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- 240 - Telescope The trials of CITY OF CLEVELAND had been a long time in coming. In late summer of 1878 David Carter, manager of the Cleveland line, journeyed to Lake Champlain to examine an engine offered for sale. Accompanying him to give advice was the young Frank E. Kirby, designer of the new CITY OF DETROIT which had joined the line that Spring. Kirby's career was still ahead of him; for forty-six years he would continue to design all ships built for the Detroit and Cleveland Line. On this occasion the engine in question was a vertical beam engine with a cylinder fifty inches in diameter and a stroke of eleven feet, belonging to the idle steamer UNITED STATES of the Champlain Transportation Company. The engine had a handsome pedigree, having been built by the predecessors of Fletcher, Harrison & Co., then considered the foremost builders of "walking beam" engines. Fletcher engines propelled many of the great sidewheelers of Long Island Sound and the Hudson River. The engine having been acquired, by the end of the year 1878 plans were well along for a steamer to use it. An iron hull had been chosen instead of a "composite" hull (with iron frames and wood planking, as found in the hull of CITY OF DETROIT) . Delay in starting construction was blamed on bad weather and tardy delivery of iron to the Wyandotte iron shipyard of the Detroit Dry Dock Company. But even by springtime the hull was barely in frame. Shipyard priority was given to the iron excursion steamer GRACE McMILIAN, whose keel was laid on February 12th, and she was in service by June 18th. Not until August 1st was the last plate riveted upon the hull of CITY OF CLEVELAND, and not until late December was she launched, almost a full year after construction began. But if CITY OF CLEVELAND was built slowly, the public knew little reason why the Cleveland line should build her at all. Upon the Detroit-Cleveland run CITY OF DETROIT had a dependable consort, the wooden steamer NORTHWEST of 1867, whose hull had been thoroughly rebuilt in 1875. One rumor said that CITY OF CLEVELAND would run up Lake Huron from Detroit to the Straits of Mackinac, with a second, smaller iron sidewheeler to be built shortly. But the steamers ST. PAUL and MARINE CITY already held down this run, and their owners promised a good fight. Another rumor held that CITY OF CLEVELAND would be chartered to the Detroit, Grand Haven & Milwaukee Railroad for day service across Lake Michigan to meet Detroit trains (in 1881 this run received the Wyandotte-built CITY OF MILWAUKEE, a ship rather similar to CITY OF CLEVELAND in appearance). But the most plausible rumor seemed to be that CITY OF CLEVELAND would form part of a new line from Detroit and Cleveland to Lake Superior. In the spring of 1878 the old Ward's Lake Superior Line had been disbanded, leaving only the Lake Superior Transit Company from Buffalo and another line from Chicago. Lake Superior Transit Company was a pool formed by the Erie, Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroad lake fleets. Detroit merchants complained that this line favored Buffalo and Eastern merchants and did not run as early or late in the season as did the Chicago ships. Several Detroit-owned Lake Superior lines were proposed in the wake of the