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-67- The Michigan and Ohio Car Ferry Company DETROIT RIVER « ROUGE ESSEX AMHERSTBURG • KINGSViy& TOLEDO By George W. Hilton The one total failure among Great Lakes car ferry enterprises was the Michigan and Ohio Car Ferry Company, which was operated between Sandusky and Detroit during the seasons of 1897 and 1898. This company was conceived and directed by Edward H. Moreton of Detroit. As head of the Moreton Truck and Storage Company, Moreton and his firm carried on most of the local drayage for the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Company and the Michigan Central Railroad. The Michigan and Ohio Car Ferry Company maintained its offices at the address of the drayage firm, and was apparently integral with it. Moreton's company proved to be such an utter failure that it is tempting to argue that it was foolishly conceived and doomed from the outset. Actually, the project was quite sensible, and with somewhat better implementation it might well have succeeded. Moreton's intention was to break the New York Central System's virtual monopoly upon freight movements into Detroit from the South. In 1897, neither the Pennsylvania nor the Baltimore & Ohio had reached Detroit; nor had the Nickel Plate gained its entrance over the Detroit & Toledo Shore Line. Moreton's first plan was to establish a tug-and-barge operation, modelled closely upon the Lake Michigan Car Ferry Transportation Company, to haul coal from Toledo to Detroit. He abandoned this idea when he encountered considerable railroad hostility. He concluded that the Hocking Valley and the Wheeling and Lake Erie, with which he planned to connect, were too closely allied to the New York Central, and he decided to look elsewhere. At this time the B & 0 was in receivership and suffering from inadequate earnings. Moreton correctly deduced that the B & 0 would be eager to gain an additional outlet for its coal traffic, and in September, 1897, he signed a contract with the receivers to establish car ferry service to Detroit from Sandusky, the B & 0's coal port. In these years the B & 0 routed a considerable amount of break-bulk freight from Sandusky to Detroit over the steamers of the Ashley and Dustin Line. Moreton conceived of various physical arrangements for his service. In order to get the service under way quickly, he arranged to establish a tug-and-barge operation. From Captain James Davidson of West Bay City, Michigan, Moreton chartered a pair of barges -- MIKADO and TYCOON--which Davidson had built in 1895. They had been