The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Telescope 25 tion. U.S.S. MICHIGAN was still in sound condition then, and lake observers predicted a long life still ahead for her. But even the most optimistic among them could not know that the gunboat would remain afloat far more than a century, finally being broken up after World War II at Erie. From the forties also date a number of iron revenue cutters and other United States government vessels of a smaller size. On Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, the British built several armed vessels from frames and plates fabricated in Great Britain. Of similar origin were some of the iron vessels which Canadian entrepreneurs built far merchant service upon those waters. The Kingston-built PASSPORT of 1846 later became CASPIAN and was dismantled at Sorel only in 1922. The longest career of all went to the Montreal-built RICHELIEU of 1845, which went out of service as the ferry BEAUHARNOIS in late 1954, and whose hull may still survive landlocked for a stillborn restaurant venture near Valleyfield, Quebec. For the upper lakes, Canadian railroads contracted for a number of iron river car ferries in the sixties and seventies. The iron ferry GREAT WESTERN of 1866 may still exist as a laid-up barge at Sorel, while the iron ferry HURON of 1875 still operates at Detroit, probably the oldest self-propelled lake vessel running. By contrast, the useful life expectancy of a wooden hull was about ten years. After this time, major hull repairs could be anticipated from year to year, so that replacement of the whole hull might be less costly in the long run. Engines frequently lasted longer than the wooden steamers for which they were built. A classic example was the beam engine of the sidewheeler CANADA of 1846, which the Wards of Newport successively placed in their own CASPIAN, E. K. COLLINS and PIANET before it ended its life in the Goodrich steamer NORTHWEST in 1876. Long wooden hulls had to be strengthened by metal chains or cables anchored at their sagging bow and stern and draped tautly over arched "hogging" frames. These frames produced great wooden sidewheelers such as the 350-foot WESTERN WORLD of 1854. But the vibration of single-cylinder steam engines of wooden