700 



SHIPPING ON THE GREAT LAKES. 



level of the shaft. Steam is supplied by six 

 boilers, each 11| f ee t l n g- The vessel is fitted 

 with a double bottom 3 feet deep, forming a 

 ballast tank of about 800 tons oapacitv. It is 

 designed to carry 2,800 tons of cargo and fuel on 

 15 feet 6 inches draft of water, and with this 

 load to steam 14 knots or 16 miles an hour. 



Since the building of the " Susquehanna" and 

 the " Owego " the tendency has been to make 

 vessels of a shorter length and standing higher 

 out of water. Of these, the " Tuscarora," built 

 in Cleveland in 1890, is, perhaps, a fair speci- 

 men. She is of 290 feet keel, 312 feet over all, 

 40 feet beam, and 25 feet depth. Over 1,600 

 tons of plate were used in her hull, and she is in 

 many respects superior to the modern steel boats 

 of the lakes, as there was no attempt to save 

 money in her construction. She has the usual 

 water capacity 8 compartments of about 800 

 tons. She has 2 flush steel decks, the top one 

 being covered with 3-inch pine, and an additional 

 tier of deck beams below, or virtually a third 

 deck. Her water-bottom runs clear aft, and she 

 has 3 longitudinal keelsons on either side of the 

 main keelson. The middle one of this third tier 

 of keelsons on either side runs down to the skin 

 of the vessel. It is said that when one of the 

 boats of the fleet, the " Saranac," was driven 

 ashore on the rocks at Buffalo, in the spring of 

 1890, it was the additional strength of such keel- 

 sons that saved her bottom. The " Tuscarora " 

 is very strong in other ways. Her trunk around 

 the engine and boiler, is carried up with quarter- 

 inch boiler plate, and the boiler house is also of 

 quarter-inch boiler plate. She carries 4 spars, 

 the mizzen of steel. Five hoisting engines on 

 the deck operate 7 spar derricks, so that time is 

 saved in handling cargo by having it worked 

 through the hatches as well as the gangways. 

 The engines have 24-, 38-, and 61-inch cylinders, 

 with 42-inch stroke ; but they are placed forward 

 about 40 feet farther than in the ordinary lake 

 carrier, and the shaft alley is, of course, very 

 large. She has 3 boilers of 12 x 12| feet, which 

 are allowed 160 pounds of steam, and her wheel 

 is sectional, 14 x 17. A feature of the "Tusca- 

 rora's " power is the Worthington independent 

 condenser, which has greatly increased her speed. 

 It is claimed that she and her sister vessels are 

 the only boats on the lakes to compete with the 

 record of 16-4 miles an hour held by the " Owe- 

 go." This is a vast improvement over the old 

 line of freighters, which made scarcely 10 miles 

 an hour as late as 1880. But there is a structural 

 weakness in all the large steel boats, arising from 

 the necessities of the carrying trade, which would 

 be fatal to their use in the heavy seas of salt wa- 

 ter. The plates of iron and steel are usually 

 much thinner than those of the salt-water ves- 

 sels, and the frames are much lighter. While 

 there are occasionally heavy storms upon the 

 lakes, yet something may be risked in the way of 

 lighter construction, because none of the lake 

 boats run during the winter months. The chief 

 element of weakness, however, is in the large and 

 frequent openings through all the decks for the 

 purpose of loading and unloading. The hatches 

 of the upper deck are 26 x 8 feet, the greater 

 length being across the vessel. The hatches in 

 the lower decks are 16 x 8 feet. All the hatches 

 are placed at distances of 24 feet, center to cen- 



ter. The immense cranes on the docks are also 

 placed 24 feet from center to center. 



At Marquette, on Lake Superior, whence hun- 

 dreds of thousands of tons of ore are shipped 

 annually, the railroad company that brings the 

 mineral down to the lake shore has built a 

 pier more than 1,000 feet long, having a height 

 of about 40 feet above the water level. The 

 freight cars are run out upon this, and their con- 

 tents are dumped into large bins directly under 

 the tracks. These bins are built to correspond 

 in dimensions with the hatches of the lake ves- 

 sels. The latter pull alongside of the pier, the 

 legs or chutes of tne bins are thrust through the 

 great hatches of the upper deck, the catch that 

 keeps the bin door in place is pulled, and the 

 entire contents of that receptacle fall into the 

 hold of the vessel with a roar that can be heard 

 for miles. Manual labor is reduced to the mere 

 duty of supervision ; but in discharging cargoes 

 a different process is adopted. No plan has yet 

 been devised of lifting a vessel up and letting 

 her cargo fall out ; neither has it been found 

 possible to unload iron ore and coal as grain is 

 discharged, by means of the endless belt of an 

 elevator. These heavy materials have to be put 

 into tubs and lifted out of the ship's hold, and 

 the merit of the frequent-hatch plan consists in 

 the opportunity it affords for several gangs of 

 men to work simultaneously. Mechanical sci- 

 ence has been brought into play in the construc- 

 tion of hoisting and conveying machines to sup- 

 plement the efforts of the men in the hold. 

 The superintendent of an ore-wharf at Cleve- 

 land asserts that with the assistance of three op- 

 erators and one foreman he has in nine hours 

 discharged a cargo of 1,980 tons of ore, working 

 six hatches with nine men at a hatch, and carry- 

 ing the ore from 50 to 150 feet from the vessel. 

 During the process the men are all under cover, 

 and are exposed neither to the rain nor to the 

 direct heat of the sun. The cost of putting the 

 ore into the buckets by the men in the hold av- 

 erages about 15 cents a ton. Instances are on 

 record where a cargo of 2,000 tons of coal lias 

 been put on board of a steamer in one hour and 

 twenty minutes, and a similar quantity of iron 

 ore in one hour and thirty minutes. Two thou- 

 sand tons of coal have been discharged in eleven 

 hours, and a similar quantity of iron ore in six 

 hours. These instances cited are exceptional, 

 but the average does not fall far below them. 



At the Lake Erie ports Cleveland, Ashtabula, 

 Fairport, Buffalo, Erie, Sandusky, Toledo, and 

 Lorain whence all the coal is shipped, and 

 where by far the larger part of the ore is re- 

 ceived, there are nearly 16 miles of dockage, 

 about 56 per cent, of which is .occupied by the 

 ore business and the remainder by the coal traffic. 



The grain trade is chiefly between Chicago, 

 West Superior, Duluth, and Milwaukee on the 

 west, and Buffalo on the east. In 1889 these 

 four ports shipped 34,887,000 bushels of wheat 

 alone to Buffalo. The total corn tonnage was 

 still greater, while the flour traffic reached a 

 total of over 3.850,000 barrels. In 1890 the grain 

 season opened the second week in April, and the 

 grain fleet on its first trip brought down from 

 Chicago 110,000 tons, distributed as follows: 

 2,802,000 bushels of corn, 1,194,000 bushels of 

 wheat, 137,000 bushels of rye, 71,000 of oats, and 



