Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Scanner, v. 31, no. 4 (January 1999), p. 7

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7. Ship of the Month - cont'd. was not built with arches to support her spar deck but rather had stanchions in her holds. This made mechanical unloading a difficult proposition. The WALDO was powered by a triple expansion engine built for her by the Wheeler shipyard. It had cylinders of 23, 37 1/2 and 63 inches diameter and a stroke of 44 inches. This machinery developed 1, 800 Indicated Horsepower at 88 revolutions per minute. Steam at a working pressure of 170 p. s. i. was de­ livered by two single-ended, coal-fired Scotch boilers, each of which was 15'0" in diameter and 12'0" in length. There were six furnaces in total, with 120 square feet of grate surface and 6, 304 square feet of heating sur­ face. The boilers were manufactured in 1896 by Wickes Bros., of Saginaw. L. C. WALDO was a handsome steamer, with a half-topgallant (sunken) fore­ castle, a flush quarterdeck, and quite a prominent sheer to her decks. Her hull plating was protected by heavy rub-rails running along her sides. Her anchors were suspended from hawseholes (there were no pockets to house them) and were carried fairly high above the loaded waterline. The stem was straight, and the finely-cut counter stern added grace to the ship's lines. On the forecastle head, behind a protective closed rail which ran for most of the length of the foredeck, was set the WALDO's turret-style pilothouse, which had seven windows in its face and a door on each side. Aft of this was the texas cabin, containing the master's office and quarters. Atop the pi­ lothouse, on the monkey's island, was the open navigation bridge. It was somewhat sheltered from the elements by a closed wooden dodger and by a canvas weathercloth which could be raised above the dodger. An awning was hoisted overhead on hot summer days. The tall and well-raked foremast rose out of the texas, and at the stem there was a vertical steering pole equipped with a decoratively-painted ball. Stretcher poles were provided so that an awning could also be hoisted over the entire open area of the fore­ castle head in warm weather. There was an open post-and-wire rail down the sides of the spar deck, which gave way to a closed steel taffrail which protected the after cabin and ran all around the fantail. The aft cabin consisted of a slightly indented steel boilerhouse, abaft of which was a wooden deckhouse with windows in its sides. This house contained the chief engineer's quarters, as well as the officers' and crew's messrooms and the galley. A lifeboat was set on the overhang of the boat deck above on either side of the cabin, the boats being worked with radial steel davits. The tall and very heavy funnel, raked to match the masts, rose out of the boilerhouse and had a prominent apron around its base, with a large ventilator cowl set to either side. The main­ mast rose close abaft the smokestack, and there was a very tall jackstaff set right aft. We never have read a description of the WALDO's colours, but we think that we can guess them fairly accurately from good photographs. The hull and forecastle were black, and the boot-top, which came up almost as high as the anchors at the stem, was reddish-orange. The cabins were white and the smokestack was all black. The ship's name was painted in white letters on the forecastle rail (with the then-fashionable but unnecessary period after the name), while centred beneath it was a white-outlined triangle, point up­ ward, which contained a large, white letter 'R '. 'Roby Trans. C o . ' appeared in white letters beneath the triangle. (The company name was dropped from beneath the triangle sometime after 1905. ) In due course of time, the L. C. WALDO was completed by the Wheeler yard and was placed in commission. Unfortunately, it did not take her long to get in­ to trouble, and during May of 1896, she was in collision on the St. Mary's River with the 1892-built "straightback" steamer CHOCTAW, owned by the Lake Superior Iron Company. We have not been able to discover any details of the circumstances of the accident, but it must have been of fairly severe conse­ quences to have been reported.

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