erie. The economics of her operation so delighted her owners that the following year seven more ships using the Ericsson propeller were in operation. By 1850, nine years after the Vandalia was launched, fifty propellers were thrashing the clear water of the Lakes.42 The Economics of the Hercules The Hercules was one of the first propellers to be built after the Vandalia proved the efficacy of the design. While the massive walking beam engines on a side wheeler were always located near the midship mark, the engines of a propeller, such as the Hercules, were placed in the very aft end of the hull, thus freeing the re mainder of the craft for compartments for passengers and holds for freight. The engine on the Hercules, which had ^Hatcher, The Great Lakes, p. 230. 42QUaife, op. cit.. p. 161. 122 a fifty-horsepower capacity, was said to occupy only six- square feet of space.43 Best of all, this compact power- plant, in combination with Ericsson's propeller, was so efficient that it could propel a vessel on only ten cords of wood a day. At a cost of $1.70 a cord, this would amount to $17.00 a day for fuel. A comparable-sized side wheeler would burn two cords of wood an hour, for a daily cost of $82.00.^4 since the propellers required about one-fifth the fuel required by the sidewheelers, they also required a minimum of stops at fueling stations lo cated throughout the Lakes to "wood-up the boat." Because the propeller used less wood, she could use her capacity for carrying cargo instead of fuel. The propeller was not only more economical to operate, she was also cheaper to build. The Hercules, which splashed into the water before the builder's yard in 1843, was 137-feet long and had a tonnage of 273. Her quarters included fourteen staterooms and she had space for forty-six more passenger berths. She was also fast; on one occasion, she made the run from Chicago to Buffalo, carrying 1,200 barrels of flour plus other merchandise in 43natcher, The Great Lakes, p. 230, 44ibid. 123 only six days. Yet, this fine vessel "superbly outfitted" required an initial investment of $20,000.^ The Great Lakes led the world in the use of pro peller-type vessels. Taylor notes that instead of lakemen copying the design of salt-water ships, during this period of maritime evolution, the reverse is true; in the last half of the 1850s, the most elegant ocean liners were still being propelled by paddle wheels, while more than half of the steam vessels sailing over the Great Lakes were of the "propeller" variety.46 In 1857, the year the financial panic struck lake transportation, there were 135 propellers, 107 sldewheel steamers, and 1,006 sailing ves sels of all riggings sailing on sweet water.47 The first series of propellers were relatively small steamers which, while possessing passenger accommodations, were con structed to compete with the sailing ships for the move ment of freight. It was only after the Panic of 1857 swept the leviathans, such as the Plymouth and the Western World, from the Lakes that the propeller prevailed in the ^Quaife, op. cit. , p. 162. ^George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolu tion 1815-1860 (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1951), p. 62. ^^Bowen, Lore of the Lakes, p. 13. 124 A Q passenger trade. While the propellers were less susceptible to catastrophe than were the sidewheelers, they were cer tainly not immune to the malady. The Coming of Course Agreements One of the two steamers which Ochille Cadotte, his horses, and his logs rolled around the rapids at Sault Salnte Marie in 1845 — one of the "fleet that sailed on land" — was the wooden propeller Independence. In November, 1853, while heading out to Whitefish Bay un der the command of a master named McKay, her boilers ex ploded and blew the boat to bits.Four people died, but neither Captain McKay nor his fifteen-year old son, who was sailing with his father to learn the trade, was injured.50 The year 1865, twelve years after the boiler ex plosion made kindling wood out of the propeller Independ ence, found Captain McKay's son aboard another propeller. He was now Captain George Perry McKay, the twenty-seven 4°Quaife, op. cit., p. 161. 4°Havighurst, op. cit., p. 177. SOjbld. 125 year old captain of the steamer Pewabic. The evening of August 9, 1865, found the Pewabic sailing south on Lake Huron and abreast of the city of Alpena, which sits in Thunder Bay, The Pewabic was bound for Cleveland with a load of passengers and a cargo of virgin copper from Houghton, Michigan, the town on the Keweenaw named after the little doctor who died when his Mackinac boat was swamped. The Pewabic carried $40,000 in a strongbox in the purser's office. In 1865, there were no up-bound and down-bound courses on the Great Lakes and it was a ritual aboard the Pewabic that when they passed her sister ship, the Meteor, they would sail very close together so that items of in terest, such as newspapers, messages and mail, could be passed between the ships.51 At nine in the evening, the down-bound Pewabic met the up-bound Meteor and, following their custom, the distance between the vessels began to close. At a crucial point in this maneuver, the helmsman aboard the Meteor misunderstood a command and whirled the wheel in the wrong direction, sending the sharp bow of the Meteor cutting into the soft side of her wooden sister ship. In a matter ^Bowen, Memories of the Lakes, p. 46. 126 of minutes, the Pewabic plunged to the bottom of Lake Huron, where she lay covered by 180 feet of water. Meteor managed to stay afloat and the crew of this vessel was able to rescue many of the Pewabic1s pas sengers as they struggled among the wreckage in the cold water. One hundred and twenty-five people lost their lives, making the Pewabic-Meteor collision the seventh worst disaster in Great Lakes history.52 While the wreck of the Pewabic caused seamen and shipowners to ponder the advantages of having separate courses for up—bound and down-bound vessels, nearly half a century would pass before such ruminations would bring results. Appropriately enough, the first such experiment was attempted on Lake Huron. In 1910, shipping interests on Lake Huron experi enced four collisions along the thumb side of the Michigan mitten which resulted in the loss of eighteen lives and $400,000 in cargo and ships.53 This loss energized the Lake Carriers Association (an American organization of shipowners whose first treasurer was Captain George Perry McKay, who managed to survive the Pewabic disaster)54 ^Ratigan, op. cit. T p. 100. ^Landon, op. cit. , p. 338. 54 Ratigan, op. cit.« p. 101. 127 into proposing that they use Lake Huron as a test bed for the separate lanes concept. The proposal was accepted, albeit grudgingly, by the masters of the American fleets and in 1911, the plan went into effect. The Canadian Lake Protective Association declined to be a party to the plan? however, in 1915, a collision on Lake Huron between the Wahcondah and the Choctaw, which resulted in the loss of the latter steamer, caused the Canadians to take an other look at the scheme. The Dominion Marine Association accepted the plan for all ships owned by their members and agreed to work out similar plans for the other lakes. Again, death and destruction engendered rules and regula tions. Presently, all five of the Great Lakes have sepa rate up-bound and down-bound courses for commercial vessels sailing upon them. It is interesting that these course patterns are not enforceable by either federal or state law; they exist merely as a result of agreements made by the men who own the steamship fleets. The latest (1970) edition of the Great Lakes Pilot, which is the bible for mariners on the chain of lakes, states the fol lowing! Separate Steamer Lanes for Vessels — The Lake Carrier's Association and the Dominion Marine Association have prescribed, for ves sels enrolled in the associations, the follow ing separation of routes for up-bound and 128 down-bound traffic in Labe Huron: Down-bound vessels shall lay a course from De Tour Passage to pass not less than 15 miles northeast from Middle Island Light, thence not less than 12 miles northeasterly of Harbor Beach Light and thence for Labe Huron Lightship [blacb hulled]. . . . Up-bound vessels on Labe Huron bound for Straits of Macbinac shall lay a course for Poe Reef Passage from a point not over five miles 050° from Presque Isle Light to abreast of Cordwood Point lighted buoy. ... 55 In spite of the fact that the Pewabic found her final resting place in nearly thirty fathoms, men would not let her alone. The thought of the $40,000 in her strongbox fired imaginations of treasure hunters. In the fifty years that followed the slnbing, ten divers died while attempting to recover the fortune, crushed or stran gled by the heinous pressures that are found at that depth. In 1914, two men in a great diving bell were low ered down to the hulb. During the descent, the pressure pushed in one of the glass windows and both adventurers drowned before the rig could be pulled to the surface.56 The production of munitions during World War I caused a copper shortage which drove the price of the red metal to tz 7 an all-time high. The high price of copper caused men 55U. S. Labe Survey, Great Labes Pilot 1970 (De troit: U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1966), p. 300. 56Ratigan, op. cit., p. 106. ^Bowen, Memories of the Labes, p. 44. 129 to remember the old propeller Pewabic and the cargo of ingots she carried in her hold. A salvage expert named Captain Ermish organized an operation to retrieve both the cargo and the strongbox. Using a new diving suit made by a Toledo firm, the venture proved profitable. Fifty—five tons of pure copper ingots were recovered. The disappointment came when the strongbox was opened. Instead of specie, the box had carried paper money that had become so soaked that "it resembled somewhat the C Q scales found on the bottom of a well-used tea kettle. 1,30 While the establishment of separate steamer tracks appreciably reduced the loss of ships and cargo as a result of collision, no similar nostrum could be found for the problem of fire. Floating Firetraps In 1847, a propeller that bore the prophetic name of Phoenix burned to the waterline on Lake Michigan. Un like her namesake in Egyptian mythology, that beautiful bird living alone in the desert that every 500 years con sumes itself with fire, the propeller called Phoenix did not rise triumphantly from its own ashes to begin another 58Ibid., p. 53. 130 long life. Two "hundred people died in the floating in ferno. In the 1880s, the railroads had encircled the Great Lakes in bands of steel and the era of the passenger steamer was brought to a close. On the advantages of the iron horse, the economic historian Taylor observed* Hail travel was generally faster, more regular and dependable, and more flexible than that by steamboat. The average rate of speed even of the faster steamboats before the Civil War was seldom greater than fifteen miles an hour except on some of the luxury lines in the East, whereas by the fifties railroad passenger trains often maintained schedules faster by 50 to 100 percent. . . . While railroads operated the year around, the lakes and rivers of the North were closed by ice from two to five months during the winter season and in the West frequently for long periods during the rest of the year by low water. Travelers and shippers alike, becoming habituated to using rails in the closed season, often found small differences in cost insufficient to tempt them back to the rivers and lakes when they again became navigable.59 After the beginning of the twentieth century, shipping interests found that there were handsome profits to be earned by posh—excursion vessels plying the Great Lakes during the summer months. Two events tipped this trade into the hands of the Canadians. First, the Congress of the United States passed legislation stating that subsequent to July 1, 1914, it S^Taylor, op. cit., p. 71. 131 was illegal for a railroad to have a financial interest in either ships or water-transport firms with which it would compete. This broke the stranglehold that James J. Hill and his cohorts historically had on Great Lakes side- wheelers and propellers. But, it also deprived the steam ship lines of a rich source of investment capital. The second was an incident that occurred out oh salt water that had economic repercussions on the Great Lakes. In the black hours of the morning of September 8, 19 34, fire roared through the Morro Castle, a twin-screw, turbo-electric passenger liner that was sailing off As- bury Park, New Jersey, on the last leg of a pleasure cruise to Cuba. One hundred and twenty-four lost their lives in the blaze and the burned-out hulk of the luxury liner was subsequently cut up for scrap. VJhile the cause of the fire was never officially determined, in his ex citing book, Fire at Sea, nautical researcher Gallagher builds a strong case for his belief that it was inten tionally set by Chief Radio Operator, George Rogers, who had been nationally hailed as the hero of the holocaust, and who, in 1958, died in the New Jersey State Peniten tiary at Trenton while serving two concurrent life ^Bowen, Lore of the Lakes, p. 66. 132 sentences for bludgeoning to death an old man and his spinster daughter.^1 As a result of the Morro Castle fire, the Senate of the United States in Report 184 instructed the Coast Guard to promulgate a series of very stringent safety-of- life-at-sea regulations. The operators of the palatial liners on the Great Lakes, separated from railroad reve nues, were unable to muster the money required to perform the required modifications to their existing vessels. As a result, such beauties as the Tlonesta, Juniata, and the Octorara, all built between 1901 and 1910 by the Pennsyl vania Railroad's Anchor Line, were swept from the Lakes.^ Since the publishing of the Coast Guard regula tions that were based upon the Morro Castle disaster, not one passenger vessel bearing the United States flag on her stern staff has been lost in a fire at sea. The Canadians have not been so fortunate. After the economic consequences of the regulations initiated by the Morro Castle fire had forced the American excursion vessels from the Great Lakes, this trade was dominated by three steel monsters that were owned and operated by the 61Thomas Gallagher, Fire at Sea (New Yorks Berkley Publishing Co., 1960), p. 153. ^^Bowen, Lore of the Lakes, p. 67. 133 Canadian Steamship Lines' Northern Navigation Division. The Hamonlc was built at Colllngwood on Georgian Bay in 1909. She was 350—feet long, 50 feet at the beam and 24-feet deep. The Noronic slid down the ways at Port Arthur, Ontario, four years later. She was 385-feet long, 52 feet at the beam and 24-feet deep.6^ The pala tial Quebec followed in 1928. Built for duty in the St. Lawrence River, she was 350—feet long, 70 feet abeam and nearly 19-feet deep.^5 They were enormous ships for their time and when they burned, despite their all-steel hulls, they were con sumed by enormous flames whose lurid light could be seen for miles. The Hamonic was the first to be gutted by fire. She was tied to the dock at Point Edward near Sarnia, Ontario, in the early morning hours of July 17, 1945, when a warehouse on the wharf caught fire, which, fanned by an off-the-dock breeze, spread to the vessel. Quick thinking and good work by the ship1s captain and crew saved the ship's passengers from fatality, but the vessel ^Bowen, Shipwrecks of the Lakes, p. 327. 64Ibid., p. 329. 65Ibid., p. 334. 134 was a total loss. She was cut up into scrap steel.66 The Noronlc was next. On September 16, 1949, she tied up at Pier 9 in Toronto, Ontario, with a passenger list of 524 persons. She carried 171 men "on the arti cles." At one fifteen the next morning, a passenger found smoke billowing from a linen locker. From there, the fire raced through the passenger quarters. According to tabulations by the Canadian Government, 119 passengers died in the blaze. So much water was poured in to quench the fire that the ship sank at the pier. A few days later, she was pumped out and hauled to the shipbreaker1s yard.^7 Last to leave the Lakes was the beautiful Quebec. On August 14, 1950, she was steaming down the St. Lawrence River when the tocsin cried "flrel" Again the flames emanated from a linen closet. While the fire parties fought a losing battle with the flames, the Captain, C. H. Burch, wheeled the steamer into Tadoussac, the nearest river port. The ship won the race with the fire and the passengers were able to be removed in an orderly manner. Only three persons died in the fire. A court of inquiry 66ibid., p. 326. 67Ibid., p. 333. 135 later rendered the opinion that the Quebec had died of fire due to sabotage by person or persons unknown.®® The case was turned over to the police and the Quebec was turned over to the shipbreaker. Within the span of five years, fire had swept the Canadian excursion fleet from the Lakes. The ships were not replaced.69 The Steam Tug and the Demise of the Sailing Fleet Tugboat Competition Concomitant with the era of the sailing vessel was the era of the steam tugboat. From the advent of steam on the Lakes until the Panic of 1873, theirs was a symbiotic relationship. Until the propeller was perfected, the sailing ship had a comparative advantage in carrying pack age freight over open water, but they were quite helpless when in the cramped and congested harbors or sailing against the current in the tortuous rivers that are the connecting links in the Chain of Lakes. Assisting the fore-and-afters to maneuver in the ports, or pulling them up the rivers, became an extremely lucrative business dur- 68Ibid., p. 336. 69Ibid., p. 322. 136 ing the incipient stage of tugboat operation.70 In con cert with the classical model, since there was no barrier to entry into the industry, new tugs were built and placed into service until the large profits originally being earned by the embryonic operators were dwindled by competition. A period of over expansion and chaotic com petition followed. During this period, the small port of Bay City, Michigan, tucked in Saginaw Bay, could boast of 200 harbor tugs. It currently has none, though there is more cargo carried in and out of the port than during the days of sail.71 When the lookouts on the harbor tugs would spot a heavily-laden schooner making for that port, their cry to the wheelhouse of "schooner cornin'" would be the sig nal for a race between the competing tugs. Since the skipper on the schooner would accept the tow from the first tug to reach his ship, great emphasis was placed on speed, as well as power, in the construction of tugboats. Bowen notes that "many nefarious tricks were re sorted to by the tug crews in order to obtain business."72 70ibid., p. 322. 71 'Bowen, Memories of the Lakes, p. 14. 72sowen, Shipwrecks of the Lakes, p. 71. 137 One of these stunts consisted of having an audacious mem ber of tug "A" sneak aboard tug "B," when her crew was ashore, to saw almost through the wooden handles of the rival tug's fire shovels. Then, when Tugs "A" and "B" were racing toward an inbound schooner, tug "B's" fire shovels would snap, her steam pressure would fall, her speed would decrease, and the cunning crew from tug "A" would capture the business. Another, albeit riskier, ruse practiced after dark among tugs cruising the open water after inbound tows was to switch running lights (carrying a green light on the left side of the tug and a red one on the right instead of vice versa), whereby one's rivals would think that the tug was coming into port, when it was really heading out into the lake after a fat freighter they had Just spotted. While such a practice was diametrically opposed to the Rules of the Road, such laws were not strictly enforced during the heyday of the tugboat fleets.73 This non-price competition among the tugboats at least once led to a disastrous conclusion. In the years prior to 1880, the Lamont family enjoyed a monopoly in the towing business in the lumber port of Pentwater, 73Ibid., p. 72. 138 Michigan. Their boats, the Messenger and the George Lanont, for many years were the only tugs in the harbor. In 1879, the rival tug, Gem, steamed on the scene and pro ceeded to share in the towing business. The antipathy that developed between the owners and crews culminated in the challenge for a race over a stated course on Lake Michigan. The gauntlet was quickly taken up and the date of March 14, 1880, was set. Both excitement and wagers were running high among the local gentry as the two tugs steamed off into Lake Michigan's heavy swells. When the tugs were well out on the lake, a nor1wester came roaring down from Lake Superior, filling the air with snow and spindrift. Late that afternoon, the winning tugboat Gem pulled into Pentwater, having completed the race course as well as could be expected under the weather conditions. So the George Lamont was most assuredly the loser. The extent of the loss was not realized until later that even ing when it became apparent to the crowd that was feting the winners, that the long overdue George Lamont would never finish the race. She had gone down with all hands. Three days later, Lake Michigan rolled the bodies of the crew ashore.7 4 74Ibid., p. 77. 139 Because the prosperity of tugboat operations was inexorably intertwined with the fortunes of the schooner fleet, when the Panic of 1873 dealt the coup de grace to the owner-masters of the fore-and-afters, the independent tugboat operator was also stricken. The Chicago Fire and Schooner Prosperity As previously noted in the study, the schooner fleet operated under auspicious conditions up until 1871. In the slimmer of 1871, the sun blazed down like a gargan tuan burning glass upon the forests of the Great Lakes' watershed. No rain fell to quench the thirst of the trees that turned tinderdry in the swelter of summer. People who lived In the sawmill towns that dotted the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron became accustomed to the acrid smell of pine smoke biting their nostrils.75 As the scorching summer progressed, town after town had to fight for its life as the sawdust and slash that was left by the loggers burst into flame. The timber town of Alpena was one of the first to go up in smoke, as fire followed the Thunder Bay River down to Lake Huron. Alpena was no stranger to flames; it had burned in 1862, 75navighurst, op. cit., p. 107. 140 1663 , 1867, and 1869. But the 1871 blaze leveled every thing north of the river.76 on the opposite side of the Michigan Mitten, the dwellers of Manistee watched in horror as a wall of fire came weaving out of the forest that lay behind the city. In a frenzy, the people fled to the Big Manistee River and piled aboard a steamer that sat at the dock. Ihe dock hands cast off the spring lines as the Captain rang up Full Ahead. As the ship slithered between burning lumber yards, tongues of fire licked at her paint and set her afire. While passengers fought the flames, the steamer headed down stream. A burning bridge blocked his way and, using his bow as a battering ram, the Captain bulled through it and succeeded in sailing his ship and its precious cargo to safety.77 Across Lake Michigan, the people of Peshtigo were not so fortunate. Seven hundred burned to death as flames devoured the hamlet.78 survivors that staggered through that wild-red night arrived at Menominee just in time to join the men at the firebreaks, as an arc of fire began to encircle that lumber port. The courage of its citizens 76Ibid. 77Ibid., p. 108. 78Ibid., p. 115. 141 plus a shift in the wind saved the city. That same breeze blew Chicago*s ashes over the length of Lake Michigan.79 During the three days that Chicago burned a black incubus lay over the Lakes. Many of the vessels that at tempted to navigate through the blinding pall of smoke arrived at disaster rather than their intended destina tion. A schooner was stranded on White Shoals, a tug and five barges crashed onto Pointe Aux Barques Reef, a barque was fetched up on Big Sable Point and a new steamer was wrecked in Saginaw Bay." As a result of the fire, three and one-half square miles of Chicago — six hundred city blocks — were re duced to "a pavement of ashes.But Chicago did not lose all of its capability as the nation's grain handler. Prior to the blaze, the city possessed seventeen grain elevators with a capacity of 11,375,000 bushels. Six of these were razed by the fire, but the eleven elevators that had weathered the fire storm could store 8,900,000 bushels of grain, so shipments from Chicago continued 79Ibid. 80Ibid., pp. 115-116. 8^Hatcher, A Pictorial History of the Great Lakes, p. 185. 142 unabated. Since a large portion of the city had to be re built, in the last months of 1871, there was a strong demand for building material and for sailing ships to carry such supplies, especially lumber. As a result of the fire, freight rates on lumber rose from $2.50 a thou sand feet to $4.00 a thousand. Wages of seamen, being free to respond to changing conditions in demand, in creased from $2.00 to $3.50 a day. Profits from the sail ing fleet hit a new high, which induced the construction of many new vessels. Eighteen-seventy-two was a record year for the shipyards on the Great Lakes. The new ships merely added to the schooner fleet's excess capacity when the financial panic hit the following year. The Panic of 1873 Ends an Era While the general level of freight rates began to decline in 1873, the full weight of the depression that came in the train of the panic was not felt until 1875. According to Peck, the Panic of 1873 "coincided with a sharp fall in the volume of railroad construction" 82 Knut Gjerset, Norwegian Sailors on the Great Lakes (Northfield, Minn.x The Norwegian-American His torical Society, 192 8), p. 87. 143 and "he notes that Professor Schumpeter classed it as a railroad crisis.85 It was precipitated by the failure of Jay Cooke and Company, a large banking house which was heavily committed in the Northern Pacific Railroad. For five years, depression followed the Panic of 1873 in which "prices fell, wages declined, unemployment rose, and agrarian unrest and labor agitation developed. 1,84 By 1875, freight rates on lumber fell from the 1871 high of $4.00 a thousand feet to $1.25-$1.50 a thou sand feet, while the cost of shipping coal fell from $1.00-$l.50 to $.45 a ton.85 Seamen's wages also reflected the pernicious ef fect of the decrease in demand. They fell from $3.50 to $1.25-$2.00 a day, depending on the season of the year. In the following years, the freight picture ap peared blacker than ever. This was at least partly due to a city ordinance passed on November 26, 1875, by the Chicago Common Council that stipulated that all buildings except "sheds and minor outhouses" be built of noncombus- 85Merton J. Peck, "Transportation in the American Economy," American Economic History, ed. by Seymour E. Harris (New York* McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1969), p. 344. ®^Walett, op. cit.« pp. 180-181. 85Gjerset, op. cit.. p. 88. 144 tible material. As a result of this law, a great deal less lumber was required than had been previously planned. As a result of this decrease in demand, freight rates be came increasingly softy rates on a thousand feet of lum ber went to $1.00-$l. I2J 5 and the coal rate to Chicago dropped to $.30-$.65 a ton.88 Sailors* pay took another drop and finished the year at the $1.00-$l.12% a day level.87 There is an old saw on the Lakes that says "When the sailors catch a cold, the tugmen sneeze. 1 1 So it was during this period of nautical hard times; plagued by ex cess capacity, it was not uncommon for the steam tugs to range the length of Lake Huron, from Port Huron all the way to the Straits of Mackinac, and sometimes as far away as Escanaba, to line up a tow of fore-and-afters to haul over Lake Saint Clair and through the Detroit River.88 Doctor Gjerset quotes the December 12, 1876, edition of the Skandinaven, a Norwegian newspaper pub lished in Chicago, as follows1 86Ibid. 87Ibid., p. 89. 88Bowen, Memories of the Lakes, p. 8. 145 The shipping for this year may now be regarded as finished. This season has been on the whole very poor, as freight rates have been low, and the amount of freight carried has been reduced in many lines. The Goodrich Steamship Line with nine ves sels, the Northern Transportation Company with thirteen vessels, the People’s Company with three vessels, the Western Transportation Company with ten steamers, the Anchor Line with eleven steamers kept their vessels in operation the whole season. Pour other companies with twenty steamers had their vessels make a few trips from time to time. This competition was very detrimental to the sailing vessels, especially in the grain trade. The smaller lake schooners are almost eliminated from the grain traffic. Ninety vessels were engaged in the lumber trade at moderate rates. Freight rates on coal are so low that ships could not make their expenses, except in cases when the trips could be made in very short time. Not less than twelve vessels have made trips to Europe through the canals, but one of them has been lost.89 In 1877, there was a slight improvement and the larger, more efficient vessels made some money. The ap parent economies of scale were driven home during this year and shipyards experimented in the construction of a few very large schooners. This movement culminated in the launching of the David Dows, which was a schooner- rigged vessel with five tall masts. 3he was 265-feet long and had a carrying capacity of 1,418 tons. Her many masts made her unstable in a blow and within a year, she had lost one of them in a storm.^0 ®^Gjerset, op. cit., pp. 90-91. ^Hatcher, a Pictorial History of the Great Lakes, p. 72. 146 While the rest of the economy began recovery in 1878, freight rates and seamen's wages stayed low until 1883. During that period, an important aspect of nautical economics began to loom large; while an individual schooner could not make money at the existing low freight rates, a string of them pulled by a steam tug could prove profitable. The trick was cutting variable cost to the bone by eliminating the majority of the crew. Since most of the crew were needed to work the sails, the owners simply solved this problem by cutting off the masts and converting the schooners into barges. Such was the ig noble fate of the beautiful David Dows, as well as hun.- dreds of her sisters.91 of the remainder of the schooner fleet, Gjerset states: Their number decreased rapidly, as they were no longer cared for, or kept in proper repair. Many were left to rot in the harbors, many suf fered damage through various accidents, and were abandoned, many were driven ashore along the lakes in strong gales, and were left to moulder into decay where they had stranded.92 According to North, the changeover from canvas to steam did not occur on salt water "until the very end of the nineteenth century, when the triple-expansion engine 91Ibid. ^Gjerset, op. cit. , p. 98. 147 made it possible for steam to compete effectively with sail. "93 i<he triple-expansion engine is a form of the reciprocating engine (an engine in which the pistons move back and forth in a straight line in the cylinders). In the triple-expansion engine, the steam is reused (com pounded) three times in the following manner. The steam comes out of a Scotch marine boiler at very high pressure. This steam is fed into the top of a cylinder (as in the conventional steam engine) and the expanding steam forces the piston down. The piston is attached to the crank shaft by a connecting rod and its movement turns the pro peller. But the steam in the first cylinder still has pressure so it is then released from the first cylinder and fed into a second cylinder, one which is larger and has a longer stroke than the first cylinder. The expand ing steam forces the piston of this second piston down. Now the steam still has pressure that is greater than the outside atmosphere, so it is exhausted from the second cylinder and fed into a third one, one which has a very large piston which gives the steam the maximum surface upon which to work. After the pressure drives the third Douglass C. North. Growth and Welfare in the American Past (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. s Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966), p. 110. 148 cylinder down, it is then sent back into the boiler to be reheated. Because the steam is essentially being used in three different cycles instead of just one, as was the case in the original steam engine, the triple-expansion version of the reciprocating steam engine has been esti mated to be slightly over twice as efficient as the single-cylinder model. While North is, no doubt, correct in the statement that the triple-expansion engine was instrumental in bringing about the change from sails to steam on salt water, such was not the experience on the Great Lakes. First, triple-expansion engines used on the Great Lakes were put in the Cambria and the Roumania in 1887.^ ^he economic position of the lake schooner had been under mined several years previously by its erstwhile confed erate, the steam tug. The last ship to carry a full-schooner rig was launched in Manitowac in 1875. She was named the Lucia A. Simpson, and she was wrecked near Sturgeon Bay in Lake Michigan in 1929.^5 ^^Bowen, Memories of the Lakes, p. 18. ^Havighurst, op. cit. , p. 74. CHAPTER V THE BULK FREIGHTER A Canal at Sault Sainte Marie The Discovery of the Marquette Range When Andrew Carnegie observed, nGold is precious, but iron is priceless,"! he knew what he was talking about for, since the Industrial Revolution in England, iron has been the sine gua non of industrialization. In spite of the fact that Americans got an extremely early start in the manufacture of iron (the first blast furnace was established in Saugus, Massachusetts, in 1644), the industry did not flourish due to a dearth of rich ore. The ore used by the nascent ironmongers was limonite, also known as "bog iron ore," since it is usually found in marshes and swamps. Limonite is formed by alteration, especially by hydration. Iron is washed from the soil and !Walter Havighurst, The Long Ships Passing (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1961), p. 9. ^Stanley Vance, Industrial structure and Policy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 19551, p. 59. 149 150 then deposited on the floor of stagnant pools of water.^ Beds of limonite are quite common, but the ore is neither rich nor vast. The American iron industry was forced to wait for the coming of the surveyor and his solar compass. In 1844, William A. Burt, heading a party of ten men which included two Indians, was busily engaged in running township lines in what would later become Mar quette County. Burt, who was the U.S. Deputy Surveyor for the northern peninsula, was the proud inventor of a solar compass, which allowed him to fix his position by taking sun shots. On a cloudy day in September, which precluded the use of the solar device, the crew was "in the bush" es tablishing the "east line of Township 47 North, Range 27 West, one mile south of Teal Lake."4 During this work, their magnetic compass started to behave erratically. Burt wrote of these wild fluctuations as followsi On sections 12 and 13, variations of all kinds, from south 87 degrees east, to north 87 degrees west. In some places the north end of the needle would dip to the bottom of the box, and would not settle anywhere. In other places it would have 3 Alexander N. Winchell, Elements of Mineralogy (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1942), p. 267. 4Havighurst, op. cit.. p. 181. 151 variations 40, 50, and 60 degrees east, then west variation alternating in the distance of a few chains.5 At Burt's behest, the men spread out and began to search the area. They found only scattered outcrops of iron ore; the exterior traces of an iron range that was heavy enough to weight down a continent. But these were surveyors, not explorers; they merely compensated for the anomaly and continued to run their lines. The Indians in the field party later mentioned it to a sagacious Chippewa Chief by the name of Majji G e s i c k . ^ The next year, a handful of adventurers from Jack son, Michigan, headed by Philo Everett, came to the Upper Peninsula to seek their fortune In copper. At L'Anse, where the voyageurs of the canoe era traded firewater for furs, they met Majji Gesick. He took them to the place where outcrops of iron thrust up from the depths of the earth, as if the lode longed to be discovered. One look was enough for Philo Everett; the next year (1846), the men from Jackson Mine began to tear at the earth with picks and shovels.^ ^William A. Burt, "The Compass Needle,1 1 The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New York* McGraw- Hill Book Company, 1961), p. 92. 6Havighurst, loc. cit. 7Ibid., p. 182. 152 As long as the obstruction at Sault Sainte Marie blocked the path to the markets on the lower lakes, iron mongery in Upper Michigan was a good deal less than a paying proposition. The first ore from what was to be called the Marquette Range was processed near the pits on the shores of Lake Superior. Small forges were fashioned by the rivers and fired by charcoal made from the ind 7- enous hardwoods. Blooms fresh from the forge were loaded aboard a schooner, shipped to Sault Sainte Marie, un loaded and portaged around the rapids, loaded aboard a downbound vessel and finally shipped to market on the lower Lakes. By the time the iron had reached a Lake Erie port, its combined cost of production and transpor tation was $200 a ton and its market value was equal to $80 a ton.® For hundreds of years, charcoal — the form of carbon that is produced when wood is oxidized in large kilns — was used to produce the intense heat necessary to transform iron ore into iron. Then, about the time of the Civil War, coke replaced charcoal as fuel in the iron business. Coke is merely anthracite that has been baked in large beehive ovens that causes impurities to be ®Ibld., p. 183. 153 driven off in the form of gases.9 In the rudimentary stages of the iron and steel-making industry, two tons of coking coal were required for every one ton of iron ore used. Given these constant coefficients, it was simply good economics for Michigan iron ore to be shipped to the Pennsylvania coal fields.*^ In 1856, a thousand tons of hematite from the Marquette Range was loaded aboard ves sels on Lake Superior. Because iron ore was deemed too heavy to be hauled hand over hand from a ship's hold, the reddish brown ore was brought aboard by wheelbarrows and then dumped on the weather deck. At Sault Sainte Marie, the seamen bent their backs and shovelled the heavy earth into wheelbarrows for transfer into portage carts. When the portage men had performed their function, the ore was again loaded into barrows and wheeled aboard vessels that were bound for the lower-lake ports. It was a wasteful way to move bulk cargo. 9Gilbert C. Fite and Jim E. Reese, An Economic History of the United States (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965)-, pT 356. lODouglass C. North, Growth and Welfare in the American Past (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.t Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966), p. 151. ■^Havighurst, op. cit. , p. 184. 154 What was clearly needed was a canal at Sault Sainte Marie. There had been none since the bateau locks built by the Northwest Fur Company were destroyed during the War of 1812. The Canal Builders vs. the U.S. Army When Michigan was admitted to the Union in 1837, one of the first acts of the newly elected lawmakers was to appropriate funds for the construction of a canal on the Saint Marys River. The system was to have three lifts, each one raising an upbound vessel by six feet. They were to be steamer—size tubs — 100—feet long, 32- feet wide, and 10-feet deep. The contractor who was to do the job had estimated the cost to be in the neighbor hood of $100,000. On May 11, 1838, the schooner Eliza Ward tied up near the rapids on the Saint Marys River. She carried the contractor and his entourage of fifty construction work ers, plus the tools of their trade. After they had un loaded their gear, they headed to the worksite, only to find the route blocked by thirty of the U.S. Army’s finest troopers, led by a Captain Johnson, the Commandant of Fort Brady, a minuscule outpost established to guard American 155 interests at Sault Sainte Marie. It seems that the canal proposed by the State of Michigan ran through the military reservation and that it would sever a mill race that served an effete sawmill on the post. The Commander had orders from Washington stipulating that such an invasion of Federal Property should not take place. Since shovels are no match for bayonets, the contractor and his roust abouts returned to the Eliza Ward, which promptly set sail for Detroit. ^ The Effect of Building the State Canal For the next thirteen years, the canal at Sault Sainte Marie was merely a debating issue in Washington. Both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster were vociferous oppo nents of the project. Webster said that he "would never vote a penny to bring the rocky, bleak, uninhabitable shores of California one step nearer Boston." Clay classed the endeavor as "a work beyond the remotest set tlement in the United States, if not in the moon."^ The bill for the canal at Sault Sainte Marie was trapped in the Senate. 13.Alida Malkus, Blue-Water Boundary (New Yorki Hasting House, Publishers"! I960) , p^ 4 ~ . 156 The canal-building fever in the United States, which reached epidemic proportions subsequent to the suc cessful completion of the Erie, had run its course by the 1850s. Of the many miles of canals that were dug between 1830 and 1840, none developed the traffic that was char acteristic of "Clinton's Ditch" in its storied era. Indeed, even the once profitable Erie commenced to operate in the red after a network of branches was added to the original waterway. As a result of this over-expansion of canals, profits did not sail in to service the bonds, and by the last half of the 1830s, the states of Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio, all labored under an onus of obligations incurred in canal construction. Only a modicum of the $200 million spent on canals was repaid from revenues earned in their operations.14 it was be cause of this experience that the bill to fund the con struction at Sault Sainte Marie remained a captive in a legislative committee. To President Fillmore must go the credit for breaking up this congressional logjam, for in his first ^Merton J. Peck, "Transportation in the American Economy," American Economic History, ed. by Seymour E. Harris (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1966), p. 342. 157 annual address to the legislature, he stated that, "a ship canal around the falls of St. Mary of less than a mile in length, though local in its construction, would be national in its purpose and benefits."IS In the fall of 1852, shortly after Fillmore's speech, the Congress of the United States presented to the State of Michigan, 750,000 acres of federal land to be sold by representa tives of the state to defray the cost of canal construc tion. The government also provided for a 400-foot right- of-way over th-j federal property adjacent to Fort Brady. While the lawmakers were pondering and then pass ing the canal bill, Charles T. Harvey, a twenty-three year old salesman for the eastern scale manufacturing firm of E. T. Fairbanks and Company, came to the village at the Falls of Saint Mary burning with typhoid. While at Sault Sainte Marie, recovering from one fever, he was smitten with another — canal-building fever. Soon he was writing to Thaddeus Fairbanks, inventor of the plat form scale, to convince him that the scale company should ^Walter Havighurst, 1 1 Introduction to 'Canalside Superintendent,1" The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New York* McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1969), p. 271. l^Malkus, pp. cit.. p. 5. 158 opt to both sell the newly-granted lands and build the canal, Harvey's proposal piqued the imagination of the brothers Fairbanks, who contacted other men of means, such as Erastus Corning of Albany, John F. Seymour of Utica, and John W. Brooks of Detroit. 1*7 These capital ists decided to take the risk and formed the Ship Canal Company; within the year, young Harvey went from being a scale salesman to a general agent for a canal company. There followed a great harangue over the size of the locks to be constructed at Sault Sainte Marie. In making the land grant, the Congress of the United States had listed locks 250-feet long; the mining men were more adventurous and wanted tubs 300-feet long; and Harvey had proposed large locks 350-feet long. For this study, it is important to note that Captain Eber B. Ward, the Lakes' largest shipowner and spokesman for the shipping inter ests, felt that locks of 260 feet would be the maximum needed at the Soo.18 During the first month of 1853, he wrote the following to Judge William A. Burt, who had traded his transit theodolite for judicial robes: l^Ernest Rankin, "Canalside Superintendent," The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1961) , p. 273. •^Walter Havighurst, "Introduction to 'The Soo Locks,'" The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1961), p. 279. 159 I do not believe there Is the least necessity for making the locks over 260 feet In the clear and 60 feet wide, as no vessels of larger dimen sions than could pass such locks can be used there with safety without an expenditure of a very large sum of money in excavating rock at various points along the river, a work that is not likely to be undertaken during the present century.19 In 1855, the first ship canal at Sault Sainte Marie was completed. Called the "State Canal," it was 1%- miles long, 64-feet wide at the floor and 100-feet wide at the surface of the water. It included two tandem locks built of masonry. In their dimensions, Harvey had pre vailed; each were 350-feet long and 70-feet wide, with a 9-foot lift. Each lock was approximately llij-feet deep at the water level found at that time.2° The canal was constructed at a cost of $999,80 2.46.^'*' On June 18, 1855, amid hoopla befitting such an epochal occasion, Captain Jack Wilson conned the steamer Illinois through the locks at Sault Sainte Marie. It was a proud day for the popular sailing master. Five years later, he died unceremoniously when the schooner Augusta 1 Q Captain Eber B. Ward, "The Soo Locks," The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New York: McGraw- Hill Book Company, 1961), p. 280. 20 Elmer Eckroad, The Soo Locks (Saulte Sainte Marie, Mich.: Elmer Eckroad, Publisher, 1957), p. 14. 21 Harland Hatcher and Erich A. Walter, A Pictorial History of the Great Lakes (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1963), p. 265. 160 cut the steamer, Lady Elgin, out from under him.22 The steamers, Baltimore, Sam Ward, and North Star, followed the Illinois through the canal. They were harbingers of great activity; in 1855, there were 193 passages through the new canal — by 1870, that number had swelled to 1,828,23 the first year of operation, 14,50 3 tons of freight passed through. In five short years, that figure increased tenfold to 153,721 tons.24 on August 14, 1855, the brigantine Columbia carried the first cargo of iron ore from the Marquette Range through the locks at the S o o . 25 Table 10 shows total shipments of ore from the Marquette Range from 1856 to 1880. The Prototype Bulk Freighters The State Canal sent the marine architects scurry ing to their drawing boards. Their first Innovation was the wooden—hulled R. J. Hackett. She was the first vessel 22Havlghurst, The Long Ships Passing, p. 205. 23crace Lee Nute, Lake Superior in The American Lakes Series, ed. by Milo M^ Quaife ("indianapoils: The Bobbs-Merrlll Company, 1944), p. 122. 24jjatcher and Walter, op. cit. , p. 266. 25 Dana Thomas Bowen, Memories of the Lakes (Day tona Beach, Fla.t Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1946), p. 18. 161 TABLE 10 IRON ORE SHIPMENTS — THE MARQUETTE RANGE 1856 — 1880 (Gross Tons) Year Tonnage Year Tonnage 1856 36,343 1869 617,444 1857 25,646 1870 830,940 1858 15,876 1871 779,607 1859 68,832 1872 900,901 1860 114,401 1873 1,162,458 1861 49,909 1874 919,557 1862 124,169 1875 891,257 1863 203,055 1876 992,764 1864 243,127 1877 1,010,494 1865 236,208 1878 1,033,082 1866 278,796 1879 1,130,019 1867 475,567 1880 1,384,010 1868 491,449 Source: Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association 1968 (Cleveland: Lalce Carriers1 Association, 1968), p. 152. 162 designed to carry iron ore from the Jackson mine to the Lake Erie ports.26 Built in 1869, she was "sized" by the dimensions of the locks at the State Canal, i.e., she was 211-feet long, 33-feet abeam, and had a 9-foot draft.27 Her maximum load was 1,200 tons of ore. She was to serve as the model for a multitude of wooden-bulk freighters. In 1881 another lock, the Weitzel, was opened at Sault Sainte Marie. It had an immense chamber — 515- feet long, 60-feet wide at the gates, and it had 17 feet of water over the miter sills.28 According to E. B. Williams, an official of the American Ship Building Com pany, the Weitzel Lock "opened the way for larger and more economical ships to navigate between Lake Superior and the Lower Lakes." Iron Ships for the Iron Trade To take advantage of the additional size provided by the opening of the Weitzel Lock, in their yard at the foot of West 54th Street in Cleveland, the Globe Ship 26 Havighurst, The Long Ships Passing, p. 221. 2>7Harlan Hatcher, Lake Erie in The American Lakes Series, ed. by Milo M. Quaife (Indianapolis* The Bobbs- Merrill Company, 19 44), p. 322. 28Eckroad, loc. cit. 163 Building Company built the mammoth Onoko. While the Merchant, built in Buffalo in 1862, took the laurels for being the first commercial ship made of iron to appear on the Great Lakes, the Onoko was the first bulk freighter constructed of iron to be launched on the Lakes. The Onoko established the basic configuration for ore boats that persists to this day; her engines and boiler house were on the extreme after end of the ship, the bridge and seamen's fo'c’s'le was located in the extreme forward sec tion of the ship, and in between these two structures was placed a cavernous cargo hold with a capacity of 3,000 tons.^ Carrying ore at $3.00 a ton and wheat at 14C a bushel, she made enough money in her 33-year career to load her down to the gunwales.^® Launched in 1882, one year after the opening of the Weitzel Lock, this progen itor of modern bulk freighters foundered in a bad blow on Lake Superior in 1915. While the shipbuilders on Lake Erie were experi menting with iron ships, in the weatherworn hills around Lake Superior, men were searching for new iron deposits. ^Havighurst, The Long Ships Passing, p. 22. B, Mansfield, "The Historic Onoko," The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1969), p. 357. 164 A fortunate few found them laying in elongated troughs that were placed parallel to the strike of the Killarney Mountains located around the Upper Lake.in 1877, 4,593 tons of hematite were shipped from the Menominee Range and soon the town of Escanaba began to rival the prosperity of the port of Marquette. In 1884, iron ore from the Gogebic Range began to pour through the port of Ashland, Wisconsin, while that from the Vermilion was shipped down below from the Minnesota town of Two Harbors.32 Spurred by the scintillating success of the iron Onoko, the shipbuilders decided to experiment with steel. The initial results were disastrous. Ships from Bessemer Steel The first steel freighter was built for Captain Peter G. Minch. Named the Western Reserve, she had a 300-foot keel and was slightly over 41 feet at the beam. She was launched by the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company in 1890. 31 J. Willis Stovall and Howard E. Brown, The Principles of Historical Geology (Boston: Ginn and Com pany, 1954), p. 150. ^Havighurst, The Long Ships Passing, p. 214. 165 Later that year, a second steel vessel was com pleted. Ordered by J. C. Gilchrist, she was named the W. H. Gilcher. Both the Western Reserve and the W. H. Gilcher received A-l ratings from the vessel-rating asso ciations . These sister ships were models of both speed and efficiency; during her first season, the Gilcher estab lished a record by hauling 113,885 bushels of wheat from Chicago to Buffalo,^3 Meanwhile, the Western Reserve was breaking existing records in the iron-ore trade. On a sultry evening near the end of August, the Western Reserve locked through the Soo on the way to Two Harbors for iron ore. In addition to her regular Captain and crew, the vessel carried her owner, Captain Minch, his wife and two youngsters plus his sister-in-law and her young daughter. They had all shipped aboard for a family excursion. 34 That night, when the vessel was some sixty miles above Whiteflsh Point and working through heavy seas, •^^Dwight Boyer, Great Stories of the Great Lakes (New Yorkx Dodd, Mead and Company, 1966)7" P* ^6. 34william Ratlgan, Great Lakes Shipwrecks and Survivals (Grand Rapids, Mich, t Wtn. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1960), p. 218. 166 without warning the ship snapped in two and plunged six- hundred feet to the bottom of Lake Superior. The next morning, a young wheelsman fought his way through the surf above Deer Park. He was the sole survivor. Two months later, while the cause of the Western Reserve calamity was still a hot issue in the waterfront bars, the W. H. Gilcher carried 3,000-long tons of coal through the Straits of Mackinac and headed around out into Lake Michigan, bound for Milwaukee. That night, October 28, 1872, the steel freighter, W. H. Gilcher. simply van ished, Only a single trace of the staunch ship was ever found — the Captain of the Hattie B. Perene located the stringbacks that supported the canvas covers on the Gil cher 1 s lifeboats. Found on High Island in the Beaver Archipelago, the stringbacks bore indications that they had been smashed with an ax. Whatever happened to the Gilcher, happened quickly, for the seamen did not have time to remove the lifeboat canvas in the normal manner.35 There is an old saw that originated with the sea men of the sailing fleets that persists in the shipping halls to this day. It goes: "If you*re going to drown, do it on Lake Superior and save yourself funeral expenses, 35Boyer, op. cit.., p. 62. 167 for Superior never surrenders her dead." The reason is that the depths of the Upper Lake are so cold that the bodies of the seamen lost on those vast waters are very slow to decompose; and it is decomposition that creates the gas that gives a body the buoyancy needed to bring it to the surface. On Superior, by the time decomposition has done its work, the corpse is covered with enough silt 36 to hold it to the floor of the lake. It was, therefore, surprising that while none of the crew of the Gilcher was ever found, those of the Western Reserve, "floated slowly in, like penitent children fearful of being scolded for absence without leave."37 The disappearance of the Gilcher provided fuel for the fomentation that arose as a result of the loss of the Western Reserve. The investigation that followed found that the steel provided by the Cleveland Rolling Mill for use in building both hulls had been produced using the Bessemer process.3® The Bessemer process was a method for making in expensive steel that was developed in 1856 in England by 3®Bowen, op. cit.f p. 12. 37Boyer, op. cit.. p. 63. 38Ibid., p. 64. 168 Henry Bessemer and In America by William Kelly. The Bessemer process could only use iron ore that had a min imum of phosphorus.^9 Since the hematite found in the iron-ore districts around Lake Superior contained almost no phosphorus, it was uniquely suited to the Bessemer Process. Bessemer steel was not produced on a commercial basis until 1867. In that year, the Pittsburgh Chronicle announced that: "This country has thrown off another shackle that has hitherto bound it to England. Bessemer steel rails may now be purchased from the Cambria iron works."^ In 1867, the American steel Industry produced an insignificant 19,000 t o n s . ^ l In 1872, Andrew Carnegie organized the Carnegie Steel Corporation to make steel rails. Using high grade ore that poured down the Saint Marys River, in 1873 Bessemer converters were turning out over 140,000 tons of steel a year, over 80 percent in the form of rails.^ In 1886, America captured the lead from ■^North? loc. cit. ^Fite and Reese, loc. cit. ^ •'•North, loc. cit. 42 Frank Thistlethwaite, "From Wlldcatting to Monopoly, 1850-1914," The Experience of Economic Growth, ed. by Barry E. Supple (New York: Random House, Inc., 1963), p. 296. 169 England; by producing two and a half million tons of steel, the United States became the largest steel maker in the world. This increase in output had a concomitant decrease in cost. In 1875, steel rails sold for $160 a ton; by 1898, this price had plummeted to $17 a ton. By 1900, the Carnegie Steel Company poured molten metal equal to four-fifths of the output of the entire British steel industry.43 But as the "sunken sisters" so vividly demon strated, Bessu\.er steel was not without problems. Indeed, the Bessemer process was a quality-control man's night mare, for each batch possessed unique characteristics.44 Such were the findings of the men that investigated the type of steel used in the construction of both the Western Reserve and the Gilcher. Noted Fred A. Ballin, a highly respected naval architect* "We found it almost impossible to get a homogeneous stock of steel even in the same plate."45 He further observed that the use of Bessemer steel would save in the neighborhood of $12,000 in a ship with a 310-foot hull (about 10 percent of the cost of the 43ibid. 44jsiorth, op. cit. , p. 150. 45g0yer, op. cit.. p. 66. 170 ship, based upon value of the Matoa, lost in the Great Storm of 1913), hut that such fortunes should be forsaken, due to the high probability of loss. As a result of the sinking of the Western Reserve and the disappearance of the W. H. Gllcher. the Bessemer steel was rejected as ship-quality metal by the insurance- rating societies.^ After 1890, the open-hearth process began to replace the Bessemer process, chiefly because it produced steel with more predictable characteristics and because it allowed the utilization of scrap iron as well as iron ore. After 1908, the majority of steel in the United States was made by the open-hearth method. A The Whaleback With only one exception, the bulk freighters of the Great Lakes' fleet have developed along a common strain first established by the historic Onoko in 1882. The only deviation from this lineage was a strange-looklng creation, peculiar to the Great Lakes which was called the "whaleback." 46Ibid. 47lbid. 4Q Donald L. Kemmerer and Merlin H. Hunter, Economic History of the United States (Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams & Company, 1967), p. 88. 171 The Consort System The whalebacks evolved out of what was known on the Lakes as the "consort system," As stated in Chapter IV, when the schooners could no longer compete with pro peller-driven vessels, their masts were cut down and they finished their careers being towed in tandum strings be hind steam tugs. This method of transport was undermined when pow erful engines were developed for the bulk freighters. The first marine steeple-compound engine was put in the Jay Gould in 1869; the first fore-and-aft compound engine went into the propeller Egyptian in 1873; and, as pre viously noted, the first triple-expansion type engines were installed in steamers Cambria and Roumania in 1887.^9 When sufficient power became available, it became apparent to the shipping masters that it would be more productive to have the schooner-barges towed by a bulk freighter capable of carrying cargo herself, rather than have them hauled by a sterile tugboat. The bulk freighter pulling a pair of barges became a common sight on the Great Lakes, a sight that may be observed to this day; the schooner- barge was called the 1 1 consort" of the steamer. Old fore- ^Bowen, op. cit. . p. 66. 172 and-after seamen no doubt thought this simply a euphemism for a disreputable relationship. As the cut-down schoon ers became dilapidated, they were replaced by wooden barges that were constructed specifically to be towed by bulk freighters. The tugboats that lost their tows to the built freighters came upon hard times. Because there were many more of these powerful little boats than the harbor—towing condition warranted, rates became uncertain as competition became chaotic. In order to survive this situation, ar rangements were forged among the independent operators whereby they agreed to take turns towing the built freight ers that sailed into a particular port. This was a most inefficient method of doing business, for often an incom ing vessel would have a long wait until the operator whose turn it was had a tug available. The culmination of this condition of economic disequilibrium was monopoly. At the turn of the century, the Great Lakes Towing Company was formed from an amalgam of independent operators. They then proceeded to buy out their competition.50 50Dwight Boyer, Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1968), p. 192. 173 McDouqall1 a Dream The whalebacks were the brainstorm of a Scot who came to Canada as a boy and turned to the sweet—water seas for his living. His name was Alexander McDougall, and by the time he reached twenty-five, he was master of the propeller, Thomas A. Scott.5^ One year later, he assisted in the design of the steamer, Japan, a combina tion passenger and package-freight vessel that sailed be tween Buffalo and Duluth.52 He shipped as her skipper for a short time, but it was aboard another vessel that he got the idea for building iron barges to replace the wooden schooner-barges then used in the consort system. He wrote: While captain of the Hiawatha, towing the Minnehaha and Goshawk through the difficult and dangerous channels of our river, I thought out a plan to build an iron boat cheaper than wooden vessels. X first made plans and models for a boat with a flat bottom designed to carry the greatest cargo on the least water, with rounded top so that water could not stay on board; with a spoon-shaped bow to best follow the line of strain with the least use of the rudder and with turrets on deck for passage into the interior of the hull.53 ^Hatcher, Lake Erie, p. 325. c 9 Bowen, op. cit., p. 183. ^Hatcher, Lake Erie. , p. 325. 174 The result was a vessel that appeared to be sired by a submarine and mothered by an L.S.T. The first barge went splashing into cold water before Duluth on June 23, 1888. She was named simply, 101. It cost $40,000 to build. Bankrolled by the Rockefeller Interests, between 1888 and 1898, Captain McDougall built twenty-six barges and fourteen steamers to the whaleback configuration. Of the steamers, the bulk freighter, Frank Rockefeller, which was later renamed the South Park, and then converted to a tanker and called the Meteor, was representative; she was 366-feet long, 45-feet abeam, 26-feet deep, and had a capacity of 5,200 tons.^4 The whaleback barge, 102, earned the distinction of carrying the first cargo of iron ore from the monstrous Mesabi Range. The cargo, which consisted of 2,073 tons of red hematite, was loaded at the docks at Superior, Wiscon sin, and shipped to Oglebay, Norton & Company in Cleve land.^^ In the Chippewa tongue, the word for "giant" is "mesabi," so it was only appropriate that what proved to be the world's largest iron range should be given this name. This prodigious body was discovered by the 54BOWQn) op. cit., p. 185. 55Ibld. 175 Merritts, a hard-working family of "lumber lookers" who made the mistake of looking to John D. Rockefeller for financial assistance "in the most ruthless days of a ruth less and uncontrolled era."5^ It was a costly errors "the end result was that the Merritts were dispossessed and beaten out of their holdings."57 The Development of the Modern Bulk Freighter The Poe Lock and the First 400 Footer Modern transportation commenced on the Great Lakes with the opening of the Poe Lock at Sault Salnte Marie in 1896. Built by the United States Government, the Poe Lock was 704-feet long between the inner gates, 100-feet wide (which was later reduced to 95 feet due to reinforcement of the south-lock wall), and 16,6 feet of water over the sills. Harlan Hatcher, The Great Lakes (New Yorks Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 321. ®"^Hatcher, A Pictorial History of the Great Lakes, p. 85. ^®Eckroad, loc. cit. 176 The Canadians opened a lock on the north side of the river the year before. The lock was 900—feet long, 60-feet wide, and 16.8 feet of water over the s i l l . 59 Strangely enough, the lock was built for military, rather than economic, considerations; when the government of the United States refused to allow Canadian troops to pass through the American locks on their way to suppress the Fiel Rebellion of 1870, the miffed men of the Dominion decided to build one of their own. While it never expe rienced the traffic that sailed through its counterparts on the south side of the river, it was instrumental in the economic development of the iron and steel industry in Canadian Sault Sainte Marie.50 Prior to the opening of the Poe Lock, not one ore freighter with a net register of 2,000 tons had been " launched. Also, the mean length of the steamers was less than 300 feet. More than half of the tonnage constructed in the year the Poe Locks were opened was over 2,000 tons net register. 6 - * * States the dean of the Great Lakes 59ibid. ^^Frank Austin Cook, "Sault Sainte Marie," Encyclopaedia Brltannlca. Vol. XIX, pp. 1096-1097. ^Hatcher, Lake Erie, p. 325. 177 historians, "Construction of the Poe Loch set off a surge of shipbuilding; scores of new vessels, of unprecedented tonnage, went into service at the turn of the century."5^ The year before the Poe Loch opened saw the launching of the Zenith City, the first of 400 footers; the year the new loch opened, the Sir Wm. Falrbairn splashed down and extended the record for hull length to 445 feet.53 The last year of the nineteenth century — the year that the 476-foot Douglass Houghton, named after the little doctor who died in the service of exploration on the Great Lahes, made her maiden voyage — saw the in stallation of an unloading device that was to revolution ize commerce on the Great Lahes. Steps to the Hulett Unloader As previously noted, in June of 1855, the brig, Columbia, hauled the first load of iron ore through the the lochs at Sault Sainte Marie. When the ship doched at the busy port on the Cuyahoga River, it tooh a great spate 5^Walter Havighurst, "Introduction to ’The New Loch 1967,’" The Great Lahes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New Yorh: McGraw-Hill Booh Company, 1966) , p. 281. 53Bowen, op. cit.. p. 19. 178 of shovelers to unload the 132 tons of ore she carried. A platform was constructed in the cargo hold and one work gang shoveled it from the floor of the hold to the top of the platform; another gang of dockers heaved it from the platform to the spar deck; a third threw it from the weather deck to the dock. By dint of great exertion, the job was done in four days. This method of discharging cargo was only productive in terms of calloused hands; a more economical way had to be found.64 The first improvement consisted of supplanting manpower with horsepower. A block and tackle was secured to the ship1s mast? one end of the running rigging was tied to a tub and the other to a horse's harness. When the horse walked down the dock, the tub, loaded with ore, was pulled from the hold. Unloading time was cut by 50 percent. 65 In 1867, two Ingenious men from Cleveland, Both- well and Wallace, replaced the horse with a steam engine. Since their device pulled up three tubs at a time, the ships stayed in port only one-third of the time they had previously spent. But the tubs were still dumped on the S^Hatcher, Lake Erie, p. 315. 65Ibid., p. 316. 179 deck until dock workers carted it away with wheelbarrows. This system held sway from 1867 to 1880. By the latter date, it cost only 800 a ton to ship ore from the head of the Lakes, but it cost 500 a ton to unload it. ®® Then, Alexander E. Brown addressed himself to the problem. First, he eliminated the need for wheelbarrows by designing a tub that was dumped directly in a freight car. There remained only the men in the ship’s hold that shoveled the ore into the tubs. Brown's newly- formed company, the Brown Hoisting Machinery Company, started to work on this problem. Their solution was a bucket with massive jaws that could be controlled auto matically and could carry off five tons of ore in one bite. Called "Brownhoist gear" by Lake seamen, some of these great buckets are still swinging down into the cav ernous holds of Great Lakes' freighters.®7 The ultimate in dock-side unloading equipment came with the invention of the Hulett unloader in 1899. This machine consisted of a rocker arm that was attached to an electrically-driven carriage that rode on steel rails laid next to the dock. At the seaside end of the 66Ibid., p. 317. ®7Ibid. 180 rocker arm is attached a vertical steel shaft which houses a compartment in which a human operator rides. Beneath this shaft is a clam shell bucket which is capable of taking 18-ton bites of ore from the freighter's hold.^® From a distance, a Hulett unloader in action looks like a giant dinosaur feasting on a fallen prey. The speed of unloading operations on the Great Lakes simply amazes the seaman from salt water. In 1937, the steamer Tregarthen set a record by unloading 4,960 tons of iron ore at the Liverpool quay in twenty working hours. In 1940, the laker William A. Irvin unloaded 13,856 tons of iron ore at the Conneaut dock in two hours and fifty-five minutes.^ The Superior City, launched in 1899, was the first bulk freighter whose spar deck and cargo hold were de signed to accommodate the Hulett unloader. All previous bulk freighters had stanchions in their cargo holds to give strength and resilience to their long hulls. But these stanchions would be obstructions for the Hulett un loader. The Superior City's architects introduced a side arch construction that obviated the need for further Q Hatcher, A Pictorial History of the Great Lakes, p. 78. ^Havighurst, The Long Ships Passing, p. 220. 181 support. Her "hatches were then coordinated with the legs of the massive loaders.70 Combination at Globe The last event in this memorable year was the for mation of the Great Lakes* largest shipbuilder. In 1886, the Globe Ship Building Company, the firm that built the epic Onoko, joined with the Globe Machine Shop and Foundry and the Globe Boiler Shop to form the Globe Iron Works Company.7^ Then in 1899, a year that stands as a landmark in the movement of the American economy from pure competi tion to oligopoly and monopoly, the Globe Iron Works, the Shipowners Dry Dock Company, and the Cleveland Ship Build ing Company combined to form the American Ship Building Company. The “Hatch Orchards1 1 End the Consort System In 1900, A. B. Wolvin, representing the Carnegie interests, ordered the first of the 500 footers. Four vessels, Wtn. Edenborn. Isaac L. Ellwood. John W. Gates, and J. J. Hill, were built to identical specifications 70Hatcher, Lake Erie, p. 327. 71Ibid.. p. 324. 182 and were the first Lakers capable of carrying 8,000 gross tons of cargo. It is important to note that only five years had passed between the first of the 400 footers (the Victory and the Zenith in 1895) and these 500 footers (Edenborn, Ellwood, Gates, and Hill) in 1900. The next year, trust formation reached its apogee with the founding of the United States Steel Corporation. This industrial colossus was formed by J. P. Morgan and Elbert H. Gary through the merger of Andrew Carnegie1s steel empire with many of his competitors in which Morgan had a financial interest. According to the Commissioner of Corporations, the value of the tangible property of the new monolith was $682,000,000; however, it was capi talized at $1,40 2,846,000, which no doubt represented the greatest "stock watering" coup ever successfully culmi- 7 2 nated. Carnegie's maritime interests were included in this conglomeration of companies, and in 1901, they were combined into an operating entity called the Pittsburgh Steamship Division.Included among the 112 steamers “ ^Harold Underwood Faulkner, American Economic History (New York* Harper and Row, Publishers, 1960), pp. 428-429. “ ^ Pittsburgh Sidelights — November 1956, House Organ of the Pittsburgh Steamship Division of the United States Steel Corporation (Clevelands Pittsburgh Steamship Division, 1956), p. 18. 183 and 22 whaleback barges that constituted this new fleet were the Edenborn, Ellwood, Gates, and Hill, At the end of the period under analysis (1958, the year prior to the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway), these four pert vessels were still ,:steel trusters," as U.S. Steel ships are called by seamen at the shipping halls, and were still hauling iron ore between Two Harbors and the mills on the lower lakes. Two years after the first 500 footers were launched found A. B. Wo Ivin experimenting with the design of Great Lakes' steamers; this time with the placement of hatches on the spar deck. The spacing of the hatches on a bulk freighter was determined by the location of the gravity spouts on the ore docks on Lake Superior. These spouts are attached to ore pockets, the location of which is decided by the size of the ore car that carries the red earth from the mines to the docks. These cars are 24-feet long and have two openings on the bottom, spaced twelve feet apart. The pockets on the dock are, therefore, twelve—feet wide center to center.74 At the docks at Two Harbors, each of these pockets has a capacity of between ^4Ralph D. Williams, "All in a Lifetime, 1 1 The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New Yorkx McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1961), p. 362. 184 250 and 300 tons.^5 Prior to 1902, the ships of the Great Lakes* fleet had hatches spaced on l , 24-ft. centers," which means they could load from every other pocket. In 1902, Wolvin had constructed the James H. Hoyt, which had nine teen hatches all spaced on 12—foot centers, which means that she could load at every pocket she was below. The Hoyt then set about smashing loading and unloading rec ords. Her first season, she took a cargo of 5,250 tons of ore in 30,5 minutes and, with the aid of the Huletts, unloaded it in 3 hours and 52 minutes. In 1904, Wolvin built the Augustus B. Wolvin, which was 60 feet longer than anything afloat on the Great Lakes. Because she had so many hatches — thirty-three spaced on 12—foot centers — . old-timers in the deck de partment remember her as the Augustus B. Workhouse. But since the wages of able-bodied seamen are a fixed cost in the short run — a sailor gets paid for a watch whether he spends it battening down hatches or drinking coffee and telling sea stories to the mate — Wolvin*s namesake ^ The Ports of Duluth-Superior. Minn, and Wis. , Two Harbors, Minn, and Ashland. Wis.. Port Series No. 49, Part 2 (rev. 1960? Detroit* U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1961), p. 87. 7®Williams, loc. cit. 185 became the model for a myriad of similar "hatch or chards. In 1905, Harry Coulby, president of the Pittsburgh Steamship Division, placed an order for four freighters of an identical configuration with the American Ship Building Company. Their names were the Elbert H. Gary. van. E. Corey. Henry C. Frick, and the George W. Perkins. Each was 569-feet long. With the advent of large vessels such as these, the cost of transporting ore fell significantly. In 1855, the cost of carrying ore was $3.00 a tony by 1905, it had fallen to 60$ a ton.78 These new ships sounded the knell of the consort system. While in 1897, consorts were still being constructed, shipowners at last concluded it was expensive business to put a high powered engine in a steamer for purposes of pulling a consort. Not only did steamers burn heinous quantities of fuel, but the steamer lost much time in port while her traveling companion was being unloaded. Biographer, Ralph D. Williams, observed that while the Elbert H. Gary had the same engines as the Manola. which was built in 1890 for pulling a consort, the 77Ibid., p. 363. 78 'Hatcher, A Pictorial History of the Great Lakes, p. 77. 186 Gary hauled over 10,000 tons while the Manola only carried 3.000 tons.79 The Gary, Corey, Frick and Perkins no sooner got their screws wet when Coulby ordered seven 600 footers. Launched in 1906, they were outlengthed the next year by the three 607 footers that had a carrying capacity of 12.000 tons.80 Because the Great Lakes are not saline, the lakers are not subjected to the ravages of rust that their salt water sisters are forced to contend with; hence, with proper maintenance, steel freighters on the Great Lakes seem to last almost indefinitely. In the strike-plagued year of 1956, the writer spent half a season on the Elbert H. Gary. She was fifty-one years old and her captain once remarked that "she was just gettin1 broke in." The World1s Largest Locks In 1914, the Davis Lock was opened at Sault Sainte Marie. It was an astounding 1,350—feet long, 80—feet wide and had 23 feet of water over the sills. The twin to the 7°wllliams, op. cit., p. 364. 80ibid. 187 Davis, called the Sabin, was opened in 1919.®! When opened, the twin lochs were the largest in the world; they were designed so each could handle two ships in t a n d o m . ® ^ It was generally assumed that another loch would never have to be built at the Soo, but, as General Poe once sagely observed about the trade. “The wildest expecta tions of one year seem absurdly tame the next.“®^ But the economics of the industry have always boggled the minds of the men most familiar with them. As the father figure of the American steel industry, Andrew Carnegie, once wrotet To mahe a ton of steel, one and a half tons of iron stone has to be mined, transported by rail a hundred miles to the lahes, carried by boat hundreds of miles, transferred to cars, transported by rail one hundred and fifty miles to Pittsburgh. . . . How then could steel be manufactured and sold without loss at three pounds for two cents? This, I confess, seems to me incredible . . . but it was so.84 ®!Echroad, loc. cit. ®2williams, op. cit., p. 282. ®®Hatcher, Lahe Erie, p. 331. ®4pite and Reese, op. cit., p. 294, 188 The Self-Unloader Lake freighters continued to grow through 1929. The longest ship on the Lakes that year was the Carl D. Bradley of the Bradley Transportation Division of the United States Steel Corporation. She was 638-feet long, 65—feet abeam and 33—feet deep. She was a "self—unloader," Q C a type of vessel peculiar to the Great Lakes. Their cargo holds are divided into vast compartments with W- shaped bottoms. Beneath these bottoms are two endless rubber-belt conveyors. Gates, placed at the points of the W allow the cargo to pour down on the belts which carry it forward and pass it to a long conveyor boom that is attached to the spar deck. Supported by an A-frame, this boom is extended over the side of the ship and carries the cargo from the vessel to the dock. These ships cannot be used in the iron-ore trade because this type of rock is too heavy for the rubber beltsj but, they are uniquely suited for the coal, sand, and crushed-stone trades.86 In the summer of 1929, the Bradley hauled the largest cargo ever carried on the Great Lakes up to that QC Dana Thomas Bowen, Lore of the Lakes (Daytona Beach, Fla.i Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1940), p. 229. 86Nute, op. cit.. p. 135. 189 time — 18,114 tons of limestone, used in steel making as an oxidizing agent, from Calcite, Michigan, to Gary, Indiana. It -would have taken three trains of 100-gondola cars each to move this cargo over land.®*? since inland transportation costs per ton mile are estimated to be 1- 2/5$ by rail and 1/5$ by ship, the operation of vessels such as the Bradley represents a significant contribution op toward economic efficiency. Depression Days In June of 1929, steel production began to decline and in September, the crash of the stock market heralded a decade of economic disorder.88 According to monetary theorist, Milton Friedman, the sharp contraction in business activity that was ush ered in by the debacle in the stock market was "converted into catastrophe by bad monetary policy — one that per mitted the quantity of money to decline by one-third from ^Ratigan, op. cit. , p. 17. 88Ernest Albert John Davies, "Water Transport," Encyclopaedia Brltannlca. Vol. XXIII, p. 303. 88John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929 (New York: Time Incorporated, 1954), p. 91. 190 1929 to 19 33. 1,90 In 1930, the economic foundations of the maritime industry on the Great Lakes began to crumble, and by 1932, the segment of that industry engaged in the movement of iron ore from the ranges flanking Lake Superior was pros trate. Table 11 shows the amounts of the four major com modity items that are moved on the Lakes for years 1929 through 1943. It should be noted that while grain, a con sumption commodity, fell by 11 percent between 19 29 to 1932, the amount of hauled iron ore, a commodity usually used in the fabrication of investment goods, declined by an astonishing 95 percent. Table 12 depicts freight ton-miles traveled by the Great Lakes' fleet from 1929 to 1943. It should be noted that transport did not reach the level of activity at tained in 1929 until the start of World War II. The Effect of World War II on the Great Lakes1 Trans portation Network In 1942, goaded on by the need for enough steel to arm the Allied Forces, work was started on still another lock over the rapids on the Saint Marys River. Named the 90"Hard Times '70: Facts, Figures, and Impact on People," Newsweek (May 25, 1970), p. 78. TABLE 11 GREAT LAKES SHIPMENTS OP BULK FREIGHT 1929 — 1943 (In tons) Year Iron Ore Coal Grain Stone Total 1929 65 204 600 39 254 578 10 021 099 16 269 612 138 574 441 1930 46 582 982 38 072 060 9 851 299 12 432 628 112 528 927 1931 23 467 786 31 176 359 9 476 640 7 208 946 74 148 865 1932 3 567 985 24 857 369 8 890 409 3 928 840 41 672 761 1933 21 623 898 31 776 654 8 713 127 6 664 629 71 373 176 1934 22 249 600 35 476 575 7 951 145 7 392 218 75 739 490 1935 28 362 368 35 289 135 6 750 261 9 082 155 82 887 403 1936 44 822 023 44 699 443 7 433 967 12 080 672 114 414 748 1937 62 598 836 44 318 765 5 829 399 14 429 379 134 688 239 1938 19 263 011 34 623 287 10 679 125 8 240 768 75 117 752 1939 45 072 724 40 368 121 11 172 079 12 208 205 114 229 856 1940 63 712 982 49 319 604 9 644 950 14 893 316 145 216 410 1941 80 116 360 53 535 365 11 387 480 17 633 448 172 286 616 1942 92 076 781 52 533 792 8 501 586 18 570 048 182 731 421 1943 84 404 852 51 969 459 11 810 116 17 339 675 175 652 684 Source: Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association 1968 (Cleveland: Lake Carriers' Association, 1968), pp. 52-53. 192 TABLE 12 INDEX OP GREAT LAKES TRAFFIC FREIGHT TON—MILES (1929 = 100) Date Index 1929 100.0 1930 77.8 1931 48.9 1932 22.8 1933 45.7 1934 47.8 1935 55.0 1936 79.6 1937 96.7 1938 47.6 1939 77.7 1940 98.7 194 1 .................117.3 1942 126.6 1943 166.9 Source* Harold Barger, The Transportation Indus tries 1889-1946 (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., 1951), pp. 138-139. 193 MacArthur Lock, after General Douglas MacArthur, Commander in Chief of Armed Forces in the Southwestern Pacific, it was opened for traffic in 1943. The chamber on this lock has a length of 800 feet between the inner gates, and is 80—feet wide and has 31 feet of water running over the miter sills.^ After a seven-year gap in shipbuilding during the depression, twenty—one ore carriers were constructed in Great Lakes' yards between 1942 and 1943. While only five of the group had 67-foot beams, the others having 60 foot, all were 35 feet in depth and about 9-feet longer than the merchantmen built Just prior to the crash. Table 13 depicts the growth pattern of the lengths of the ships in the bulk—freighter fleet, starting with the first of the 400 footers. During 1942, the first season in the history of Great Lakes transport when iron-ore shipments topped the 90,000,000 ton mark, the new Irving S. Olds, the largest ship among Pittsburgh Steamship's "silver stacker" fleet, set a record by hauling 18,161 tons of ore. It is interesting to note that it would have required 60 schoon ers of 300-tons capacity to carry that mountain of ore, and the Olds would race from Duluth and back before the 9^Eckroad, loc. cit. 194 TABLE 13 GROWTH OF THE GREAT LAKES BULK FREIGHTER Year Ship Length in Feet 1896 Sir Win. Fairbairn 445 1898 Samuel F. B. Morse 475 1899 Douglass Houghton 476 1900 James J. Hill 498 1904 Auqustus B. Wolvin 560 1905 Henry C. Frick 569 1906 J. Pierpont Morgan 600 1906 Edward Y. Townsend 602 1907 Le Grand S. De Graff 605 3/4 1909 Shenango 607 1911 Col. J. M. Schoonmaker 617 1925 Joseph H. Frantz 618 1927 L. E. Block 620 3/4 1927 Harry Coulby 630 3/4 1942 Irving S. Olds (and others) 639 3/4 Sourcet Dana Thomas Bowen, Memories of the Lakes (Daytona Beach, Fla.i Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1946), p. 19. 195 fore-and—afters had made it through the locks at Sault Sainte Marie.92 During World War II, the shipyards of the United States reverberated with the roar of the rivet gun and the crackle of the welding torch. On the Great Lakes, the American Ship Building Company, the largest of its kind on the shores of the inland seas, had from 3,000 to 4,000 men and women working on combatant ships as well as mer chantmen. By 1944, the shipyards of the Great Lakes had constructed 350 ships of various kinds for the war effort, plus 200 knocked—down barges.92 The Dynamics of Ship building Costa During the hostilities, American shipyards pro duced the greatest armada of ships the world had every known; in doing so, they also recorded statistical data on the economics of ship construction that are highly informative. These data on World War II ship contruction were analyzed by Allan D. Searle from the Bureau of Labor Sta tistics' Productivity and Technical Development Division, ^Hatcher, The Great Lakes, p. 332. 93 Hatcher, Lake Erie, p. 358. 196 who published his findings under the title of "Productiv ity Changes in Selected Wartime Shipbuilding Programs" in the December, 1945, edition of the Monthly Labor Review. In his analysis of the costs incurred in the pro duction of ships by domestic yards, Searle observed that when costs were measured in terms of production direct hours per vessel, as output Increased by a fixed percent age, the costs required to produce the units declined by a fixed percentage.^ The phenomenon that the investi gator noted was one commonly found in the airframe indus try, and there known as "cost reduction curves," "learning curves," or "Curtiss curves" — the last name given in honor of Doctor T. P. Wright of the old Curtiss-Wright Airplane Company, who first published an article describ ing this tendency in 1936.^5 As far as can be determined, Searle's effort was the first and only attempt to elucidate the cost reduction ^Allen p. searle, "Productivity of Labor and In dustry* Productivity Changes in Selected Wartime Ship building Programs," Monthly Labor Review December. 1945. Vol. LXI, No. 6, United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (Washington, D.C.i United States Government Printing Office, 1945), p. 1132. ^John Myron McCarty, "The Utilization of an Ex ponential Equation to Describe and Predict the Production Cost Curves in the Aerospace Industry" (unpublished Mas ter's thesis, The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1965), p. 8. 197 curve phenomenon in ship construction. While Searle used a graphic approach exclusively, the mathematics involved are quite rudimentary. While studying the construction of liberty ships, Searle found that when the vessels under construction were considered in bunches of 5 vessels each, every time the quantity doubled the unit cost of the grouped vessels decreased by a fixed percentage, i.e., 20 percent. For example, if the average cost of the first group of ves sels (ships 1 through 5) cost 1,000,000 man hours each — as Searle found to be the case — then when the quantity doubled from 1 to 2 (i.e., ships 6 through 10), the aver age cost for ships 6 through 10 reduced to 800,000 man hours each, which is 80 percent of the cost of the orig inal group. This reduction relationship continues through the entire shipbuilding program. To extend the above example, if the second batch of ships (6 to 10) costs on the aver age 800,000 man hours each, and the quantity under con sideration again doubles (i.e., from 2 to 4), then the average cost of the fourth group of vessels (16 to 20) will be 640,000 man hours each, i.e., 80 percent of the cost of the second batch of ships. 198 Because the cost decreases in a constant percent age with a constant increase in quantity, the resultant curve is linear in the logarithms and can be described by the formula, y = ax”* 3, where "y" is equal to the average man hours per vessel for a group of 5 ships, 1 1 a" is the y- intercept and equal to the cost for the first bunch of ships, "x" is the sequential designation for a group of 5 ships, and "-b" is the negative decimal exponent asso ciated with a given reduction percentage. The exponent takes some explaining. When the re duction percentage is known (80 percent in the evidence on Liberty ships given above), the exponent may be cal culated as follows!^ _ log of the percent —^ — log of 2 _b = locr of 0.80 log 2 -b = 1- log 8 log 2 b = 1-0.90309 0.30103 b = 0.09691 0.30103 -b = 0.322 ^Henry Haddad, Learning Curves and Direct Man power Loading Techniques (Los Angelesi North American Aviation, Inc., 1959), p. 21. 199 Once the exponent Is known, estimating calcula tions are quite simple. For example, to find the average man hours required to build the tenth group of Liberty ships (vessels 46 to 50), the formula becomes, assuming a first group cost of 1,000,000 man hours and a reduction percentage of 80 percent: y - ax“k y = 1,000,000 (10)-*322 This problem is amenable to manipulation by loga rithms or, even more convenient, with a slide rule having mated log scales. Using the latter device, the calcula tions become: 1 .000.000 y “ _ ^22 10 * _ 1 .000.000 Y ~ 2.1 y = 477,000 man hours It is easy to see that with such decreasing costs involved, it is only natural that the men who build ships for the Great Lakes' fleet are under strong pressure to strive for uniformity of design and to have long produc tion runs. The practice that is most common in shipbuilding, as well as in aircraft production, is to hold the work 200 force constant and let the reduction curve manifest itself in a reduced production schedule. When Doctor Hatcher observed that during World War II, "The Irving S. Olds was built in a year and eighty-nine days; the Beniamin F. Fairless, constructed in the adjoining dock at Lorain, required a year and sixty-nine days, . . ."97 the cost reduction curve was the phenomenon subsumed within his acuate observation. The Effect of the Korean War on Car goes and Carriers In 1950, the nation again "let slip the dogs of war," and the steel industry was called upon to forge the armament. It was during the Korean War that the great worth of the McArthur lock became evident, for its great depth allowed the passage of the first 20,000 ton car riers, which commenced with the launching of the Wilfred Sykes in late 1949.98 During the 1950s, leviathans such as the Sykes operated in the ore trade with vessels that were built Just after the turn of the century. ^^Hatcher, Lake Erie, p. 331. ^®Williams, op. cit.» p. 283. 201 On the tenth of May, 1953, when the maritime in dustry on the Great Lakes was straining to keep up with the demand for the heavy earth from the Minnesota ranges, the Henry Steinbrenner. built in 1901, headed out into Lake Superior with a cargo of 7,008 tons of iron ore. Only a few hours out of port, the old ship was struck by a severe nor'easter. During the night, the winds hit 72 miles an hour and 20-foot waves began to claw at her hatch covers. Soon, number 11 hatch was open and the Steinbrenner began to sink. In the gray light of dawn, the crew got ready to leave her. One boat went off with only three seamen in it and the other went off with seven. The men of the navigation department scrambled to the little raft that sits on top of the pilot house. The ship plunged to the bottom, a wave broke over the raft and carried four seamen away with it. Of the six that re mained, one later died of the exposure. Bulk freighters brought to the scene rescued fourteen; seventeen others were lost at sea. The Steinbrenner1s skipper, Captain Albert Stiglin said, "We ran into a little more sea than she could take. The Coast Guard thought otherwise, and ^^"Death on the Lake," Newsweek (May 25, 1953), p. 37. 202 the captain lost his license for alleged negligence.100 The Coast Guard then issued a directive specifying the dates that a loaded vessel must have her hatches covered by tarpaulins. Despite the sinking of the Steinbrenner, 1953 turned out to be the most successful season recorded in the history of both the iron-ore trade and in total Great Lakes' commerce. A total of 95,844,449 tons of iron ore were shipped on the Great Lakes, 3,767,668 tons greater than the previous record established in 1942. Nearly 30 percent (2/,446,822 tons) of this record haul of ore was carried in bottoms owned by the Pittsburgh Steamship Division. -*-02 In addition to the red hill of hematite that the long ships of the Great Lakes' fleet carried in 1953, they also hauled 51,034,713 tons of coal, 14,317,229 tons of grain, and 26,999,207 tons of stone. The total net tons carried by the fleet was 199,696,932; it was the first lO^Ratigan, op. clt. , p. 238. IQljUinual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association 1968 (Clevelands Lake Carriers' As sociation, 1968), p. 18. 102pittahurgh Sidelights, p. 18. 203 time that total tonnage had passed the 190,000,000 mark. ^ ^ The Last Years of a Closed Industry As the 1950s rolled on toward the day when the Saint Lawrence Seaway would open the Great Lakes to for eign competition, the length of the new vessels launched by the shipyards grew toward the 700-foot mark, and their carrying capacity neared 25,000 tons. In 1952, Pittsburgh Steamship Division brought out three vessels, the Ander son, Callaway, and Clarke, that had a capacity of slightly over 20,000 tons. It is interesting to note that each of these ships carried only one seaman more (an additional Second Assistant Engineer, called a "second Second") than did the Elbert H. Gary, whose carrying capacity was only 10,000 tons. In a highly commendable study by Meyer, Peck, Stenason and Zwick, the researchers estimated that in 1955, a bulk freighter on the Great Lakes with 20,000- ton capacity would have a capital cost (original cost minus salvage value) of $4,000,000. Based upon an oper ating year containing 230 sailing days, the rest of the ^°^Annual Report of the Lake Carriers* Association 1968, p. 18. 204 year being lost to navigation because of ice conditions, the daily cost of running such a ship would be $3,500, of which $700 are depreciation and $400 are administrative expenses. The daily variable cost for operating the steamer, which represents fuel, crew's pay, supplies, and maintenance costs for a 24-hour period, is then equal to $2,400 (i.e., $3,500 minus $1,100).104 Since the speeds that vessels may travel are, at least in part, determined by limits established by the Coast Guard on the rivers and connecting waterways, when faced with vigorous competition from "foreign flagers," the operators of the built freighters on the Great Laltes have only a few ways they can respond. They can attempt to reduce the amount of time the vessels spend loading and unloading, and thereby maximize revenues in relation ship to costs; they can attempt to maximize the amount of cargo hauled each trip and again maximize revenues; they can attempt to expand the number of sailing days in an operating year in order to maximize revenues while spread ing the base for depreciation and administrative expenses, i.e., reducing fixed costs per day; or they can attempt to ^ 4John R. Meyer, Merton J. Peck, John Stenason, and Charles Zwick, The Economics of Competition in the Transportation Industries (Cambridge* Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 113—114. 205 reduce the number of men required to man the vessels and thereby reduce crews' pay plus concomitant supply costs, i.e., reduce variable costs per day. All of these ave nues were ejqplored with varying degrees of success after 1958. These points will be returned to in the following chapter. In 1954, the George M. Humphrey was launched; 710- feet long, 75-feet beam and 37.5—feet deep, she was the first laker to top the 700—foot mark. The year 1954 is remembered for another event — it was the first year that the iron-ore deposits at Schefferville, situated on the Quebec-Labrador line, were 10 5 mined. First discovered near the close of the nine teenth century, the strike is estimated to contain 400,000,000 tons of ore that is 55 percent pure. Mining interests connected Schefferville to Sept-Iles, a port city near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, by a 365- mile railway. The year 1958, the last navigation season before the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, could not be classed as anything but dismal. The recessive tendencies 105 John David Ives, "Labrador-Ungana,n Encyclo paedia Brltannica, Vol. XIII, p. 564. 206 in the national economy had a pernicious effect upon in land transportation. The shipments of iron ore from Lake Superior were down to 59,312,991 net tons from the 1957 figure of 97,752,273 net tons, a reduction of 37 percent. Shipments of bituminous coal, anthracite, and limestone were also off significantly. Only grain shipments showed an increase due to a bumper crop in the midwest.^07 In the forecastles of the long ships rumors were rife that the mighty Mesabi was just about played out and that there was nothing left on the range but some unusable rock called "taconite." Despite the gloom that was dif fused throughout the industry, as the sailing season neared the end, in the American yards, five large bulk freighters were nearing completion, including two 730 footers. On the Canadian side of the Lakes, four freight ers were being built including one 730 footer. The End of the Bradley The 1958 season concluded with a catastrophe. At 5:50 p.m., on the 18th of November, the Carl D. Bradley. ^ ^ Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association 1958 (Cleveland: Lake Carriers1 Association^ 1958), p. 9. 207 the self-unloader that was breaking records in 1929, broke up in gale winds near Gull Island in the Beaver Archipel ago on Lake Michigan. Of a crew of thirty-five men, only the first mate and one deckwatch survived the disaster.108 Their raft was found by the Coast Guard vessel, Sundrew, near High Island, where the stringbacks of the Gllcher had been found so long ago. Over night, the Bradley1s home port, Rodger City, Michigan, population 3,873, became the town in the nation with the greatest percentage per capita of fatherless children.It was the first time that the Bradley Trans portation Division of United States Steel Corporation had ever lost a ship. lOBjtetigan, op. cit., p. 36. 109Ibid., p. 29. CHAPTER VI THE TIME OF TRANSITION 1959-1968 The Exodus In the Report of the President to the Members of Lake Carriers' Association, Vice Admiral Lyndon Spencer stated* "It may safely be said that the year 1959 was fraught with adversities and problems for operators of United States vessels on the Great Lakes.In the same address, he also observed, ", . . the 1959 season must go into the record as one of the most frustrating periods in the recent annals of lake transportation.The President of that august association cannot be accused of overstat ing his case, for the 1959 season was not very old before both seamen and vessel operators realized that Great Lakes transportation was an industry in disequilibrium. The First Wave Foreign vessels began to roll over the inland shipping lanes with apparent disregard for the rules of • ^ Annual Report of the Lake Carriers’ Association 1959 (Cleveland* Lake Carriers' Association, 1959), p. 9. 2Ibid. 208 209 the road established on sweet water. The result was a series of costly collisions — the Liberian freighter, Monrovia, sank off Thunder Bay Island in Lake Huron after crashing into the Canadian ore boat, Royalton; the steamer C. S. Robinson collided with a British ship named Roonagh Head, and the Arcturus hit an American salt water ship called the Wang Cavalier.3 As a result of these acci dents, the next year the Congress of the United States passed Public Law 86—555, which stipulated strict pilotage provisions for ocean vessels entering the Great Lakes. While the national economy was able to throw off its recessionary tendencies, in the month of August, 1959, iron ore was the lowest for that month since the heinous year of 19 32. At the end of the season, the shipments of ore from the ports on the Upper Lake were the lowest since 1939. At the close of the season, the only ray of hope was that at steel plants down below the inventories of iron ore were the lowest since 1947. Overall grain movements were at the highest level since 1956, but participation of the U.S. bulk fleet in this trade was a modest 17 percent. Foreign freighters loaded 467 cargoes of grain totaling 120,022,644 b u s h e l s .4 3Ibid., p. 42. 4ibid., p. 10. 210 Voyage to the Iron Pile In this first year of competing with salt water ships, nine U.S. bulk freighters were scrapped. Among the ships that would feel the sear of the acetylene torch was the Sir Wtn. Falrbairn. which had lasted 63 years in the trade, and in those years must have transported a sizable chunk of the state of Minnesota down to Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Thirteen Canadian "canallers" also made their way to the ship-breakers yard, their economic position undermined as a result of the enlargement of the Welland Canal as part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway Project.*’ Prior to the work on the Seaway, the Welland Canal could only accommodate freighters up to 225 feet in length with a capacity of 2,700 tons. The new Welland can handle vessels up to 730 feet in length, carrying cargoes up to 28,000 tons.® This first trickle of old freighters to the scrap yards would soon swell to a flood in the decade of the 1960s. 5Ibid., p. 12. ®The Saint Lawrence Seaway Annual Report 1966 (0ttawa, Canada: Queen's Printer, 1967) , p. 38. 2X1 In 1960, thirteen United States' vessels and six teen Canadian vessels were earmarked for the scrap pile. In addition, five more U.S. ships were sold to the Canad ians for operation. This year marked the completion of the first vessels to maximum seaway dimensions; the Arthur B. Homer (730 feet x 75 feet x 39 feet) was commissioned in April and the Edward L. Ryerson, of an Identical con figuration, went to work in August. They were the largest vessels to he constructed by U.S. lake—side shipyards. On the other side of the Lakes, five bulk freighters joined the Canadian fleet. They ranged in length from 605 feet to 730 feet and had cargo capacities that varied from 15,500 to 25,000 tons.^ The year 1961 found the shipping industry on the Great Lakes in complete disarray. That season, thirty- eight vessels from the U.s. fleet were sold for scrap or other non-navigatlonal uses. Of this figure, eight were to be destroyed in the U.s., fourteen would go to sal vagers in Canada, and the remainder would wend their weary way to ship-breakers1 yards in Europe or Japan. September found the steamer, Perseus, named after the hero in Greek 7Annual Report of the Lake Carriers' Association 1960 (Cleveland: Lake Carriers' Association, 1960), p. 10. 212 mythology who rescued Andromeda from a sea monster, teth ered to a tow line and heading for the scrapyards in Genoa, Italy. On the 21st of that month, while off the Azores, the Perseus foundered and plunged to the bottom Q of the sea — perhaps to avoid such an ignominious fate. Entire fleets left the Lakes. The ships of the Nicholson Transit Company were all sent to the scrap heap save one. The complete bulk cargo segment of the T. J. McCarthy Steamship Company fleet met the same end.9 Among the ships slated to leave the ore trade were the four pert ships from the Pittsburgh Steamship Division that were the first 500 footers to sail sweet water — the Wn. Edenborn, Isaac L. Ellwood. John W. Gates and James J. Hill. The next spring, the Edenborn and the Hill were towed toward Cleveland and sunk in shallow water to serve as a breakwall for the east harbor. According to Havig- hurst, "From Gordon Park they look deepladen, the Edenborn nudging the Hill — and both of them going nowhere."10 ^Annual Report of the Lake Carriers' Association 1961 (Clevelandi Lake Carriers' Association, 1961), p. 45. 9Ibid., p. 53. -^Walter Havlghurst, "Coda," The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havlghurst (New Yorki McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1969), p. 420. 213 Trying to Compete In an effort to bring their lines into a competi tive posture, three lake firms bought four Wbrld War II T-2 ocean tankers, cut them in two, added new midsections which had been built in Europe and towed across the At lantic for that purpose, and then brought them to the Lakes through the Seaway, two of them stopping for cargoes of iron ore at Sept Isles on the way. All four freighters are of maximum seaway dimensions (i.e., 730 feet x 75 feet x 39 feet) and can carry 23,000 gross tons of cargo.^ On the shores of Canada, in 1961, thirty-seven ships, many of them the last vestiges of the moribund canal fleet, went to the scrap heap. Recognizing the need to resuscitate its inland merchant marine, the Canadian government initiated a construction aid program which would subsidize 40 percent of the construction costs for the first two years. After 1963, the subsidy would be reduced to 35 percent.12 While the Canadians commenced to build a new fleet, many an American seaman found himself fetched-up H Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association 1961. p. 10. 12Ibid. 214 in some lake-side fleshpot as Gary, Lake County, Indiana. While the stranded seamen "rode the bench1 1 in the hiring halls, an experiment was in progress that could well prove detrimental to their livelihood was taking place. In a move reminiscent of the days when the lake schooners were beginning their decline, in 1963 the Horace S. Wilkinson, a bulk freighter built in 1913 with a cargo capacity of 13,000 tons, sailed into the yards for exten sive surgery. First, her superstructure was cut away, then her powerplant was extracted, and finally, her stoke hold and engine room were converted into a cargo hold. She emerged from dry dock as an unmanned barge pushed toward the Iron ore ports by a tugboat which had an ex tended pilot house that would allow the tug's pilot to see over the barge's bow. Not only had the Wilkinson1s capacity increased as a result of carrying cargo in the engine room, the tug-barge combination was manned by a crew of twelve, whereas thirty-six men had shipped in the Wilkinson. Out of Ore While able-bodied seamen became a glut on the labor market, the Minnesota iron range was quickly be- ^Havlghurst, loc. clt. 215 coming a pine 3cented poverty pocket. After one "hundred years of supplying the ore for 60 percent of all steel production in the United States, the 110 mile Mesabi range had run out of rich ore. All that remained was taconite rock, a tough, gray quartz that contained only 25—35 per cent hematite and magnetite, a mineral, mining men believ ed to be too hard to cut and too low grade to process. In 1962, the iron—range town of Chisholm, with a popula tion of 7,100, was experiencing 33 percent unemployment.-^ Nor was the Mesabi the only effete rante; Table 14, which shows shipments from the Gogebic and the Vermilion since 1959, indicates that the scoop shovels were striking bed rock in their deep pits about the same time. While Minnesota miners were somberly standing in unemployment lines at Virginia and Hlbbing and Nashwauk, in Labrador-Ungana the mining town of Schef£erville and the port city of Sept Isles were experiencing a population explosion as the rich, red ore rolled down the Saint Lawrence Seaway to the open hearths at South Chicago, Gary and Cleveland. In 1956, there were 1,632 people living at Schefferville, and in 1966, 3,212 lived in that tundra * 1 A “Steel* Resurgence in Bunyan Country," Time (October 22, 1965), p. 105. 216 TABLE 14 IRON ORE SHIPMENTS (Gogebic and Vermilion Ranges) (In tons) Year Gogebic Vermilion 1959 1,940,363 740,012 1960 3,377,406 1,368,343 1961 2,483,492 865,010 1962 2,525,115 1,092,882 1963 1,750,891 766,206 1964 1,403,137 1,023,976 1965 913,215 803,197 1966 350,000 712,902 1967 289 ,316 / 1968 Sourcet Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Asso ciation 1968 (Cleveland: Lake Carriers* Association, 1968), p. 152. 217 town; during the same period Sept lies grew from 5,592 to 1 s 18,950. Table 15 shows ore shipments from Eastern Canada via the seaway. By the middle of the 1960s, Minnesota miners got the break they had been hoping for. First, the mining engineers discovered that they could cut through taconite with a Jet of 4,300° flames. This break through brought in its wake a host of innovations in equipment for the processing and pelletization of the hard quartz. The final fillip came to the range when, in 1964, the Minne sota voters, prodded by the Democratic Farm Labor Party of Governor Karl F. Rolvaag, passed a "taconite amendment" to the state constitution that guarantees that mining com panies, which traditionally faced steep tax schedules, would be assessed at the same rate as other businesses. The day the election returns were tallied, U.S. Steel an nounced that it planned the construction of a $120 million taconite plant at Mountain Iron on the Mesabi Range. Ad hering to a tradition as old as the Gary Dinners, other steel companies promptly announced that they would follow the "Steel Trust*s" lead. By 1965, seven companies were building taconite processing plants worth $1 billion and 15 John David Ives, "Labrador-Ungana," Encyclo paedia Britannica. Vol. XIII, p. 564. 218 TABLE 15 IRON ORE SHIPMENTS PROM EASTERN CANADA VIA THE SEAWAY (In tons) 1959 ..................... 4,271,243 1960 ..................... 3,171,520 1961 ..................... 2,839,740 1962 ..................... 4,747,321 1963 ..................... 6,859,436 1964 ..................... 10,527,096 1965 ..................... 11,130,645 1966 ..................... 13,508,813 1967 ..................... 14,384,790 1968 ..................... 15,764,225 Sourest Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Asso ciation 1968 (Cleveland: LaTce Carriers’ Association, 1968), p. 153. i 219 which would provide jobs for 9,000 men and ship 33 million tons of blue taconite pellets each year. With a 300-year supply of taconite in the yawning pits, the consensus was that the Minnesota miners had it made. In three years, unemployment in Chisholm had fallen from 33 percent to 6 percent.-*-® But the lake seaman was still adrift. The pellets that would be processed in the new towns that sprung up on Lake Superior's wild north shore, where the voyageur had once run trap lines, would contain 68 percent iron, instead of the 45-55 percent range found in raw iron ore. This would mean that fewer cargoes would be coming through Sault Sainte Marie.^ Also ore shipments would be con strained by the speed of the processing plants. These facts, plus the red river of hematite flowing in from Labrador-Ungana, meant that the Great Lakes maritime in dustry would require a significant adjustment in its use of productive factors. 6 "Steels Resurgence in Bunyan Country," p. 105. 17 "Lakers Open 111th Season," Business Week (April 9, 1966), p. 36. 220 A Disaster Sparks Advances The procession of old vessels to the scrap yards in Europe continued. Some failed to complete this one way trip. The steamer, E. Y. Townsend, heading to the ship breaker's yard in Santander, Spain, foundered 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland on October 7, 1968. She was the seventh laker to be lost enroute to the iron piles of Europe since 1959.*^® During this period of transition, other ships left the bulk carrier fleet due to disasters on the Great Lakes. In the spring of 1965, the limestone carrier, Cedervllle, went down with ten of her crew after a colli sion in the South Channel of the Straits of Mackinac. In 1966, two years before the E. Y. Townsend plunged to the bottom off Newfoundland, her sister ship, the Danial J. Morrell, snapped in two during an end of November blizzard, 20 miles northeast of Harbor Beach, Lake Huron. Built in 1906, this first of the 600 footers • ^Annual Report of the Lake Carriers' Association 1968 (Cleveland! Lake Carriers' Association, 1968), p. 3€f. 19News item in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner (November 30, 1966). 221 was bound from Cleveland to Taconite Harbor, Minnesota, one of the new ports on the north shore of Lake Superior which specialized in the loading of pelletized ore. The ship was one of two old-timers owned by the Cambria Steam ship Company of Cleveland and was sailing under the char ter of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. "When the ship broke up, it parted the fore-and-aft electrical cables, thus precluding the issuance of a Mayday signal.2® Dennis Hale, one of the Morrell »s three watchmen, was awakened by "two loud thumps" and the tolling of the tocsin. He made it topside and managed to climb aboard the little orange raft that sits atop the pilot house. Ten other seamen joined him aboard the raft Just before the forward section of the ship went under. The surging water capsized the composite of boards and barrels, throw ing the seamen into the 36 degree water. Hale and three others made it back aboard; six others disappeared into 21 the blackness of that wild night. At dawn, two of the raft riders died of exposure; later in the day, the third one expired. 2®News item in the Los Angeles Times (December 1, 1966). 2^"Disastersi Pounds of Prevention," Time (December 5, 1966), p. 30. 222 Thirty-four hours after the ship slid beneath 145 feet of green water, a seaman aboard the steamer, G. G. Post, spotted a corpse suspended by an orange life jacket stamped Danial J. Morrell. This grim vestige was the first indication that the bulk freighter had run into trouble. Shortly thereafter, the crew of the G. A. Tom linson sighted three more bodies. A massive air-sea search was initiated by the Coast Guard. Two hours later, a helicopter sighted the Morrell1s raft bobbing upon the lake. Divers in rubber suits were lowered into the water. Beneath the bodies of his shipmates, they found Watchman Hale, blue with cold but still alive. He was the lone survivor of a crew of twenty-nine. Doctors have specu lated that the reason the 220 pound seaman survived the disaster was that his wealth of body fat acted as insula- . . 22 tion. The sinking of the Danial J. Morrell sparked sev eral advances in safety-at-sea equipment. One of the first Improvements was in the radio telephone system. The radiotelephone, an invention of the Lorain County Radio Corporation (now Lorain Electronics Corpora tion) was first installed in 1934 on the William C. At water, owned by the Wilson Marine Transit Company, one of 22 Ibid. 223 2 3 the more progressive lines on the Great Lakes. The next year (1935) only two vessels on the Lakes carried ship-to-shore telephone gear. That season, Cap tain Mason, master of the Atwater, slashed open his head during a fall from a ladder. First aid could not stanch the flow of blood; the Captain would bleed to death before the ship would make the dock at Marquette, the nearest port fifty miles away. Using the radiotelephone, the chief mate called a doctor in Lorain, Ohio, who directed the captain's treatment via the airways. When the ship docked in Marquette an ambulance was waiting to rush the master mariner to the hospital. Captain Mason recovered and by the end of the next season (19 36) twenty-two steamers had radiotelephones installed.^ In spite of this dramatic utilization of the instrument, the radio telephone was not placed on the mandatory equipment list by the Coast Guard until 1954, the year after the Henry Stelnbrenner called for help on stormy Lake Superior.25 2 ^ Dwight Bayer, Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes (New York* Dodd, Mead and Company, 1968) , p^ xxl. ^Harlan Hatcher, Lake Erie, in The American Lakes Series, ed. by Milo M. Quaife (Indlanapolis: The Bobbs- Merrill Company, 1944), p. 335. ^Bayer, op. cit. T p. xxil. 224 As a result of the Morrell sinking, vessel oper ators on the Great Lakes have begun to install auxiliary battery-powered radio units to be used for issuing dis tress signals should disaster sever the main power cables. Also life rafts built from spare 55-gallon drums are being supplanted by inflatable rafts which include protective covers to preserve the precious cargoes that they might carry over tempestuous seas.^6 In the train of the Morrell disaster, the Coast Guard initiated LAVERS, an acronym standing for "Lake Ves sel Reporting System," a method whereby the men at Ninth District headquarters in Cleveland will monitor the prog ress of the ships participating in the scheme as they move over the chain of lakes. The masters of vessels over one hundred tons will file the nautical equivalent of a flight plan prior to leaving port. The ships will then be traced through a series of checkpoints; if a ship was four hours overdue at a checkpoint, the Coast Guard, called the "Hooligan Navy" by merchant seamen, will initiate a commu nications search for her. If the communications section failed to find her, one hour later an extensive sea and air search would begin.27 Again, disaster induced innova tion. 26Ibid., p. xv. 27Ibid. 225 The Harbinger of the Future Fleet American Ship Weathers a Storm Seamen and ship operators were not the only ones awash in the wake of foreign competition that steamed through the Saint Lawrence Seaway during the 1960s. Dur ing this inclement decade, the American Shipbuilding Com pany, owner of 70 percent of the drydocks on the U.S. side of the Lakes, found itself foundering in a sea of red ink. In 1962, the company incurred a loss of $565,382 on $19.8 million in revenues. The next year, the stockholders de cided to ditch their pilot and piped aboard a new skipper, William H. Jory, a salt-water man from the Maryland Ship building and Drydock Company. His first act in conning the company was to jettison several of American Ship's top executives in an endeavor to bring expenses in line with trimmed sales. On this subject, Business Week quotes Jory as followst "A business that doesn't have a definite growth pattern can only have lean management. 1 1 After shaping up his crew, Jory began to actively pursue government contracts, such as reconditioning ships Op "Takeover on the Lakes," Business Week (August 26, 1967), p. 29. 226 for the U.S. Navy.^ While such tasks are traditionally low risk and low profit business, they do keep the yards open — and that was a major accomplishment. Between the years of 1960 and through 1967, not one ship was con structed in the U.S. shipyards on the Great Lakes. Due to the economic uncertainty of the period, there was a growing appetency for vessel operators to modernize their old ships rather than place orders for new ones — a ship owner could convert from steam to diesel for $4 million and install automated boiler controls and bow thrusters for $100 thousand and have a ship that would last another twenty years.^0 During Jory's first years at the helm of the Amer ican Shipbuilding Company, two exogenous influences arose to compound his problems. First, the railroads that ran contiguous to the Great Lakes developed the "unit train" concept, whereby all the cars on a freight train carry a homogeneous com modity and run nonstop from shipper to receiver. The unit trains quickly made inroads into the grain and coal trade and began to threaten the iron-ore business. 29Xbid. 30«i,akers Open 111th Season," p. 36. 227 The second disquieting element was, while Jory struggled with over capacity at Lorain yard, Litton In dustries, a California conglomerate that produces a myriad of products, ranging from highly sophisticated electronics gear to frozen foods, became interested in the domain of American Ship and in January, 1966, set up the Litton Great Lakes Corporation, to study the feasibility of building super ships on the Great Lakes — ships 1,000 feet long and 100 feet beam that might cost as much as $30 million. Incongruous as it might seem, while men began to study super ships, four of Alexander McDougall's whale- backs were still plying the waters of the inland seas. Before the 1965 season ended, the seventy-five year old whaleback barges, the Alexander Holley and 137 were dis mantled at Hamilton, Ontario, and the whaleback steamer, John Ericsson, was tied to a pier awaiting the cutting torch. That left only one? when she bore the name Frank Rockefeller« she hauled ore? as the South Park, her decks were loaded with automobiles? converted to a tanker, she is now the Meteor, and carries crude oil from Cleveland. When this floating anachronism leaves the Lakes, the whaleback will have gone the way of the side wheeler and 228 the centerboard schooner.^1 While the marine engineers were huddled over their drafting tables designing the ship of the '70s, the Soo was the site of great hurly-burly, as the old Poe Lock was demolished so that a more massive chamber could be built in its place. The MacArthur Lock clearly demonstrated the ad vantage of great capacity — during the sailing season of 1963, only 29 percent of the total passages went through that lock, but those passages accounted for 77 percent of the total cargo that passed through Sault Salnte Marie.^2 New Captain at American Ship In May of 1966, Litton Industries decided that it would enter the shipbuilding Industry on the Great Lakes. Representatives of that firm informed Jory that unless the American Shipbuilding Company would sell out for $12.50 a share, Litton would build a competing facility on Lake Erie. Jory refused the tender and Litton Industries com menced to build a $20 million yard at Erie, Pennsylvania, 3-1-Havlghurst, op. cit. , p. 420. 'Waterborne Commerce of the United States, Part 3. Waterways and Harbors, Great Lakes (Chicagot North Central Corps of Engineers, 1963), p7 95, 229 for its newly formed Erie Marine Division.33 Litton*s interest in American Ship piqued the ap petites of a coterie of maritime men from Cleveland, headed by thirty-seven year old, George Steinbrenner III, owner of an eight ship outfit called the Kinsman Marine Transit Company. In August, 1967, Thomas Roulston, thirty-four, Cleveland investment banker and Steinbren ner 's broker, assembled a boarding party, took over Amer ican Ship, and then made Jory walk the plank.34 Steinbrenner, who took command of the company in October of 1967, rejected the course steered by his pred ecessor; he intended to minimize the number of government repair contracts while energetically pursuing the bulk freighter business. Stated Steinbrenner, "In the next ten years, fifteen to twenty boats — costing around $17 Q C million a piece — will be built."03 This view of the future of ship construction on the Great Lakes, which was a good deal more roseate than that possessed by Jory, was based on the knowledge that, in the last decade, the steel Interests have spent over $1 billion in new facilities 33ntakeover on the Lakes," p. 30. 34Ibid. 35Ibid. 230 on the northern ranges? the fact that in 1967, in spite of the exodus of ships suffering from senescence, the average age of the ships in the American fleet in 1967 was forty years; and a ship operator's intimate understanding of the economies of scale that characterizes marine transporta tion. The effect of scale in ore boat construction was demonstrated in a most cogent manner in a paper by Harry Benford, et al., that was presented to the Society of Naval Architects and Design Engineers in June of 1962. A synopsis of Benford1s findings appears in Table 16. Benford found in his study of iron-ore freighters, that when the design and the length of the run i3 held constant, a ship with a 20,000 ton carrying capacity would require a freight rate of $10.00 in order to cover total cost, including costs of operation, depreciation, and re turn on investment. His data also show that when carrying capacity is increased from 20,000 tons to 180,000 tons that the freight rate required to cover total costs is reduced by a magnitude of four, i.e., from $10.00 to $2.50. Such economies of scale will prove to be salient factors in determining the industry's adjustment to for eign competition. 36jcrtm B. Lansing, Transportation and Economic Policy (New Yorkx The Free Press, 1966), p. 366. 231 TABLE 16 SCALE EFFECT IN BULK FREIGHTERS Operating Dead Weight (Tons) 20,000 100,000 180,000 Required Freight Rate (Dollars per ton) $10.00 4.00 2.50 Source* John B. Lansing, Transportation and Economic Policy (New York: The Free Press, 1966), p. 266. 232 The New Poe Lock The year 1968 will be one long remembered in the annals of marine transportation on the Great Lakes. The first landmark in this eventful year occurred when the Pittsburgh Steamship Division's steamer, Philip R. Clarke, heavily laden with Minnesota iron ore, made the first com mercial passage through the new Poe Lock at the Saint Marys Falls Canal. Virtually a cement-sided canyon, this $40 million facility is 1,200-feet long, 110-feet beam and 32-feet deep. 37 it can accommodate, without special restriction, vessels that are 1,000—feet long, including steering poles, and 100-feet wide.38 After the Clarke1s successful passage, the remainder of the 1968 sailing sea son was spent in testing the new equipment. The new Poe Lock was dedicated in June of 1969. A Ship for the '70s In order to take advantage of the economies of scale allowed by the opening of the new Poe Lock, in 1968 the Bethlehem Steel Corporation announced that it had ^^Annual Report of the Lake Carriers' Association 1968. p. 10. 3^u.S. Lake Survey, Great Lakes Pilot 1970 (Detroit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1970), p. 102. 233 completed contractual arrangements with the Erie Marine Division of Little Industries, Inc., for the construction of the largest ship ever built on the Great Lakes. Truly a harbinger of the bulk freighters of the future, this leviathan will be 1,000-feet long, 105 feet at the beam and have a depth of 49 feet. She will be capable of car rying 51,000 gross tons. Built with the taconite trade in mind, she will be a self-unloader, using belt-type con veyors for emptying her cavernous holds.^ This modern sea monster will plow through sweet water at speeds up to 16 miles per hour, pushed forward by four diesel engines capable of generating 14,000 horse power. This ship of the '70s will have twin screws, and carry two bow thrust ers and two stern thrusters for maneuvering the ship at the dock. The vessel is scheduled to be launched in 1970.40 While Erie Marine Division won the honor of build ing the ship of the future, the American Shipbuilding Com pany will remain a strong competitor in years to come. With George Steinbrenner III at the helm, American Ship captured a contract for a new self-unloader from the U.S. ^ Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association 1968. p. 9. 40Ibid., p. 36. 234 Steel Corporation. Though smaller than the ship being built at Erie, Pennsylvania (858 feet x 105 feet x 41 feet 6 inches vs. 1,000 feet x 105 feet x 49 feet), Bhe will sail one mile an hour faster than Bethlehem Steel's ship. She is to have a capacity of 45,000 gross tons and is slated to hit the water in 1970.^ These two self unloaders are the first ships built in U.S. yards since 1960.42 On a Course Toward Equilibrium The Effect of the Canadian Subsidy By 1968, the maritime industry on the Great Labes had set a course toward a new equilibrium position. The flood of ships sailing to shlpbreakers1 yards in Europe had been stemmed to a trickle. Since 1958, the total num ber of ships in the Great Lakes fleet fell from 728 to 455, for a reduction of 27 3 ships. Nineteen sixty-eight was the second year in the twentieth century that the fleet contained less than 500 ships. While the number of 41Ibld., p. 37. 42|,Takeover on the Lakes," p. 29. 235 ships fell by 37 percent, gross tonnage of the fleet was only reduced by 2.5 percent, i.e., to 3,423,487 from 3,518,941. In 1958, 60 percent of the ships were of U.S. registry and in 1968, 59 percent belonged to the U.S. fleet; the year before the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, 72 percent of the total gross tonnage on the Great Lakes was owned by American firms, and in 1968, this had fallen to 54 percent. This diminution in U.S. interests in the Great Lakes fleet was caused by the construction subsidy plan initiated by the Canadian government in 1961. The effect of this subsidy to ship operators is also ap parent in carrying capacity data. Despite the exodus of old ships from lake service, between 1958 and 1968, the carrying capacity of the Great Lakes fleet actually increased by 10,552 gross tons, from 5,060,248 to 5,070,800. During this decade, the combined capacity of vessels under U.S. registry fell from 72 per cent of the total capacity in 1958 to 56 percent of the total capacity in 1968. Subsumed beneath these seemingly innocuous statistics is this startling relationship — in the decade under consideration, American cargo capacity decreased by 22 percent (from 3,655,147 to 2,850,100 gross tons), while the Canadian cargo capacity increased by 58 236 percent (from 1,405,101 to 2,220,700 gross tons). By 1968, the Canadians had modernised their fleet to the extent that the Lemoyne, a ship that for years had held the record for the maximum grain cargo and which had re cently been converted to oil, was sold by the Canadian Steamship Lines, Ltd., to the Steel Company of Canada, Ltd., to be ravaged for scrap.44 Going It Alone When the subsidized Canadian fleet began to ex hibit its prowess, it was only natural that the spokesmen for American shipping interests should cry to Washington for redress. During the Johnson Administration, such hortatory went unheard. Indeed, Mr. McNamara, wheelhorse in Johnson's Cabinet, regarding the merchant marine as a bete noire. Said the Secretary of Defense, in a press statement* No more ships will be built for the United States, not even transports. The American people must be accustomed to seeing foreign flags flying from ships in American waters. In case of emergency the United States will use foreign shipping.45 4-^Annual Report of the Lake Carriers' Association 1968. p. 44. 44 Ibid., p. 48. 45Earl Parsons, Stories of the Great Lakes (Can ton, Ohio* Rob—Roy Graphic Arts, 1963) , p^ 11. 237 With the change of administrations, the operators and crews of American vessels on the Great Lakes were again heartened, based upon Nixon's campaign promise to revive the American merchant marine. In December, 1969, these soaring hopes plunged into dejection, when Nixon's 300-ship maritime program was submitted to the Congress sans aid for either the salt water passenger liners or for Great Lakes shipping. While it appears that the U.S. fleet on the Great Lakes will be forced to "go it alone," the future should find sizable cargoes of ore waiting on the shores of Lake Superior. Made in 1962, Williams' long-term annual esti mate of 7 5,000,000 gross tons of ore from the Upper Lake now appears to be very close to being correct.^ In 1961, 63,665,690 long tons passed through the Sooy by 1967, that figure had swelled to 72,426,887, which increased to 74,191,714 in 1968. In 1967, 49.5 percent of the total gross tons of ore brought down from up above was in the form of taconite pellets; in 1968, 58.4 percent of the cargoes from Lake Superior's ports were in the form of 46,)U.S. gapping steers Back into the Money," Business Week (December 13, 1969), p. 57. ^E. B. Williams, "The New Carriers," The Great Lakes Reader, ed. by Walter Havighurst (New York: McGraw- Hill Book Company, 1969), p. 379. 238 pelletized ore. All of Superior's ports participated in the taconite trade except Michipicoten, a tiny harbor on the wild Ontario shore.48 A 300-year supply of taconite rock lining the yawning pits on the northern ranges,48 plus a national growth in steel consumption of 3 percent annually (with a growth in the Midwest of 4 to 5 percent)^8 means that the bulk freighter fleet that remains after the adjustment to the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway has been completed should find a wealth of cargoes to carry. Because both calcite and dolomite are used as oxygen-freeing ingredients in the production of steel, an increase in the consumption of iron ore will bring about a concomitant upward trend in stone shipments. In 1968, 33,093,501 tons of stone were moved on the Great Lakes, almost 1.4 million greater than the shipments the previous year. The 1968 total was the second highest in the his- 51 tory of the stone trade. Because stone is superbly 48Annual Report of the Lake Carriers' Association 1968, p. 54. 49 "Steel: Resurgence in Bunyan Country," p. 105. "Billions Build Chicago into a Steel Titan," Business Week (November 19, 1966), p. 72. 51 Annual Report of the Lake Carriers* Association 1968, p. 11. 239 suited to be shipped by self-unloaders, the growth of this trade will add verve to the movement away from straight- deckers and toward bulk freighters carrying unloading equipment. The coal trade on the Great Lakes continues to lose ground. In 1968, coal movements declined by 7.6 per cent from the previous year to a figure of 48,861,866 net tons. A great deal of this decline was due to stiff com petition from the new unit train. For example, water car goes carried to Lake Huron terminals for domestic use C O plunged by 30.6 percent between 1967 and 1968. If coal prices in the 1970s are increased by 30 percent, as spokesmen for the coal Industry predict due to the effect of mine safety legislation, a sizable decrease in the coal trade in the long run will occur due to the availability of close substitutes.^ While grain movements on the Great Lakes in 1968 were the lowest since 1962, predominately due to labor disputes at the terminals and at the Saint Lawrence Sea way, the trade is essentially a stable one. However, it 52Ibld. S^News item In The Wall Street Journal (April 27, 1970). 240 is largely a Canadian game, with U.S. vessels only han dling about 13 percent of the volume in 1968. It is interesting to note that in 1968 grain re ceipts at Buffalo, that ganglion of the schooner and side wheeler fleets, were the lowest they have been in fifty years of data. This indicates the decreased importance of the Erie Barge Canal in the Great Lakes transportation network.^ Financial Morass on the Saint Lawrence In spite of the navoc that its opening wrought on the structure of the maritime industry on the Great Lakes, the Saint Lawrence Seaway never realized the dreams of its planners. Prior to its opening, the men of the Saint Law rence Seaway Development Corporation estimated that by 1965, the total tonnage through the system would be 52 million tons. At the close of the 1965 sailing season, the tonnage realized was closer to 40 million tons.^^ In 1969, one of the worst years in the Seaway's history, tonnage fell to 41 million tons from 48 million 54 Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association 1968, p. 96. ^Lansing, op. clt. « p. 362. 241 the year before.^ Because traffic projections have not become a reality, the Seaway has found itself in financial hot water. When Congress passed the law in 1954 appropriating funds for its construction, the bill stipulated that rev enues from tolls would not only pay operating and mainte nance costs, but would also pay both construction costs plus interest on its bonds. To date the Seaway has been able to pay only a modicum of interest costs and so the outstanding debt accumulates yearly. In 1970, it stands at $155.9 million; analysts estimate that it could reach $821 million in the next forty years.^7 In 1969, a significant threat to the economic well-being of the Seaway loomed large. In a modern ver sion of the Great Trace, innovators in the Canadian Na tional Railway system have devised a method whereby the package freight originating around Chicago and Detroit will be siphoned off and then pushed through that old en trepot of the fur trade, Montreal. The scheme is as followst the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, the American subsidiary of Canadian National which operates a fleet of ^"Shippingi St. Lawrence Blues," Newsweek (March 16, 1970), p. 82. 57Ibid., p. 87. 242 car ferries across Lake Michigan, will assemble unit trains filled with U.S. products bound for Europe. The train will cross the Detroit River, get on Canadian Na tional's rails that skirt the northern shore of both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and then speed nonstop to the waterfront at Montreal. At Montreal, a modern container facility that allows a single worker to handle 600 tons of freight a week, instead of the usual 32 tons per man per week, will whisk the containers from the trains and place them on fast container ships, which have been called "the biggest change in ocean shipping since steam replaced sail,"58 which will carry the containers to the Continent, where they will be again placed on unit trains, and sped to their final destination.^9 Because of its financial difficulties and because of the competition to come from Canadian National, it is a safe assumption that the Saint Lawrence Seaway will not be enlarged as bigger and bolder locks are cut at the Saint Marys Falls Canal. This means that in years to come the Great Lakes will again have a fleet of "Canallers," 58"Transportation! An End Run Around U.S. Ports," Business Week (April 25, 1970), p. 55. 59Ibid. 243 I.e., ships which are significantly smaller than the ves sels trading between Lake Superior and the lower lakes because their exterior dimensions are determined by the size of the locks on the Welland portion of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Greater Economic Efficiency The opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway has goaded the operators of the Great Lakes' fleets toward more effective utilization of the factors of production. As noted in the preceding chapter, when faced with compe tition from ships flying foreign flags from their sterns, the operators of domestic bulk freighters had a limited number of ways they could respond. One of these avenues of response was to attempt to minimize the amount of time that the vessels spend at the loading and unloading docks. Table 17 shows the aver age amount of time spent loading iron ore in upper lake ports? the average amount of time unloading iron ore car goes in the ports of the lower lakes? and the average amount of time spent taking and discharging iron ore car goes from 1959, the year the Seaway opened, until 1968. Please note that the average lay day has been reduced from TABLE 17 LOADING AND UNLOADING STATISTICS — IRON ORE CARGOES (Time given in hours and minutes) 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 Average Time Loading 10:12 6:00 11:06 11:24 12:36 11:06 11:30 8:54 8:30 8:48 Average Time Unloading 12:42 11:36 6:06 6:24 6:47 7:12 7:36 6:24 6:36 6:10 Average Time Loading and Unloading 22:54 17:36 17:12 18:06 19:23 18:18 19:06 15:18 15:06 14:58 Sourcei Annual Report of the Lake Carriers* Association 1968 (Cleveland: Lake Carriers1 Association, 1968), p. 108. to 245 nearly 23 "hours to nearly 15 "hours, for a decrease of nearly 35 percent.^ Another area of response was to attempt to maxi mize the quantity of cargo carried each trip. Table 18 shows the growth in the average cargoes of iron ore car ried between 1959 and 1968, plus the largest cargo carried each year in the decade under consideration. Please ob serve that the average cargo hauled increased by 3,397 gross tons in the ten-year period, while the largest load grew by 6,326 to a 27,018 gross tons of ore.^ A third response to what has been called the "com petitive crunch" was to endeavor to expand the number of sailing days in the operating year. In 1959, the first iron-ore cargo was loaded on the 10th of April at Escanaba by the steamer, L. E. Block. The last cargo was loaded December 20 at Two Harbors, Minnesota, into the E. W. Pargny. It was the latest date that ore had ever been loaded on the Great Lakes. 60Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association 1968. p. 108. 61Ibid. 62Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Assoclatlon 1959. p. 16. TABLE 18 CARGO STATISTICS — IRON ORE (Gross Tons, bill of lading weights) 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 Average Cargo Carried 12,390 13,555 14,388 14,862 15,049 14,678 15,326 15,341 15,513 15,787 T-arcest Cargo Carried 2o,6v;: 23,922 22,455 25,018 24,339 24,540 25,480 26 ,334 20, 657 27,018 Source: Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association 1968 (Cleveland: Lake Carriers' Association, 1968), p. 108. to • ! * > 247 On June 25, 1963, the Senate of the United States authorized an extended study of methods of deieing to be used both on the Seaway and on the connecting waterways on £ O the Great Lakes. In 1968, the first cargo of ore was loaded by the steamer, E. L. Ryerson, at Escanaba on the 31st of March. At the close of the season, the steamer, E. M. Voorhees, locked through the MacArthur Lock on January 4, carrying a cargo of taconite pellets, which, unlike raw iron ore, can be loaded by conveyor in any weather. This was the latest movement in the history of the trade. At the time of this final passage, ice was nearly one-foot thick in the West Neebish Channel and over two-feet thick at the Detour dock.^ The last response was to minimize the number of men required to man the ships. The supplanting of men with machinery has proceeded at a frantic pace since the opening of the Seaway. The "double hand job" with a pair of brutish stokers, armed with a fire shovel and a slice bar, and assisted by a coalpasser rolling anthracite from ^^Havighurst, op. cit., p. 241. ^ Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association 1968, p. 17. 248 the bunkers with a wheelbarrow, has been replaced by auto mated boiler controls. The change in technology in the engine room is indicated by the fact that all vessels, both Canadian and American, that were built in 1968, have been designed to utilize Diesel engines, propulsion sys tems that maximize horsepower and minimize manpower. CHAPTER VII SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The Summary The evolutionary sequence of carriers on the Great Lakes began with Robert Cavelier de LaSalle's ill-starred Griffin, the first merchant ship to ply the sweet water seas of North America, She was lost, together with a cargo of precious furs on the return leg of her maiden voyage. Marine historians believe that they have found her bones in the Mississagi Strait at the top of Mani- toulin Island in the northern realms of Lake Huron. After the loss of the Griffin, the canoe of the Algonquin tribe was used by the French voyageurs for car rying furs from the shores of the Great Lakes to the transshipment point at Montreal. Three different versions of the canoe were used in the fur trade. As the trade grew, the bateau and the Mackinac boat evolved from the canot du maltre. The first canal at Sault Sainte Marie was constructed by the Northwest Fur Company so that the bateaux, which were too large to be portaged, could move between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Both the bateau 249 250 and the Mackinac hoat started to carry sails, first of tanbark and then of canvas; after this addition, it was only a short step to the schooner, the ship that dominated transportation on the Great Lakes for nearly a century. The fur trade on the Great Lakes watershed waned when silk replaced beaver in hats and nutria, the fur from the South American coypu, took over that portion of the market formerly held by the muskrat. On Lake Superior, schooners that had carried bales of fur started to haul barrels of salted fish. The fishing industry on the upper lake was brought to an abrupt close as a result of the Panic of 1837. Con sequently, until the discovery of copper at Eagle River in 1845, maritime activity on Lake Superior was at a stand still. The growth of the schooner fleets was given a strong stimulant when the Erie Canal was completed. When the Canadians retaliated by constructing the Welland Canal, the "canaller" came into existence, a vessel that was economically less efficient than those schooners sail ing on lakes other than Ontario. While the first sidewheeler, the Frontenac. was launched on the Great Lakes as early as 1816, they never 251 experienced the popularity that their sisters enjoyed on the western rivers. Steamboat construction reached its zenith when the railroad interests decided to buy into the industry, but the prosperity that the sidewheelers enjoyed under the leadership o£ the railroad magnates ended when the Panic of 1857 came to the Great Lakes. The first commercial vessel to employ Ericsson's propeller wheel was built on Lake Ontario in 1841. Be cause of its superb operating economics, the propeller was an Instantaneous success, but it did not capture the freight trade from the schooner until the fore-and-after was laid up by the Panic of 1873. The lineal descendent of the propeller is the modern bulk freighter, both in the "straight decker" version and the "self-unloader" variety, while McDougall1s whaleback freighter grew out of the con sort system, a system which evolved when demasted schoon ers were towed from port to port, first by steam tugs and then by the early editions of the modern bulk freighter. The progenitor of the modern "straight decker" is t^le Onoko, the first bulk freighter built of iron to sail the Great Lakes. While lakemen had amazing success with iron, the first uses of steel on the Great Lakes proved to 252 be calamitous; the first steel ship, the Western Reserve, broke up above Deer Park, Lake Superior. Two months later her sister ship, the W. H. Gilcher, disappeared during a blow near the Beaver Archipelago, Lake Michigan. These were the last ships built of Bessemer steel. The modern era of Great Lakes transportation be gan in 1896 with the opening of the Poe Lock, and the simultaneous launching of the bulk freighter, Sir Win. Fairbairn. The year the Saint Lawrence Seaway opened, this floating anachronism was still operating in the ore trade. From the opening of the original Poe Lock until the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, except for a seven-year gap during the Great Depression, the develop ment of the bulk freighter on the Great Lakes has been one of continuous advancement. By 1954, the first laker to exceed the 700-foot mark was launched. The 1959 season, the year salt water ships first sailed over the shipping lanes of the Great Lakes, found the inland maritime Industry in disequilibrium. By 1961, the industry was in complete disarray, as bulk freighter after bulk freighter began a one-way trip to the shipbreakers1 yards in Spain, Italy, and Japan. 253 In 1968, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation announced that it had placed an order with Litton Industries for the construction of a new bulk carrier. This leviathan will be 1,000—feet long, 105 feet at the beam and 49-feet deep. Possessing both self-unloading equipment and four diesel engines capable of producing 14,000 horsepower, this will truly be the ship of the '70s. Also, it is the first ship to be constructed in a yard on the American side of the Lakes since 1960. The Conclusions The Griffin The Griffin was the cornerstone in LaSalle1s blue print to establish, under the fleur-de-lis, a commercial empire in the heart of North America with fur as its re source base. She was a salt-water ship, constructed by a salt-water master carpenter (Moise Hillaret) , and pi loted by a salt-water navigator (Luke, the Dane). Her design was along the lines of a fighting merchantman, as her armament of five cannons attest. In keeping with this design, she carried square-rigged sails. Since she was nearly lost on Lake Huron when she carried a crew of thirty-three to work her canvas, LaSalle 254 was, indeed, foolhardy to send the vessel, laden to the gunwales with pelts, around the top of the Michigan Mit ten with only six men aboard. Had the Griffin been constructed as an unarmed schooner, a vessel that requires a minimum number of men to man her, she might have completed her voyage and been instrumental in changing the course of economic history. Cyclical Effects Both severe downward shifts in demand in the com modity being carried and sharp downturns in the business cycle have had a terminating effect on the use of partic ular forms of transportation on the inland seas. Examples of this termination are as follows: 1. The shift from beaver fur to silk and from muskrat fur to nutria ended the commercial use of the canoe, bateau, and Mackinac boat in the Great Lakes water shed. 2. The Panic of 1837 ended the construction of prefabricated schooners such as the John Jacob Astor for fish transportation on Lake Superior. 3. The Panic of 1857 ended the development of ponderous and palatial sidewheelers by the railroad interests. 255 4. The Panic of 1873 and the decade of depressed freight rates that followed in its wake ended the era of the centerboard schooner. Connecting Waterways While dips in the business cycle have the effect of bringing a halt to certain forms of conveyances, they do not exert a "sizing" influence in the evolutionary process. The exterior dimensions of carriers are deter mined by rivers and connecting waterways on the chain of lakes, and especially by the improvements constructed thereon. Examples are as follows: 1. The canoe evolved into three distinct config urations as a result of separate demands placed upon it by the unique pattern of waterways. 2. The first lock at Sault Sainte Marie, built by the Northwest Fur Company in 1798, placed an upper limit on the size of both the bateau and the Mackinac boat. 3. The Welland Canal decided both the size and shape of the hull of the ships known on the Lakes as the "canallers." Since their opening in 1855 until the open ing of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959, the locks at Sault Saint Marie have always been larger than those on 256 the Welland Canal. Because of this, there has always been a fleet of small ships that were used for carrying on commerce between Lake Ontario and the rest of the Great Lakes system. When the Saint Lawrence; Seaway opened its gates, these small canallers were the first to go to the shipbreakers' yards. With the opening of the new Poe Lock, the Saint Marys Falls Canal is again larger than the Welland Canal. Because of the financial morass on the Saint Lawrence, compounded by the threat of the unit train, the possibilities of future enlargements to the Welland Canal are, indeed, remote. As a consequence, as ships traveling to the taconite ports on Lake Superior continue to expand, there will again appear a fleet of ships known as canallers. 4. Since the dimensions of the first ore freight er, the wooden R. J. Hackett. were determined by the size of the chamber on the State Canal on the Saint Marys Rapids, the ships of the Great Lakes fleets have been sized by the locks at Sault Saint Marie. The Weitzel, the old Poe, the Davis, and the Sabin — each of these locks engenered a new series of bulk freighters, each bigger and better than the last. Now, the new Poe Lock, which went into full-time use in 1969, has played the 257 leading role in sizing the ship of the '70s. Loading and Un loading Gear Since Dart's mechanical rig proved to he more ef ficient than Irishmen's backs in the unloading of grain at Buffalo, the arrangement of hatches and superstructures — an arrangement that gives the "laker" her unique sil houette — has been determined by loading and unloading machinery that is unique to the shores of the Great Lakes. Examples include; 1. The clamshell diggers made by the Brown Hoist ing Machinery Company, that are known as "Brownhoist Gear." 2. The Hulett unloaders, which are found in "fast docks" such as U.S. Steel's Conneaut, Ohio, slip. The Superior City was the first ore freighter built whose hatches were coordinated with the legs of this dockslde unloader. 3. The gravity spouts on the ore docks on the shores of Lake Superior. The James H. Hoyt was the first ship to have her nineteen hatches spaced on 12-foot cen ters, to agree with the ore pockets on the Duluth dock. 258 4. The ship-borne cargo conveyors, such as car ried by self-unloading bulk carriers such as the Carl D. Bradley. Because iron ore was too heavy for the self unloader's rubber belts to handle, these ships had previ ously been restricted to the calcite, coal, gypsum, and sand trades. Since taconite has replaced iron ore as the commodity carried from the shores of Lake Superior, the self-unloader will be in the forefront of development, because the blue marbles of processed taconite are uniquely suited to self—unloading equipment. That the first two bottoms to be launched by shipyards on the American side of the lakes in a decade are both self-unloaders is an indication that this is, indeed, the course for the future evolution of Great Lakes bulk freighters. Rules, Regulations and Safety-at-Sea Equipment The rules and regulations that govern the opera tion of Great Lakes freighters, together with the safety- at-sea equipment required by these documents, have come into existence as a result of a heinous history of fires and founderings, collisions and catastrophies. Examples includes 259 1. Congressional regulations passed in August, 1859, that provided for inspection by agents of the Fed eral Government of bulls and boilers. The impetus for this regulation was a rash of fires and explosions that culminated in the burning of the G. P. Griffith east of Cleveland with the estimated loss of 295 people. 2. The upbound and downbcund course agreements that were forged between the American Lake Carriers' Association and the Canadian Dominion Marine Association after a collision between the Wahcondah and the Choctaw resulted in the loss of the latter vessel. 3. The fire equipment regulations by the U.S. Coast Guard for passenger vessels flying the American flag, issued after the burning of the Morro Castle in the Atlantic. On the Lakes, these regulations had the effect of driving the Anchor Line ships Tlonesta. Juniata, and the Octorama from the trade and tossing the summer pas senger business into the hands of the Canadians. The sub sequent fires aboard Canadian Steamship Line's Hamonic. Noronlc and Quebec have forcefully demonstrated the need for stringent fire-at-sea specifications and regulations. 4. The institution by the U.S. Coast Guard of LAVERS (Lake Vessel Reporting System), whereby each 260 master electing to participate in the scheme will file the nautical equivalent of a flight plan before leaving port. The men of the Ninth Naval District will monitor the passage of the bulk freighters from their headquarters in Cleveland. This system originated as a result of the loss of the sixty-year old Danlal J. Morrell„ which snapped in two in 1966, during a blow off Harbor Beach, Lake Huron. A Mayday signal was not sent out because the fracture cut the power cable to the ship-to-shore tele phone, It was thirty-four hours after the Morrell went down before the rest of the maritime community realized a calamity had occurred. Only one of a crew of twenty- nine survived. Inconceivable Commerce It is an inescapable conclusion that the "incon ceivable commerce" that Father Hennepin could see so vividly in the offing while viewing a world of wilderness from the bow of the doomed Griffin, has long been a real ity. And the vessels that carry the commodities between the "infinite number of considerable towns" will continue to prosper as long as the men of the maritime industry — 261 the seamen, the operators, the naval architects — con tinue to search for more efficient methods for moving their mountainous cargoes. BIBLIOGRAPHY 262 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Books Barcus. Frank. Freshwater Fury. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1960. Barger, Harold. The Transportation Industries 1889-1946. New Yofk* National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., 1951. Bowen, Dana Thomas. Lore of the Lakes. Daytona Beach, Fla.: Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1940, ________. Memories of the Lakes. Daytona Beach, Fla.: Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1946. ________. Shipwrecks of the Lakes. Daytona Beach, Fla.: Dana Thomas Bowen, Publisher, 1952. Doyer, Dwight. Great Stories of the Great Lakes. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1966. ________. Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1968. Clough, Shepard B. The Economic Development of Western Civilization. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1959. Croxton, Frederick E., and Cowden, Dudley J. Applied Gen eral Statistics. 2d ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1955. Eckroad, Elmer. The Soo Locks. Sault St. Marie, Mich.: Elmer Eckroad, Publisher, 1957. Emmons, William H.; Thiel, George A.; Stauffer, Clinton R.; and Allison, Ira S. Geology: Principles and Processes. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1955. Faulkner, Harold Underwood. American Economic History. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1960. 263 264 Fite, Gilbert C., and Reese, Jim E. An Economic History of the United States. Bostoni Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965. Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Great Crash 1929. New York: - Time Incorporated, 1954. Gallagher, Thomas. Fire at Sea. New York: Berkley Pub lishing Company, 1960. Gjerset, Knut. Norwegian Sailors on the Great Lakes. Northfield, Minn.: The Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1928. Haddad, Henry. Learning Curves and Direct Manpower Load ing Techniques. Los Angeles: North American Aviation, Inc., 1959. Hatcher, Harlan. The Great Lakes. New York: Oxford Uni versity Press, 1944. ________, and Walter, Erich A. A Pictorial History of the Great Lakes. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1963. Havighurst, Walter. The Long Ships Passing. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1961. Judson, Clara Ingram, St. Lawrence Seaway. Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1959. Kemmerer, Donald L., and Hunter, Merlin H. Economic His tory of the United States. Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams and Company, 1967. Kull, Irving S., and Kull, Nell M. A Chronological Ency clopedia of American History. New York: Popular Library, 19 52. Lansing, John B. Transportation and Economic Policy. New York: The Free Press, 1966. Malkus, Allda. Blue-Water Boundary. New York: Hasting House, Publishers, 1960. 265 Meyer, John R.; Peck, Merton J, ; Stenason, John; and Zwick, Charles. The Economics of Competition in the Transportation Industries. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1959. North, Douglass C. The Economic Growth of the United States 1790-1860. New York: W. W. Norton and Com pany, 1961. ' ________ , Growth and Welfare in the American Past. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice—Hall, Inc., 1966. Parsons, Earl. Stories of the Great Lakes. Canton, Ohio: Rob-Roy Graphic Arts, 1963. Pegrum, Dudley F. Transportation: Economics and Public Policy. Homewood, 111.: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1968. Ratigan, William. Great Lakes Shipwrecks and Survivals. Grand Rapids, Mich. : Wtn. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1960. Rostow, W. W. The Stages of Economic Growth. London: Cambridge University Press, 1960. Savage, Christopher I. An Economic History of Transport. London: Hutchinson and Company, Ltd., 1959. Stovall, J. Willis, and Brown, Howard E. The Principles of Historical Geology. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1954. Taylor, George Rogers. The Transportation Revolution 1815-1860. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1951. Vance, Stanley. Industrial Structure and Policy. Engle wood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentlce-Hall, Inc., 1961. Walett, Francis G. Economic History of the United States. New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1954. Wlnchell, Alexander N. Elements of Mineralogy. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1942. 266 Books: Parts of Series Hatcher, Harlan. Lake Erie, in The American Lakes Series. Edited by Milo M. Quaife. Indianapolis: The Bobbs- Merrill Company, 1944. Landon, Fred, Lake Huron, in The American Lakes Series. Edited by Milo M. Quaife. Indianapolis: The Bobbs- Merrill Company, 1944. Nute, Grace Lee. Lake Superior, in The American Lakes Series. Edited by Milo M. Quaife. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944. Quaife, Milo M. Lake Michigan, in The American Lakes Series. Edited by Milo M. Quaife. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944. Publications of the Government, Learned Societies, and Other Organizations Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association. Cleve land* Lake Carriers' Association, 1958. Annual Report of the Lake Carriers' Association. Cleve land: Lake Carriers' Association, 1959. Annual Report of the Lake Carriers' Association. Cleve land: Lake Carriers' Association, 1960. Annual Report of the Lake Carriers' Association. Cleve land: Lake Carriers' Association, 1961. Annual Report of the Lake Carriers1 Association. Cleve land: Lake Carriers' Association, 1968. Bureau of the Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1968. U. S. Department of Commerce. Washing ton, D.C.* U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969. Detroit River, Lake St. Clair, and St. Clair River. Rec reational Craft Series. Chart No. 400. Detroit* U.S. Army Engineer District, Lake Survey, 1963. 267 Great Lakes and Connecting Channels: Water Levels and Depths. Detroit; U.S. Army Engineer District, Lake Survey, 1964. Nautical Chart Symbols and Abbreviations. Washington, D.G.i U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office, 1963. Pittsburgh Sidelights. House Organ of the Pittsburgh Steamship Division of the United States Steel Corpo ration. Cleveland; Pittsburgh Steamship Division, November, 1956. The Saint Lawrence Seaway Authority Annual Report 1966. Ottawa, Canada; Queen's Printer, 1967. The Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation Annual Report 1966. Washington, D.C.; United States Govern ment Printing Office, 1967. Searle, Allen D. "Productivity of Labor and Industry: Productivity Changes in Selected Wartime Shipbuilding Programs," Monthly Labor Review. Vol. LXI, No. 6 (December 1945). United states Bureau of Labor Sta tistics. Washington, D.C.; United States Government Printing Office, 1945. Small Craft, Gale and Whole Gale Warning Facilities Chart. U.S. Department of Commerce, Weather Bureau. Wash ington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1964. Supplement No. 2 to the 1965 Great Lakes Pilot. Detroit: U.S. Army Engineer District, Lake Survey, 1965. The Ports of Duluth-Superior, Minn, and Wls. , Two Harbors. Minn, and Ashland. Wls. Port Series No. 49. Revised 1960. Part 2. Detroit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1961. United States Coast Guard. Light List Volume IV: Great Lakes. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1964. ________ . Manual for Lifeboatmen and Able Seamen, Quali fied Members of Engine Department, and Tankermen. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1955. 268 ________ . Rules of the Roadi Great Lakes. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1962. U.S. Lake Survey. Great Lakes Pilot 1970. Detroit* U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1970. Waterborne Commerce of the United States. Part 3. Water ways and Harbors, Great Lakes. Chicago: North Cen tral Corps of Engineers, 1963. Periodicals "Billions Build Chicago into a Steel Titan,” Business Week (November 19, 1966), 68-75. "Death on the Lake," Newsweek (May 25, 1953), 37. "Disasters: Pounds of Prevention," Time (December 5, 1966), 30. Goodrich, Carter. "On Rereading Harry J. Carman's Social and Economic History of the United States." Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. VII, No. 2 (june 1969), 426-427. "Hard Times *70: Pacts, Figures, and Impact on People," Newsweek (May 25, 1970), 73. "Shipping: St. Lawrence Blues," Newsweek (August 16, 1969), 32. "Steel: Resurgence in Bunyan Country," Time (October 22, 1965), 105. "Takeover on the Lakes," Business Week (August 26, 1967), 29-30. "Transportation: An End Run Around U.S. Ports," Business Week (April 25, 1970), 30. "U.S. Shipping Steers Back into the Money," Business Week (December 13, 1969), 52-57. 269 Essays and Articles in Collections Burt, William A. "The Compass Needle," The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. Beston, Henry. "The Golden Age of the Canoe," The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966, Hatcher, Harlan. "Sails," The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Com pany, 1966. Havighurst, Walter. "Coda," The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. ________. "Introduction to 'Canalside Superintendent,'" The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. ________. "Introduction to 'The New Lock 1967,'" The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. ________. "Introduction to 'The Soo Locks,'" The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. ________ . "Voyageurs' Tales," The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. Mansfield, J. B. "The Historic Onoko," The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. Peck, Merton J. "Transportation in the American Economy," American Economic History. Edited by Seymour E. Harris. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1961. Rankin, Ernest H. "Canalside Superintendent,» The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. 270 Thistlethwaite, Prank, "From Wildcatting to Monopoly, 1850-1914," The Experience of Economic Growth. Edited by Barry E. Supple. New York: Random House, Inc., 1963. Ward, Captain Eber B. "The Soo Locks," The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. Williams, E. B. "The New Carriers," The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. ________ . "The New Lock, 1967," The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. Williams, Ralph D. "All in a Lifetime," The Great Lakes Reader. Edited by Walter Havighurst. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966, Encyclopedia Articles Albright, Robert Edwin. "Erie Canal," Encyclopaedia Brltannica. Vol. VIII. Anderson, Roger Charles. "Ships," Encyclopaedia Brltannica. Vol. XX. Cook, Frank Austin. "Sault Salnte Marie," Encyclopaedla Brltannica. Vol. XIX. Davies, Ernest Albert John. "Water Transport," Encyclopaedia Brltannica. Vol. XXIII. Davis, Charles Moler. "Saint Marys River," Encyclopaedia Brltannica. Vol. XIX. Hough, Jack L. "Welland Ship Canal," Encyclopaedla Brltannica. Vol. XXIII. Ives, John David. "Labrador-Ungana," Encyclopaedia Brltannica. Vol. XIII. 271 Kelloga, Charles E. "Pur," Encyclopaedia Brltannica. Vol. IX. Morton, William Lewis. "Hudson's Bay Company," Encyclopaedia Brltannica. Vol. XI. "Red River Settlement," Encyclopaedia Brltannica. Vol. XIX. Newspapers Los Angeles Heraid-Examiner, November 30, 1966. Los Angeles Times, December 1, 1966. Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1970. The Wall Street Journal. April 27, 1970. The Wall Street Journal. April 29, 1970. Unpublished Materials McCarty, John Myron. "The Utilization of an Exponential Equation to Describe and Predict the Production Cost Curves in the Aerospace Industry." Unpublished Mas ter' s thesis, The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1965.

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Creator Mccarty, John Myron (author)

Core Title Economic Aspects In The Evolution Of The Great Lakes Freighter

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Economics

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag economics, history,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Phillips, E. Bryant (committee chair), Pollard, Spencer D. (committee member), Pounders, Cedric J. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-511447

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