Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Adz, Caulk, and Rivets: A History of Ship Building along Ohio's Northern Shore, 1963, 2017, p. 47

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The Empire was later converted to a propeller and lost on Long Point, Lake Erie, in 1870. In 1845 Jones brought out the propeller Phoenix. When she was nearly ready for service, Captain Jones generously offered her services for a benefit excursion of the Phoenix Fire Engine Company No. 4, of Cleveland. Said "Observer:" In one respect the Phoenix differs from all the propellers I have ever seen. Her engine is placed mid-ships or nearly so, and she has two freight holds, one aft and one forward. She has one engine, a 20 foot boiler with two furnaces, each five by three feet, 34 main flues 15 feet long and nine inches in diameter. On the trip yesterday, her machinery being stiff and new, she made the downward passage somewhat slow. She came up in three hours and 15 or 20 minutes. I am of the opinion she can easily and regularly run ten miles per hour; indeed she did yesterday make the first ten miles within that time-making about 60 revolutions to the minute - whereas the average number is about 54. She is with all a most splendid sea boat.49 Just twenty-eight months later, on November 2, 1847, one of the fine twenty foot boilers overheated, setting some fuel wood stacked near it on fire when about 15 miles above Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on Lake Michigan. The Phoenix Fire Engine Company No. 4 was too far away to save 190 of the 250 Dutch immigrants who died. Between 1846 and 1854, the Joneses built several vessels, but for some unknown reason, in 1855 they moved their shipyard to a new location between Snell's Slaughterhouse and the lower railroad bridge, on the west side of the river. This would place the yard today just upstream and across the river from the Bourne-Fuller Division of the Republic Steel Corporation on Scranton Road. The first vessel to come from this yard was the ill-fated propeller Jersey City, built at a cost of $37,000. She was lost with her entire crew, nineteen lives, in a terrible storm off Long Point, Lake Erie, in November 1860. That same year, at the launching of the Jones-built schooner Gertrude, it was predicted that …the day is not far distant when Cleveland will build ships to sail across the ocean, and extensive as her commerce now is, it is but in its infancy compared to what the future bids fair to come.50 In 1856 and 1857 the Jones yard launched a few schooners, the last being the Tracy J. Bronson and Belle Wallbridge in 1857. Then suddenly, the Joneses apparently moved their interests back to Black River. 34

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