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-46- Telescope IRON MERCHANT SHIPS: AN UPPER LAKES CENTENNIAL PART TWO By Gordon P. Bugbee Great Lakes shipowners found the depression years after 1873 quite unlike any they had known before. Cargoes were plentiful. But ships were even more plentiful. In the competition, freight rates plummeted until few ships could show a profit. Vessel men ruefully agreed that they had overexpanded their fleets in the good years. There was nothing to do but to let storms and dry rot take their toll of wooden hulls, until supply and demand might become favorable once again. Nobody thought of building any large hulls, let alone iron ones. Iron shipbuilding had to seek its laurels upon a much more subdued scale. One June morning in 1875, a sleek steam yacht named MYRTLE turned up at Toledo, eager to show off her speed. Mischievously she ran after the plodding sidewheeler CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE and overtook it, unsportingly spinning several circles around the big paddler before steaming home again to Wyandotte, Michigan. MYRTLE'S seventy-foot hull had only eight feet of beam, which gave her advantage enough. But MYRTLE was also demonstrating what was known as a "composite" hull--one having the complete iron framework of a metal hull, but having a sheathing of wood planking instead of iron plates. These relatively light hulls drew less water than comparable ones of wood, contributing to their speed. MYRTLE'S lesson may have impressed the Detroit & Cleveland line, for in 1877 the line chose to replace its burnt sidewheeler R.N. RICE with a composite ship of the RICE's dimensions, using the RICE's engine. That composite hulls were a compromise in cost between wood and metal must obviously have influenced the choice. At Wyandotte the Kirbys produced this ship, the first CITY OF DETROIT (see this issue, page 57). On her first trip to Cleveland, CITY OF DETROIT covered the 112-mile course from Detroit in six hours and six minutes, trimming thirty-five minutes from the best time ever shown by the RICE on this route. When wooden ships were built once again, they quickly adopted some of the benefits of iron. Some wooden ferries had bows strengthened for working in ice. In the autumn they might be dry-docked to have their bottoms sheathed in iron for the winter's work. Most large new wooden hulls had diagonal iron straps which braced the