The Great Lakes Car Ferries
Copyright 2011 Montevallo Historical Press
Published by Montevallo Historical Press at Smashwords
This is a reprinting of the original 1962 volume. It contains corrections to the text and newly-written addenda.
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To David A
Hill
Who Interested the Author in Railroading
Preface
The Great Lakes car ferries are a significant type of ship and an important part of the American railroad system; on both grounds I have long felt they deserved an intensive study. Although my interest in the car ferries dates back some twenty years, I began to collect material systematically for this history only in 1952. The pressure of other research kept me from making much progress on the book until 1959. My timing was, perhaps, appropriate, since, whether one takes the John Counter of 1853 or the Buffalo & Lake Huron's International (1) of 1857 as the first Great Lakes car ferry, the 1950's marked the centenary of car ferry service on the Great Lakes. Thus, although I did not realize it when I undertook the work, this is, in fact, a centennial history of the Great Lakes car ferries.
I have, naturally, described the accidents of the car ferries in some detail. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about a normal voyage across Lake Michigan. Consequently, although I dwell on the disasters of the car ferries, the reader should not forget that these are atypical, and that the overall safety record of the car ferries is superb. When W. L. Mercereau, marine superintendent of the Pere Marquette, went to Manitowoc in 1926 to supervise efforts to take one of his ferries, Pere Marquette 18 (II), off the beach where she had grounded, a reporter thought that he seemed rather unconcerned about the accident, and asked him about its severity. Mercereau replied that the affair was routine. Since his ships put into Lake Michigan harbors about three thousand times a year, he was surprised only that groundings and harbor collisions were as few as they were. Even more to the point, the Detroit River car ferries, crossing dozens of times a day a channel where a ship is rarely out of sight, have had an almost unbelievably small number of collisions.
On the other hand, recognition that accidents are part of the game should not blind us to the heroism, ingenuity and resourcefulness of the men who were involved in them. Ferrying railroad cars across fresh water at 14 miles per hour may appear pale against racing for the Blue Riband of the Atlantic, or taking grain under sail around the Horn to Liverpool, but the feats of seamanship that brought Ann Arbor No. 4 and Pere Marquette 16 into port after their numerous disasters are as worthy of memorializing as any of the exploits of the Seven Seas. The hardy Scandinavians and all the rest who have sailed the car ferries are a sturdy breed of men, and so, may the principal purpose of this book be to honor them.
The habit of the major car ferry operators of numbering their ships, rather than naming them in some other fashion, has robbed car ferries, at least superficially, of some of the individuality of other ships. This is unfortunate for narrative purposes, however useful it may have been for the operators. To distinguish car ferries from other steamers mentioned in the text, I have capitalized car ferries, including barges equipped to carry cars, but used italics for other ships. Since in several instances two car ferries (and on one occasion three) have borne the same name, I have distinguished between the ships by Roman numerals in parentheses, as Transfer (I) or Pere Marquette 18 (II). Such numbers were not part of the registered names of the steamers. I have used these Roman numerals at each mention of the steamer, on the ground that many who use such books as this refer to them only to find details on a single ship. For such readers it might not always be clear which of several ships of the same name is indicated. To readers who read the text in extenso, I can only apologize if repetition of the Roman numerals becomes tedious.
My obligations are many. In particular, I received invaluable assistance from W. A. McDonald, Frank E. Hamilton and Erik Heyl, distinguished historians of the Great Lakes. Gordon Potter, George F. Kuschel, Neil F. Morrison, Emerson Smith, David Glick, Rev. Edward J. Dowling, S. J., Edwin Wilson, Richard J. Wright, and Duff G. Brace, also assisted me by furnishing information or illustrative material. Since I was in California during preparation of much of the manuscript, I was necessarily dependent on correspondence for discovery of many facts. During trips to the Lake ports, I was assisted by librarians and archivists at the public libraries at Milwaukee, Chicago, Manitowoc, Ludington, Benton Harbor, Detroit, Port Huron, Sarnia, Windsor, Ogdensburg, Muskegon, Kingston, and Sandusky, to all of whom I express my gratitude. I have also benefited from use of the collections of the John Crerar Library of Chicago, the Wakefield Museum of the Great Lakes Historical Society at Vermilion, Ohio, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum at Detroit, the National Archives, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Public Archives of Canada, the British Museum, and (by correspondence) La Direction Generale des Douanes et Droits Indirects, Ministere des Finances, Paris, as well as numerous academic libraries.
C. Bradford Mitchell, Gordon Shaw, Gordon P. Bugbee, William A. Hoey and John Williams were kind enough to read the manuscript, and the comments of all five were very helpful. Portions of the manuscript which originally appeared in Inland Seas and Telescope are reproduced with the permission of the publishers, respectively, the Great Lakes Historical Society and the Great Lakes Maritime Institute.
Cartography is by James Bier of the Department of Geography of the University of Illinois.
George W.
Hilton
Berkeley, California
April, 1962
Introductory Note on Ice Breaking
As the reader will shortly discover, much of the history of the Great Lakes car ferries is concerned with their continual battle with the ice. Operating as they do on fresh water in a severe climate, for more than a third of a year they are menaced with ice formations of various sorts. Ice can surround a ship and render her immobile; ice can burst her plates and sink her; ice can conceal obstructions in her path; ice can drive a ship aground. Ice is the eternal enemy. It is never vanquished; though defeated today, it returns to fight again tomorrow, next month or next season.
Ice is not one enemy, but several, and it must be fought in a variety of ways. There are five major types of ice on the Great Lakes.
1. SHEET ICE. In relatively calm weather in sub-freezing temperatures, flat sheet ice forms rapidly, ranging in thickness from a fraction of an inch to several feet. Sheet ice of five feet thickness is not unknown after prolonged periods of cold weather. Sheet ice may slow a ferry down greatly, but it usually yields to driving the prow of the ship onto the ice until her weight breaks through to the water. The principal danger from sheet ice is losing speed sufficiently that the ship cannot develop momentum enough to rise on the ice before her. She may then be frozen into the ice, with a variety of disastrous consequences related in the subsequent pages. Lateral motion can be achieved by shifting water between the ballast tanks to help free the ship, and ferries have occasionally blasted free with dynamite. Blasting was fairly common on the Lake Erie car ferry lines, but it has never been widely used on Lake Michigan. The Ann Arbor tried blasting free in 1917, but it suffered so much damage to the ship, Ann Arbor No. 5, that it never did so again. Working cracks into sheet ice with crowbars, a process called "spudding," is a laborious, but occasionally effective way of freeing a ship.
2. WINDROW ICE. The break-up of sheet ice from wind and waves, plus the passing of ice-breakers, creates great chunks of ice which drift into floating masses called windrows. It is possible to push through small windrows, but some windrows are several miles wide and as much as fifty feet thick, partly submerged and partly above water. The impacting of windrow ice causes stress ridges which are conspicuous, reaching several feet above the water. By the same token, windrow ice contains a great deal of kinetic energy. It can exert a pressure against a ship that can hold her fast, or move her as the windrow drifts. The more powerful is an ice-breaker, the more readily can she work her way out of windrows, but, as the text indicates, on many occasions car ferries have become enmeshed in windrows for days or weeks until the wind changed the stress patterns in the ice enough to free them.
3. PACK ICE. Wind and wave action build tip masses of ice, in smaller fragments and without stress ridges, known as pack ice. Current in the Detroit and St. Clair Rivers is also responsible for pack ice concentration. Pack ice is found mainly in harbors, coves and bights. It frequently fouls the ferry slips themselves. Pack ice, especially after re-freezing, is often too thick, too steep or too resistant for the process of rising on it and breaking it by weight of the ship to be effective. Screwdriven ferries often reverse their directions and back into pack ice, breaking it up with the quickwaters from their propellers. Ferries with propellers fore and aft are particularly effective against pack ice.
4. SLUSH ICE. As the name indicates, this is ice of any sort in the process of melting, drifting freely in the water. Although such ice presents no problem of breaking, it may so clog the water intakes of a car ferry that she cannot bring in an adequate supply of boiler water. Slush ice also cuts down wave action, but consequently intensifies swell, causing ferries to roll markedly.
5. ANCHOR ICE. Any ice fixed to the shore or solid to the bottom is called anchor ice. It typically contains a great deal of sand and other foreign material, making it relatively heavy. Anchor ice is particularly a problem in the ferry slips themselves, where it may obstruct entrance almost completely. Quick-water from the propellers may take nearly an hour to break up anchor ice in the slip under the worst conditions.
Needless to say, the distinction between the several sorts of ice is not rigorous. Where pack ice merges into windrow ice on one hand and into anchor ice on the other is frequently an arbitrary judgment. Car ferry skippers differ one with another in description of given ice conditions, but marine nomenclature on the Great Lakes is often less formal than on salt water.
The Great Lakes car ferries are among the most notable icebreakers. Their fame has spread throughout the world, and the practice of private shipowners and of naval operators in many countries owes much to the experience of a century of icebreaking by Canadian and American railroads.
Chapter 1: The River Car Ferries
The history of the Great Lakes car ferries dates back almost to the inception of this type of ship. Car ferries had less than a decade of history when the first was introduced on the Lakes in the 1850's. As far as is known, the first self-propelled car ferry in the world was the Leviathon, built by Robert Napier & Sons at Govan, Scotland, in 1849 for the Edinburgh Perth & Dundee Railway. The Leviathon, a double-ended paddle ferry of two tracks, 167 feet long, inaugurated a crossing of the Firth of Forth between Granton and Burntisland on February 7, 1850. In the following year, the same railway opened a crossing of the Firth of Tay betwaeen Tayport and Broughty Ferry, for which it ordered a similar ferry, the Robert Napier.
Both of the Scottish train ferries were considered successful, and they achieved a small amount of publicity in railway journals. They provided, however, only a meager background of experience for the early Great Lakes operators.
CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS
Buffalo & Lake Huron Railway
The earliest railways to operate car ferries on the great Lakes (though not on the St. Lawrence; see below, Chapter VII) were all predecessors of what is now the Canadian National Railways. The first of these was the Buffalo & Lake Huron Railway Company, a road projected during the Canadian railway building boom of the 1850's to run from Buffalo, New York, to Goderich, Ontario, Its promoters had been Buffalo businessmen who feared that the rise of the western railroads would cost Buffalo some of its trade as a port for transshipment of grain between lake vessels and the eastern railways. They hoped that a direct railway to Goderich would shorten the distance between Buffalo and Lake Superior ports or Chicago, and thus retain much of the grain traffic for the city. Goderich was the first good harbor on Lake Huron above Sarnia. Since the passage through Lake St. Clair was a difficult one, particularly for schooners, the railway was a more sensible project than it would have been after improvements in ships and channels in the late nineteenth century. The original promoters of the road failed, but it was completed on July 8, 1858, by British capitalists.
The Buffalo & Lake Huron and its predecessor, the Buffalo Brantford & Goderich, had operated ferry service between Buffalo and Fort Erie since 1853, apparently entirely with break-bulk steamers.i The Buffalo & Lake Huron had been built to what was then the customary Canadian gauge of 5'-6". The Canadian authorities had adopted this gauge out of a desire to frustrate invasion by American military forces, but it had seriously impeded interchange of equipment with American railroads. At this time, however, it was common for railroads, even of the same gauge, to transship at junctions, rather than to permit their freight cars to travel off the home line. Out of a desire to avoid transshipment between rail and ferry, the directors voted to have a car ferry built in time to handle the additional traffic they expected on completion of the road. They ordered a sidewheel steamer from Jacob W. Banta of Buffalo, 226 feet long, capable of handling eight of the small passenger cars of the time. Named the International (I), she had two tracks on her deck, each laid to 5'-6". The ship was launched in October, 1857, and was reported in service by 1858. Thereafter, the B&LH was able to transship in Buffalo directly between its cars and the 6'-0" equipment of the Erie, which was the B&LH's principal connection, or cars of other American railroads.
From the outset, the ferry was looked upon as a temporary expedient. The directors of the B&LH even in 1857 hoped to bridge the Niagara River within a few years, and specified that the ferry should be built so as to be converted readily into a passenger steamer or a package freighter. The B&LH during its existence was never able to complete the bridge project.
In 1870, the Buffalo & Lake Huron was leased in perpetuity to the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada. Thus the B&LH came into the system of the largest Canadian railway of the day, and the principal component of the Canadian National Railways. In April, 1872, the Grand Trunk, which was also built to a gauge of 5'-6", announced that it would convert its lines to 4' 8" for consistency with the American railroads. The Grand Trunk converted the entire Sarnia-Fort Erie line to standard gauge on Sunday and Monday, November 17-18, 1872. The Grand Trunk then relaid the tracks on the International (I) to 4' 8", increasing her capacity in cars by about 20 per cent.
The Grand Trunk, anticipating that standard-gauging would increase interchange with the railroads at Buffalo, pushed the bridge project to completion. The bridge was scheduled for opening in December, 1872, but delays in construction prevented completion until late in 1873.
Upon opening of the bridge, the International (I) was laid up at Fort Erie. The Grand Trunk felt that her capacity was inadequate, and her maintenance expenses excessive. She was in bad condition, and the Grand Trunk was not eager to use her further. She never ran again, for on Monday, February 2, 1874, at 9:45 p.m., she was discovered ablaze at her berth in Fort Erie. Although flames shortly enveloped the entire ship, no fire alarm was registered locally. In fact, no alarm was sent until 11:15, when one was made in Buffalo. The Buffalo firemen were unwilling to cross to Fort Erie, and the ship burned to the waterline. There was some speculation that the fire might have been incendiary. The ship was valued at about $12,000, some 10 per cent of her original cost. Only part of the loss was covered by insurance.
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway of Canada was opened for traffic from Suspension Bridge to Windsor, Ontario, in 1854, the first railway to reach the Detroit-Windsor area from the east. It was also built to the Canadian gauge of 5'-6", and like the Buffalo & Lake Huron, was unable to interchange with American railroads across the water. Its first connections with Detroit were small break-bulk ferries, Ottawa, Windsor, and Transit. The Ottawa, a sidewheeler built in Detroit in 1853, is said to have been used in freight service only, but the Windsor, a side-wheeler of 1856 (also built in Detroit), is known to have carried both passengers and freight. The Transit, a propeller of the same year, was originally used for general purposes. In 1956, the railway bought or chartered the ten-year-old propeller Globe, which on March 9, 1858, capsized at the Michigan Central wharf in Detroit while loading cattle. In 1857, the company placed in service a 163-foot side-wheeler of 1190 tons, the Union, reported to have had an iron-sheathed hull. Being larger and more powerful than the earlier steamers, she became the GWR's principal ferry. She had comfortable passenger accommodations, including it was said, an excellent restaurant. Upon her arrival, the Transit was assigned to ferrying cattle.
The Great Western Railway recognized the error of building to an off-standard gauge relatively early, and in the middle 1860's began to lay a third rail along its track for standard gauge equipment. To provide interchange with the railroads at Detroit, the railway ordered its first car ferry, Great Western.
An iron hull was ordered from Barclay Curle & Company of Glasgow. It was fabricated on the Clyde, assembled, knocked down, and shipped in 10,878 pieces to Windsor, where it was reassembled at the shipyard of Henry Jenking. The engines for his side-wheels were built at Dundas, Ontario, by the firm of Gartshore, and her boilers were built in the GWR shops at Hamilton. Great Western was launched September 6, 1866, festooned with British and American flags. She was completed with a long tubular housing covering her main deck. She had pilot houses fore and aft, and was nominally double-ended, although she loaded cars only from her bow. She went into service on January 1, 1867, simultaneously with the GWR's initiation of mixed gauge service on its rail lines. Interchange of standard gauge equipment with the Michigan Central at Detroit began on June 1, 1867. Great Western had two tracks on her deck, both laid to dual gauge. By the standards of the day, Great Western with a length of 220 feet, was a monstrous ship, the largest steel or iron vessel on the Lakes, and the largest ship, save one, of any kind on the Lakes. The publicity she received is a marked contrast to the relative obscurity in which the International (1) operated; indeed, Great Western is frequently, but erroneously, said to have been the first Great Lakes car ferry.
In 1872, the Great Western began converting its operations entirely to standard gauge, completing the process in 1874. Since this permitted a great increase of interchange with the American railroads, the company expanded its car ferry fleet considerably, adding three ferries in the three-year period. The first of these was a combination passenger and car ferry intended for service between Port Huron and Sarnia, Transit (I). The Great Western had built a branch from London to Sarnia in 1858. In 1872, the railway was making connection with Port Huron with a passenger and break-bulk ferry, Florence. She may occasionally have ferried railway equipment on barges; newspaper accounts of her activities are ambiguous. Transit (I) was to carry passengers in cabins around the tracks on the main deck. She had two standard gauge tracks, capable of holding five freight cars each. She is believed to have had only a single pilot house forward, twin stacks, and an enclosed car deck. Her hull, only 168 feet long, was built mainly of white oak, and she was propelled by twin screws. Since the break-bulk ferry Transit was reported broken up in 1872, there is some reason to believe that the new ship may have inherited machinery from the old.
Transit (I) was launched at 3:30 P.M. on July 9, 1872, at the Jenking Yard.ii Her boilers and engines were in place, but her tracks were yet to be laid, and her cabin had still to be fitted out. Her total cost was about $85,000. The GWR, before the ship was completed, decided to divert her to the Windsor-Detroit crossing. She made her trial runs in the Detroit River September 7, 1872, and on September 12 was reported to be at her slip in Windsor, ready for service.
Upon deciding to use Transit (1) at Windsor, the GWR ordered another, but smaller ferry for the Port Huron-Sarnia crossing. The railway in July, 1872, contracted with the Port Huron Dry Dock Company to build a single screw ferry of 142 feet, equipped to handle only four cars. She was reported also to have passenger accommodations. The keel was laid in August, and the ship was named the Saginaw; work on her progressed through the fall and winter. By March, 1872, she bad been launched and was having her engines installed. She was ready for service by May, but the railway decided to put her in the Windsor-Detroit crossing, presumably because of a deluge of traffic there. She arrived in Detroit about June 1, and spent the summer and fall ferrying there. In November, she returned to Port Huron and entered service. Subsequently, she went to Windsor to relieve the larger GWR ferries occasionally. Her small capacity-—except for the St. Lawrence River ferries, she was much the smallest to serve on the Great Lakes—was a handicap from the outset.
Both of the new wooden propeller ferries quickly proved themselves failures for winter operation. In January, 1873, ice was so heavy that only the Great Western was reported to be getting through it. On January 7, the Great Western announced that it was planning to build a new ferry, to be a sidewheeler of greater size and capacity than Great Western. The railway explicitly stated that the propeller arrangement was unsatisfactory in the ice. A contract was let in April to the Jenking yard for the hull and to Gilbert's Canada Engine Works of Montreal for the engines. To be called the Michigan (I), she was to be a double tracked ferry capable of taking 18 cars as a load. With a gross tonnage of 1344, she was expected to be the largest ship on fresh water. She was to have a wooden hull, sheathed with 3⁄16" iron plates for six feet below the water line. Her rudders were submerged two feet to avoid sheet ice.
Construction began in the late spring, and by July her wooden framing, better known as "hog bracing," was reported in place. She had pilot houses fore and aft, like Great Western, and twin stacks outboard of the hog bracing. An old print indicates that she had an enclosed car deck.
Michigan (I) was scheduled for launching on Thursday, December 18, 1873, at 1:30 P.M. She was christened with a bottle of brandy, and her stays were removed, but she failed to move an inch. The railway, which had a party of guests in the river on the Union, was highly embarrassed, but could do little. Transit (I) put a line on Michigan (I), but could not tow her off. A mechanic named Brown was slightly wounded in the leg when a chain parted in the towing operation. For two days, Michigan (I) defied efforts to launch her. On December 20, shortly before noon, she gave way to a battery of wedges and jack screws, and went into the water. She was towed to the GWR berth for fitting out, and was made ready for service by February, 1874.
With the arrival of Michigan (I), the Great Western made several changes in its ferry service. Captain C. W. Stone, commodore of the fleet, transferred to the Michigan (I), and Captain Mason of the Canada Southern's Transfer (I) was brought in to replace him on the Great Western. The railway at this time discontinued its passenger and break-bulk ferries. Previously, only freight cars had been ferried across regularly, but Michigan (I) was expected to ferry GWR passenger trains, in addition to making eight or nine trips per day with freight cars.
Michigan (I) did not satisfy the GWR's high hopes. She had cost over $230,000, but the railway found her an inferior icebreaker. Her wooden hull was weak, and no match for the pack ice of the river. Nonetheless, she remained in service with her three running mates as long as the GWR maintained itself as an independent entity.
In the spring of 1882, the GWR sent Great Western into dry dock for extensive rebuilding. She emerged in the middle of September with her deck housing removed. Thereafter, she operated with an open deck, like all later Detroit River car ferries. The change lowered her gross tonnage from 1252 to 1080.
Meanwhile, the Great Western Railway had been absorbed by the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada on August 12, 1882. The Great Western, Transit (I), Saginaw, and Michigan (I) passed into the hands of the Grand Trunk along with the rest of the property.
Grand Trunk Railway
The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada itself became a car ferry operator on the St. Clair River in 1872. The company had reached Sarnia with a branch from St. Mary's in 1859, completing a 5'-6" line from Toronto via Guelph. The Grand Trunk operated under lease a standard gauge line between Port Huron and Detroit, also completed in 1859. Before 1872, the railway made connections with a sidewheeler, W. J. Spicer, and other break-bulk steamers, and with a swing ferry equipped to handle standard gauge railroad cars. The swing ferry was anchored by a chain of about 1000 feet near the American shore, and, depending on her angle, was driven by the current in the rapids from one shore to the other. Her slips were at Point Edward, above Sarnia, and at Fort Gratiot in Port Huron, almost exactly at the piers of the present Blue Water Bridge.
A swing ferry at a point of such heavy traffic as the rapids presented a menace to navigation. About 1867, she collided with an upbound steamer, severing her chain, and drifting uncontrolled down the river. The schooner Reindeer picked her up off Butler Street, Port Huron.
In anticipation of conversion of the line into Sarnia to 4' 8-1/2"' in 1872, the Grand Trunk prepared to retire the swing ferry, enlarge the slips at Point Edward and Fort Gratiot, and put in service a self-propelled car ferry, International (II). The new ship, which bore the name of the pioneer Great Lakes car ferry that was about to be withdrawn, was built at Fort Erie. As in the case of the Great Western, the new ship's hull was fabricated in Britain, in this instance by Palmer & Company of Yarrow-on-Tyne. She was shipped in sections to Fort Erie, where she was assembled by the Grand Trunk. Work on her was begun on October 23, 1871, and the railway planned to launch her patriotically on Victoria's birthday, May 24, 1872. A force of 120 men worked on her and she was expected to cost only $75,000, although it seems unlikely that she could have been completed for so small a sum. She was to be twin screw, with two high pressure noncondensing engines. The original plan was to equip her with a single track of 4' 8-1/2” at the center, flanked by a track of 5' 6" on each side, but she appeared with three dual gauge tracks. She was the first three-tracked ferry on the Lakes. Although she was only 210 feet in registered length, the railway hoped to have her carry 21 cars.
International (II) was fitted out by the end of July, and sent off to Sarnia. Although built at Fort Erie, she never served there, nor was she ever intended to do so. International (I), as far as is known, was the only Niagara River car ferry. International (II) arrived in Sarnia on August 2, 1872, in tow of the propeller City of Detroit. She went into service about a month before Transit (I), qualifying for the honor of being the first propeller among the Great Lakes car ferries. The swing ferry was discontinued, and her hull converted to the Wolverine dry dock, in which capacity she operated locally for some years.
Contrary to the Great Western's experience with its two propellers at the same time, the Grand Trunk found the International (II) thoroughly satisfactory. She required between six and eleven minutes for the 800-foot crossing, and made about two trips per hour. Some 300 to 400 cars were customarily ferried per day in the early years. When she ferried 224 eastbound freight cars in one night in April, 1873, plus two passenger trains, her performance was thought noteworthy. In the navigation season, she burned about two cords of wood per day, and was considered economical. She was popular with her crew, and was known among them by the nickname, "Peggy." Her broad gauge tracks were removed when standard gauging of the Grand Trunk into Sarnia was completed. In January 1874, a Grand Trunk official told shareholders she had never been held up by ice.
The Grand Trunk's traffic grew greatly in the 1870's as, by acquisition and construction, its rails pushed west to Chicago, Grand Rapids and Grand Haven. By the middle of the decade International (II) could no longer handle the traffic, and the railway ordered a similar, but somewhat larger ferry, Huron. Again an iron hull was built on the Tyne, knocked down and reassembled in Canada. The railway assembled her at Point Edward under the direction of John H. Smith, who had supervised the building of International (II). Work on her began August 12, 1874, and she was launched at 2:00 P.M. Thursday, June 3, 1875, amid great festivities. She was sponsored by Miss Jessie S. Hughes of Toronto, and given a broadside launching, possibly the largest ship to be so launched up to that time. Just 242 feet overall, she was nonetheless looked upon as a mammoth ship. She cost about $200,000.
If only because of her remarkable longevity, Huron is of exceptional interest. She is a twin screw ship with a pair of single cylinder engines. Since this primitive arrangement presents the problem of stopping on dead center, each of her shafts is fitted with a large cog wheel and a fulcrum from which the engineer can pry the engine off center with a crowbar. They are noncondensing simple engines, each of which exhausts beside the opposite stack. Although only sixteen feet longer than the International (II), she had a greater capacity by three cars. Second slips were built for her both at Fort Gratiot and Point Edward, and on Dominion Day, July 1, 1875, she made her trial run.
The Grand Trunk's roster of car ferries tripled in 1982, when the Great Western Railway was absorbed. The Grand Trunk clearly thought little of the Great Western's wooden ferries. The Sarnia-Port Huron ferry was discontinued as redundant upon the Grand Trunk's Point Edward-Fort Gratiot operation, and Saginaw was laid up at Windsor. Ice conditions are worse at Windsor than at Sarnia, and Michigan (I) had proved herself too weak of hull for heavy ice-breaking. The Grand Trunk contracted with Detroit Dry Dock to provide a new iron hull for Michigan (I)'s machinery. The hull was designed by the most distinguished naval architect of the Great Lakes, Frank E. Kirby, and was his first car ferry. After its launching on May 11, 1884, the hull was towed to the Jenking yard at Windsor, where Michigan (I)'s engines, and, apparently, much of her superstructure were applied. She was named Lansdowne in honor of the Marquis of Landsdowne (1845-1927), Governor General of Canada. She has two tracks, like the earlier GWR ferries, and loads from the bow. As built, she had pilot houses fore and aft, both believed to have been inherited from the Michigan (I). The aft pilot house was removed, apparently after she ceased ferrying for the Wabash in 1912. As long as it was necessary to make the trip south to the Wabash slips, an aft pilot house was useful, but on the Grand Trunk's own route directly across the river from Windsor to Brush Street, Detroit, it is not necessary. As built, she had three stacks, one on the port side and two on the starboard, but a fourth was added in 1903.
Lansdowne went into service in November, 1884, and was rapidly acclaimed a great success. In February, 1885, C. K. Domville, mechanical superintendent of the Grand Trunk, reported to his superiors, "The Lansdowne has succeeded in making trips across the ice in faster time than any other boats crossing the river could have done under much more favorable circumstances, and has therefore shown herself to be what it was the object to make her, viz., a first class Ice Boat."
Michigan (I) was rebuilt, after removal of her engines and superstructure, into a four-masted tow barge, owned by F. W. Gilchrist of Alpena. She was used in the coal trade, and apparently also carried lumber. She continued to be bedeviled by her weak hull, and had to be loaded and unloaded with great care. Once in the early 1890's she almost broke in two in Chicago while unloading. She was dry-docked for strengthening of her truss rods and returned to service. She foundered September 22, 1893, at Point Sable in Lake Superior.
Upon delivery of the Lansdowne, Transit (I) was laid up at Windsor, along with Saginaw. Transit (I) was reported to be in poor condition in February, 1889. On March 4, 1889, she took fire at the Grand Trunk wharf in Windsor and was totally destroyed. Saginaw met a similar disaster exactly three years later. On March 6, 1892, she burned in Windsor, but was saved and rebuilt as a wrecking steamer for the Isaac Watt Wrecking Company of Windsor. In 1899, she passed into the hands of the Great Lakes Towing Company of Sarnia, and in 1907 she was sold to Edwin A. Booth of Kingston. She spent the rest of her career working out of Kingston, and was reported broken up in 1940.
Until 1899, Lansdowne and Great Western operated the Grand Trunk's Windsor crossing unaided. Lansdowne in these years suffered two major accidents, both of which were collisions with freighters in the river. The first occurred July 15, 1885, less than a year after Lansdowne entered service. At 1:00 A.M., Lansdowne loaded a short passenger train, a baggage car, two coaches and a sleeping car, at the Wabash slip at 18 Street in Detroit and left for Windsor. She was about a third of the way across when Captain Sullivan spotted the port running light of a propeller which proved to be the Clarion of the Anchor Line, downbound for Lake Erie. He assumed the Clarion was turning toward Detroit. Sullivan reported that he blew one blast, indicating that the ships should pass to starboard. Instead, the Clarion responded with two blasts, indicating that she intended to cross Lansdowne's bow and pass to port. Sullivan immediately ordered Lansdowne's wheels reversed, but be had no time to avoid the collision. Clarion rammed his ship just forward of the port wheel. The wheel was put out of commission, but Sullivan was able to bring Lansdowne into her slip at Windsor and unload the train.
In a lawsuit, Clarion was found to have committed a clear violation of the rules of the road in cutting across Lansdowne's bow, and was found wholly at fault.
Lansdowne's second major collision was remarkably similar, although the legal outcome was quite different. A few minutes after midnight, August 6, 1899, Lansdowne loaded 18 freight cars at Windsor for the Wabash Shp in Detroit, about two miles distant. Captain Purdy watched the ferry load from the forward bridge, just above the apron. He blew the signal to cast off, ordered his port engine started, and then went down stairs to the upper deck, where he walked about 270 feet, and then ascended to the aft pilot house. When the ship began to move, no one was in the aft pilot house, although the wheelsman, who also had duties as deckhand during loading, arrived there momentarily. By the time Purdy arrived, the ship had moved out 500 to 600 feet. As he surveyed the river, he saw approaching him a steam barge, the W. B. Morley, proceeding up the river, hugging the Canadian shore to avoid the glare of lights from Detroit. Purdy presumed that the two ships would pass to starboard in the usual fashion, and saw no immediate prospect of collision.
Captain Nicholson of the W. B. Morley later testified that he was unable to distinguish the Lansdowne’s lights from those on the Windsor shore. He said that he could see no running light until the two ships were but a few lengths from one another. He blew two blasts to pass to port. Then, suddenly and almost simultaneously he heard a single blast from the Lansdowne's whistle and saw her port running light. The Detroit River car ferries carry two sets of running lights, and change from one to another as they reverse directions. In the nineteenth century these were kerosene lamps. It was presumed that the Lansdowne’s watchman had neglected to shield the forward and unshield the aft set until the ship was underway. The Lansdowne’s captain argued that he had shown proper running lights from the outset. He also claimed to have blown his signal before the W. B. Morley blew hers. Both ships seem to have blown simultaneously, but it was then too late to avoid a collision. The W. B. Morley reversed her propeller, but the Lansdowne had time only to stop her wheels. The W. B. Morley was traveling about 7 miles per hour and the Lansdowne about 5, but they struck head-on with terrific impact. There was no loss of life or injury, but the W. B. Morley had a large hole, some six feet by four feet, about five feet from her bow on the starboard side. Lansdowne had a hole 14 feet deep in her stern, squarely at her center line. Because the W. B. Morley was working her engines full speed astern at the moment of impact, the two ships came apart immediately. Purdy ordered the Lansdowne forward, back into her Windsor slip. Since she was damaged aft, she made it, even though her stern was settling rapidly.
Captain Nicholson behaved less wisely. He ordered the W. B. Morley full speed ahead for the Detroit shore, hoping to reach a berth or to beach her before she sank. Since she was loaded with 2800 tons of coal destined for Duluth, she did not have much buoyancy. Had Nicholson ordered her to back to shore, she might have made it, but her bow was so badly damaged that forward progress inundated her with water and she sank off Hastings Street in Detroit.
Lansdowne, meanwhile, was in the process of sinking in Windsor. Her aft compartment—she had three—was flooded, and the impact of the collision had knocked some of the cars on deck off the rails, making it impossible to lighten her quickly. When she had settled enough to bring water in through the open deadlights (portholes) in her middle compartment, she took water forward of her aft bulkhead, and was doomed. She sank about 3:00 A.M. in her slip.
Damage to each ship was estimated at more than $15,000. Both were salvaged, in spite of early pessimism about the W. B. Morley. Lansdowne was raised by the former Great Western ferry Saginaw, by 1899 well established in the wrecking trade in Windsor. At first Captain John S. Quinn, in charge of salvage, planned to cover her hole with canvas and pump her out, but he concluded that she would float if he could merely pump out her main compartment. He sent down a diver to close her deadlights, and in ten hours, he had pumped her out and had her afloat. Fortunately her forward compartment had not flooded. She was towed to the Detroit Dry Dock Company for repairs. The Grand Trunk chartered the Canadian Pacific's Michigan (II) to serve until Lansdowne returned to action.
In the ensuing legal action, the Grand Trunk's attorneys argued that the W. B. Morley had been at fault in cutting across Lansdowne's bow in the same fashion as the Clarion. The judge found otherwise, holding that the Lansdowne had been negligent in eight separate respects: failure to ascertain proximity of another vessel before leaving the slip; leaving the berth without a responsible officer in the aft pilot house; having no officer aboard but the captain; having no lookout; failure to carry range lights as prescribed by Canadian regulations; failure to show the port running light until shortly before the collision; failure to sound the passing signal early enough to avoid collision; and failure to lessen speed until the collision was inevitable. He found no contributory negligence on the part of the W. B. Morley, and the Grand Trunk found itself saddled with the entire damages.
On June 14, 1897, the Wabash arranged trackage rights on the Grand Trunk between Detroit and Buffalo, including the right to use the Grand Trunk's ferries. Consequently, traffic increased to the point where two boats were inadequate. The Grand Trunk had laid up both its Sarnia ferries, International (II) and Huron, upon completion of the St. Clair tunnel on September 19, 1891, but there were some impediments to using either at Windsor. First, they had three-track bows, whereas Lansdowne and Great Western had the Great Western Railway's two-track bows. Second, both had deteriorated greatly in lay-up. The Grand Trunk advertised both International (II) and Huron for sale in 1896, but had no immediate success in selling them. In 1898, it sold International (II) to J. H. Walker, treasurer of the Lake Erie & Detroit River Railway. The LE & DR became the Canadian lines of the Pere Marquette, and International (II) became the Pere Marquette's first river ferry. Late in the same year, Huron was taken to Windsor to be thoroughly refurbished, equipped with a switch to her center track and relaid to use a two-track apron. She was then put in service on the Detroit-Windsor ferry.
Not long after beginning service at Windsor, the Huron had the first of two sinkings in her Windsor slip. Because of ice jams to the north, the water was abnormally low. On April 12th, 1901, she struck a boulder in the river, but on inspection in the slip, she was thought to have been undamaged. On a trip two days later, however, she was found to be settling forward in midstream. Taking water rapidly, she barely made Windsor. Switching crews took off her cars with great difficulty. She was so low in the water that the apron was necessarily extremely steep. It was hoped that, relieved of her cargo, she would regain her buoyancy, but she continued to settle and shortly touched bottom forward. Her steam pumps were not equipped to work on her forward compartment, and a hand pump was inadequate. A portable steam pump was brought in for the job, and she was then raised, drydocked and returned to service.
Huron's second trip to the bottom of the Windsor slip had a certain ludicrous quality. On August 20, 1907, she was receiving some repairs to her propellers in the slip. Rather than drydock her, the company simply put two loaded gondolas on her bow to tip up her stern to a point where her screws were out of the water. This is a common practice on the car ferries and is usually carried off without difficulty. Unfortunately, while the Huron lay in this vulnerable position, the great White Star Line excursion steamer Tashmoo steamed past. Tashmoo was notorious for having a big wash, and on this occasion it swept in through some open deadlights on the Huron. The ferry was swamped and sank almost immediately. Again, her deadlights were closed by divers, after which she was pumped out, sent to drydock at Ecorse and returned to service.
Great Western, Huron, and Lansdowne ran together on the ferry until 1923. In 1906, the service ferried an average of 540 cars per day. Cars spent about 30 minutes on shipboard. After the Wabash established its own ferry line in 1912, two boats were usually enough for the service, and Great Western, which could handle only twelve cars, as compared with the Lansdowne’s sixteen, served mainly as spare boat. Consequently, Great Western was sold on December 3, 1923, to the Essex Transit Company of Ford, Ontario. After several years of hauling sand and gravel in the Windsor area, she was sold to the United Towing & Salvage Company of Port Arthur. In 1957, after 90 years of service, she was taken from the lakehead to the St. Lawrence River for use in construction of the St. Lawrence seaway.
Since 1923, Lansdowne has served as regular boat on the Canadian National's Windsor-Detroit ferry, with Huron as spare. Huron operates only during the warmer months, and spends the winter generating steam for heating the CNR's yard office and cars waiting to be pulled out of Windsor on CNR passenger trains. On September 25, 1955, the CNR discontinued passenger service over the ferry line, substituting a bus through the Detroit-Windsor tunnel. Freight service continues. Much of the freight has been in cars too large for the St. Clair tunnel, but recent easing of clearances in the tunnel has reduced this traffic. Currently, the ferry operates five days per week, but is idle on week-ends.
On several occasions, the CNR has foregone the opportunity to buy newer ships than either the Lansdowne or Huron. None of the ferries of other companies at Detroit would fit the Brush Street slip without considerable alternation to the pilings and apron. The life expectancy of a 77-year-old paddler with 88-year-old engines and an 86-year-old propeller cannot be great, but the CNR has maintained both steamers very well and they may go on for several years. Lansdowne's independently driven wheels make her extremely maneuverable, fitting her well for changing course between Windsor and Brush Street. As one might expect of a ship operating on 65 pounds pressure, she is quite economical. She is still considered a good ice-breaker.
Since both Huron and Lansdowne have iron hulls, they have passed their hull inspections without difficulty. Huron has been the oldest active steamer on the Great Lakes for many years, and Lansdowne has become the last paddler. Indeed, Lansdowne has survived long enough to be one of the last half-dozen sidewheelers in North American registry, and may yet outlast all the rest.
MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD
In 1873, six years after the Great Western Railway brought car ferriage to the Detroit River, a predecessor of the Michigan Central Railroad initiated what was to be the most extensive of all the river ferry services. The company was the Canada Southern Railway, which was being built by the Vanderbilt interests as an effort to establish a direct line from Suspension Bridge, at Niagara Falls, to Chicago. The financial panic of 1873 caused the line to terminate at Fayette, Ohio, about one hundred miles southwest of Detroit. Its crossing of the Detroit River was constructed by a subsidiary, optimistically named the Canada Southern Bridge Company, organized in 1873. The Bridge Company's line ran east from Slocum junction, near Trenton, Michigan, across a fourspan bridge over the west channel of the Detroit River to Grosse Ile, thence over a second bridge to Stony Island, on which a ferry slip was built. The opposite slip was built at Gordon, Ontario, 1.2 miles north of Amherstburg. The Canada Southern Bridge Company never bridged the main channel of the Detroit River, but operated for 15 years with car ferries.
The company's first car ferry was a wooden side-wheeler, Transfer (I), built at Walkerville by Henry Jenking in the same year as the Great Western's Michigan (I). The ship was slightly smaller than the Michigan (I), but she had three tracks and a capacity of 21 cars. She is reported to have had arch frames. The railway hoped to have her in service by January 1, 1873, but she was not ready for launching until May 14. She was sponsored jointly by four young ladies, Bella, Lilly and Eliza Jenking and Ella Caldwell. Together they released a bottle of wine suspended from the deck of the ferry and christened her. The ship was said to be a great source of pride to Jenking, who had designed her as well as supervised construction.
The Transfer (I) was 244 long overall, and 75 feet wide over the guards. She had pilot houses fore and aft, and rudders at both ends of the hull. She had metal sheathing of 1/8" to 3/16" where she was exposed to the ice. She made her trial run in June, 1873, and entered service toward the end of July.
Within a year and a half, the Transfer (I) encountered the worst winter in local history. February, 1875, is the coldest month in the recorded history of the Detroit weather bureau, which has data reaching back to 1871. The other winter months were nearly as severe. By the middle of January, the Canada Southern was unable to maintain the ferry schedule, and had to route livestock via the Great Western crossing at Sarnia. Toward the end of the month, the company tried blasting the ice with gunpowder and nitroglycerine. In February, the ferry broke a rudder in the ice, and in an effort to return to Stony Island, where she was maintained, she became fast in heavy pack ice. There she remained for two weeks, while freight was either drawn across on sleighs or sent via Sarnia. A relief ferry, believed to have been the Great Western's Michigan (I), came down the river to try to maintain service, but she failed to do so. The railway, badly disorganized by the interruption in service, considered tunneling the river, but such a project was too advanced for the times.
Traffic was growing steadily. By January, 1878, the Transfer (I) was averaging 35 trips per day, carrying both passenger and freight trains. In April, 1878, a telephone cable was laid under the river to aid in dispatching the ferry.
In 1880, the railway brought out a second ferry, the Transport built by the Detroit Dry Dock Company at Wyandotte. She was a larger boat than her predecessor, and had an iron hull. She was most unusual in her engines. The typical Great Lakes or coastal side-wheeler of the time was propelled by a vertical single-cylinder beam engine, which was both simple and economical. Such an engine was impracticable in a car ferry because the main shaft would have fouled the car deck.iii In addition, as in the case of the Lansdowne, independently driven wheels were a source of quick maneuverability, a prime desideratum in a car ferry. Accordingly, most designers of car ferries followed the custom of the western rivers and used independent horizontal engines on the guards. On the Transport, however, the engines were put in the hull, and connected to the wheels by gears. The ship proved successful and served on the Detroit River for more than a half century.
A second slip had been built on the Ontario side when Transport appeared in 1880, but the Amherstburg crossing suffered from a geographical handicap. The direct route to Chicago of which it was to be a part had never been completed, and it was some 16 miles below the center of population in Detroit and Windsor. The Grand Trunk's absorption of the Great Western in 1882 put the Canada Southern at a competitive disadvantage by bringing its principal rival into Windsor. As if to demonstrate the operating handicaps at Amherstburg, Transfer (I) went aground for a full day at Stony Island in August, 1882. The Canada Southern Railway in 1882 and 1883 built a line from Essex to Windsor to provide a connection with the Michigan Central at Detroit. In 1883, the Canada Southern was absorbed by the Michigan Central, and on December 31, 1883, the Michigan Central opened a ferry crossing between Detroit and Windsor. Slips were placed at the foot of 9th Street, Detroit, and Cameron Street in Windsor. This became the company's principal crossing, and Amherstburg was used mainly (or only) when ice interfered with operations at Windsor.
The new arrangement created a great increase in traffic, and in 1884, the company took delivery of a new iron ferry, similar to the Transport, Michigan Central. The new boat was also built by Detroit Dry Dock at Wyandotte. All of the Michigan Central ferries had three tracks.
In 1888, the Transfer (I) was condemned as unseaworthy and the Michigan Central closed the Amherstburg crossing permanently. In the same year the railroad placed in service a new car ferry of the same name, Transfer (II). The new ship was built and engined by the Cleveland Ship Building Company. She had the first steel hull among Great Lakes car ferries. She was one of the few ships ever propelled with both paddle wheels and a screw; the great Victorian Atlantic liner Great Eastern is the principle example of such propulsion. Transfer (II) had 27'-6" wheels, weighing 66 tons each. Each was driven by two 28" x 48" cylinders in the hull through a 16-foot cog wheel, in the same fashion as on the Transport, In addition, Transfer (II) had a 9'-6" propeller at the stern, driven by a pair of 28" x 36" cylinders acting on a shaft 10 inches in diameter and 52 feet long. The shaft was slightly inclined so that the screw projected about a foot below the hull, where it was protected by a cast iron guard, part of the rudder housing. The reason for this odd arrangement was the nature of the ice-breaking required at Detroit. The ice in the Detroit River is typically pack ice against which the usual method of ice breaking, bringing the bow forward on the sheet ice until the weight of the ship breaks the ice, is inappropriate. Since the Detroit River car ferries spend about half their passages backing, the propeller on Transfer (II) was useful in breaking up pack ice and opening a channel. It was difficult to coordinate the propeller with the wheels while berthing, however, and normally the ship used only her wheels approaching the slip.
Transfer (II) had ample opportunity to demonstrate her ice-breaking talents on her maiden voyage. She steamed from Cleveland to Detroit under her own power, January 13, 1889, making the trip in 11 hours and 12 minutes, even though she had to run through about 50 miles of sheet ice, four to six inches thick. She had a speed of 12 miles per hour in open water and 10 miles per hour in sheet ice. She was equipped with ten intakes at various points about her hull because of the difficulty of taking boiler water in heavy ice. On her voyage to Detroit she was commanded by the commodore of the Michigan Central fleet, J. R. Innes, assisted by Captain McLaughlin of the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Company's City of Cleveland.
Paddlers had three distinct advantages in car ferry service: they could be built for shallower drafts than propellers, they were more maneuverable in thin ice, and their wheels were particularly effective in keeping the slips free of ice. Transfer (II) was a success, and the company considered building a similar ferry driven by side-wheels and a screw early in the twentieth century, when traffic had become too heavy for the three ships. The increased size and weight of railroad freight cars, naval architects believed, demanded hulls of broader beam than the older ferries. Because of the wide overhang of the guards on a paddler, no wider side-wheeler could he built than the boats in service, unless the slips were to be rebuilt. Since the railroad was unwilling to build a new slip, or widen one of the old, it resolved upon building a propeller of a new design. The new ship, Detroit, was built by the Great Lakes Engineering Works at Ecorse, Michigan, in 1904 along the lines of the Pere Marquette 14, built by the Detroit Ship Building Company at Wyandotte a few months earlier.
Detroit was equipped with four screws, a pair forward and a pair aft. She has rudders fore and aft, as well, but she is not otherwise double-ended; she is loaded only from the bow and has only a single pilot house. All Detroit River car ferries are built to have equal visibility fore and aft from the bridge, however. All four of the Detroit's screws are used for running in both directions, and the forward propellers are particularly useful for breaking pack ice. Unlike Pere Marquette 14, which had propeller shafts running the length of the ship, Detroit was equipped with separate shafts and engines for each screw. Although all of the ferry slips were set so that the ships come upstream into them—indeed, the current in the Detroit River is so strong that no other arrangement is practical—there are frequently packs of ice in the slips that make entry difficult. Either of the rudders can be pinned in place for movements into ice packs.