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Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakestraces the evolution of the Great Lakes shipping industry over the last three centuries. The Great Lakes shipping industry can trace its lineage to 1679 with the launching on Lake Erie of the Griffon, a sixty-foot galley weighing nearly fifty tons. Built by LaSalle, a French explorer who had been commissioned to search for a passage through North America to China, it was the first sailing ship to operate on the upper lakes, signaling the dawn of the Great Lakes shipping industry as we know it today. Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakes is the most thorough and factual study of the Great Lakes shipping industry written this century. Author Mark L. Thompson tells the fascinating story of the world's most efficient bulk transportation system, describing the Great Lakes freighters, the cargoes of the great ships ,and the men and women who have served as crew. He documents the dramatic changes that have taken places in the industry and looks at the critical role that Great Lakes shipping plays in the economic well-being of the U.S. and Canada, despite the fact tat the size of the fleet and the amount of cargo carried have declined dramatically in recent years. Spanning more than three centuries, from LaSalle's voyage in 1679, through 1975 with the mysterious sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, to life aboard today's thousand-foot behemoths, this important volume documents the evolution of the industry through its "Golden Age" at the end of the nineteenth century to the present, with a downsized U.S. fleet that numbers fewer than seventy vessels.
From the early days of commercial navigation on the waterways of the Great Lakes, tugboats have been needed to guide the ships in and out of the newly constructed ports. As the means of transportation progressed from wooden schooners to large steel steamships, the tugboat also grew in size. This book takes an in-depth look into the ancient practices of Great Lakes ice-breaking, ship-assistance and towing. At the turn of the century, the towing industry changed forever with the consolidation of fleets and the design of the low-profile powerful steam ship-docking tug. This "G-Tug" design has become known all around the world and these same 80-year old tugs are still the primary workhorse in most harbors on the Lakes today. Many other designs, unique to the fresh waters of the Great Lakes are profiled in this book. The severe climate of the Great Lakes region is brutal on the equipment and the tugs are built tough, for heavy ice breaking. A new class of powerful Coast Guard ice-breaking tugs came out in the 1940s. Today, many of these "WYTM" class tugs survive in commercial service on the Lakes. The Lakes have always been home to a large fleet of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers tugs. Additionally, U.S. Army auctions have brought many government-class tugs such as LTs, STs, and DPCs to the Lakes in the hands of private and commercial operators. In the rivers that feed the busy port of Chicago and all throughout New York State on the Erie Canal, a rare species of tug can be found-the famous "canallers" which are also featured in this volume.
An account of the use of commercial water transport on the Great Lakes.