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Telescope - 243 - Kirby pointed out, CITY OF CLEVELAND's 23-foot-diameter feathering wheels gave her the same results as would radial wheels forty-five feet in diameter. This also meant less weight topside, which is important for stability, and that much less for the engine to turn. About six-thirty in the evening CITY OF CLEVELAND departed upon her trial trip. First she started upriver past the Canadian side of Belle Isle, and then turned around to come down past the American side. The City of Detroit had just purchased Belle Isle for a park the previous June, so there was no Belle Isle Bridge in her way. As she approached downtown Detroit, her speed was checked down to conserve steam. But by the time she passed the foot of Woodward Avenue she was "opened out" again. For a brief time she was making thirty-four-and-a-haIf revolutions per minute with forty-one pounds per square inch of steam pressure supplied to her engine. All this was recorded by a small group congregated in the engine room where interest in the trial was centered. CITY OF CLEVELAND was now upon a measured run downriver to Grassy Island Light, a standard speed trial course for new ships. Naturally, her boilers couldn't supply enough steam to sustain her initial speed, and her engine slowed down to 28% revolutions on 26% pounds of steam. Kirby was quick with figures and estimated that at 32 revolutions, with 20 per cent slip of her wheels in the water, she should make 19 miles per hour. From Woodward Avenue she ran about 7.3 miles to Grassy Island Light in 26% minutes. Perhaps now it was time for a return run upstream against the current, to get an average for the results of both runs. But in another sense the trials of CITY OF CLEVELAND were not yet over. In coming about below Grassy Island Light at 7:35 p.m. she made too wide a swing and found herself hard aground off Fighting Island on the Canadian side of the river, six inches out of water on her starboard side. With all the power her engine could muster, her thrashing wheels would not budge her. It was soon obvious that she could not help herself, so a small boat put out for Wyandotte on the opposite shore to get help. Telephone communication from Detroit to Wyandotte had been established just the previous summer. Answering the call for assistance, NORTHWEST arrived from Detroit some minutes after nine o'clock. NORTHWEST was not much help. She tugged upon CITY OF CLEVELAND, but succeeded only in breaking some of her new lines. And before long NORTHWEST was also aground. NORTHWEST managed to get herself off, however, and decided that she had had enough. Well after midnight she churned back upriver toward Detroit. Ladies and gentlemen of the trial party peered wistfully after her from the decks of CITY OF CLEVELAND, and then wearily resigned themselves to spending as comfortable a night as possible upon their new island resort. Another party ventured across to Wyandotte in another boat to telephone Detroit again, but the Detroit telephone office was shut down for the night. Finally, in the early morning, the Canadian tug PRINCE ALFRED came down from Windsor, and in short order CITY OF CLEVELAND was free. As one observer later wrote, "thus ended one of the most trying trial trips on record."