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24 Telescope IRON MERCHANT SHIPS: AN UPPER LAKES CENTENNIAL PART ONE By Gordon P. Bugbee This summer will mark the passing of a century since the first iron merchant ship was built for commercial purposes to sail upon the upper Great Lakes. In August of 1862 the iron screw steamer MERCHANT cleared Buffalo for Chicago upon her first voyage. The 894-ton propeller had been built by David Beilina Buffalo shipyard from frames fabricated nearby in Black Rock. The 190-foot ship was built to carry passengers and package freight in the services of James C. and Edwin T. Evans of Buffalo. In the remainder of the sixties, Buffalo shipyards built a number of small iron vessels of three hundred tons or less. The far-seeing Evans family commissioned David Bell in 1868 to build one large vessel, the 1,464-ton propeller PHILADELPHIA. By this time the Evans family had formed the Erie and Western Transportation Company commonly known as the "Anchor Line"--on behalf of a predecessor of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1871 the Anchor Line brought out the three famous iron passenger and package freight propellers INDIA, CHINA and JAPAN, and the iron package freighter AIASKA, all built at Buffalo. The New York Central Railroad affiliate, the Western Transportation Company, ordered the iron package freighter ARABIA at the same time. The four twin-screw iron package freighters CUBA, JAVA, RUSSIA and SCOTIA were built in 1872 for Holt and Ensign's Commercial Line. 3n this way Buffalo shipbuilders and Buffalo shipowners came to dominate the iron merchant ships of United States registry within the decade which followed the MERCHANT experiment. Now, centennials are arbitrary but well-meaning reminders of past events which might not otherwise come to mind. What is most noticeable about this iron merchant ship "centennial", however, is that it has had no occasion to be celebrated some years ago. If longevity was an appealing argument for iron ships, the United States gunboat MICHIGAN amply demonstrated this, as well as the more fundamental consideration that iron ships DO float. U.S.S. MICHIGAN was completed in 1844 at Erie, Pennsylvania, from plates fabricated at Pittsburgh. When MERCHANT was built, U.S.S. MICHIGAN was already eighteen years old, an aged ship by the standards of wood construe-