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Ship of the Month - cont'd. 8. The tall and heavy fidded foremast was stepped at the break of the fore castle. It was heavily raked and was equipped with ratlines, gaff and boom, because steamers like the MORLEY carried auxiliary sail to augment the engine power or for emergency use. The topmast was relatively light but suf ficed because no topsail was set. There was a "doghouse", pro v i d i n g a dditional crew ac commodation, about h a l f way d own the spar deck, and the lifeboats also were carr i e d right on deck in the ear ly years, alth ou gh later they w ere re lo cated atop the af ter cabin. Photos would seem to show that there were seven large cargo hatches. Aft, there was a large, metal-clad boilerhouse, out of which the twin smoke stacks rose, and behind it the big, wooden after cabin containing the en gineers' quarters, galley and messrooms, with a large clerestory overhead to admit light. The boat deck overhung the entire cabin and the fantail, and the short and rather light mainmast rose out of the aft section of the deck house. The coal bunker was located in the forward end of the boilerhouse, but such large amounts of coal had to be carried that piles of it were stacked on the spar deck forward of the boilerhouse, the coal being shovel led down the bunker hatch as space permitted. We cannot say what colours W I L L I A M B. M O R L E Y carri ed w h e n she was completed, nor do we have any i n f o r m a t i o n about her operation. The fact that she was named as she was and was built by M o r l e y and Hill w o u l d seem to indicate that the sh i pyard built her on speculation, witho ut a contract, hoping to sell her to one of the ma ny lake shipping fleets. The yar d may a c t u a l l y have o p e rated the steamer to its own order for a while, or put her out on b a r e boat charter to anothe r operator, but we cannot be certain. What we do know is that by 1890, WILLIAM B. MORLEY had become part of the once-famous Corrigan Fleet of Cleveland, a concern of which many of today's shipping observers will never have heard. This fleet had its beginning back in 1872, when Captains James and John Corrigan acquired their first lake schooner. That same year, they became interested in the oil business, and eventually they operated a number of refineries, which they later sold to the Standard Oil Company. By the mid-1880s, the Corrigans were interested in the Lake Superior iron mining business and to complement their mining and shipping interests, they invested in at least three furnace companies which smelted iron ore. By the early 1900s, the Corrigans had reorganized their various interests as Corrigan, McKinney & Company, and this firm survived for many years. The lake shipping fleet, however, did not. The Corrigan fleet truly was a "transitional" operation, comprised mainly of old wooden steamers from the Nineteenth Century, the one concession to modern times being that several of these old steamers towed large, steel-hulled consort barges. There were four of these big new barges in the fleet, the 352-foot AURANIA which was built in 1895, and the 375-foot AMAZON, AUSTRALIA and POLYNESIA which were built in 1897. All four of these barges were later rebuilt as steamships, and although AURANIA was lost in 1909, the others enjoyed long careers. The Corrigan Fleet, however, did not survive as long as many of its ships. Many of the wooden hulls were lost or sold off in the new century, and by 1915, with the remaining wooden boats becoming obsolete, the steel ships were sold to Hutchinson and Company, of Cleveland. As far as we are aware, no recognizable remnants of the Corrigan Fleet are to be found anywhere on the surface of the Great Lakes today. WILLIAM B. MORLEY apparently joined the Corrigan Fleet early in her life and by 1890 she was renamed (b) CALEDONIA. She wore the traditional, if somewhat unimaginative Corrigan livery, with a black hull, black stacks, and dark red-brown deckhouses that later became white. (The operators of most w o oden hulled lake freighters were not known for the variety or creativity of the way in which their ships were p ai nted. ) For as long as the Corrigan fleet ran CALEDONIA, her registered owner was James Corrigan, of Cleveland.