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SS ast ee, A view of SIR HE Ea ER Se NRY BESSEMER, from a Pesha postcard. TELESCOPE Page 41 - McDONALD Coll./DOSSIN MUSEUM such a ship as a "wild boat." If ore ships were Rockefeller's best promise of future profits, they has been a business dismally like the oil wells of old. No monopoly in ore ships seemed possible, for there were many shipowners, each with per- haps only one or two bulk freighters or schooners. When ships were too numerous for the cargoes offered, all shipowners suffered together from low rates. Among river tugs and until 1892 in Lake Superior package freighters, shipowners had pooled ships and shared revenues and had paid smaller ships to lay up in the slack times. But no such remedy was at hand for ore ships, and the newly formed Lake Carriers Association did not seem intended for such a role. In 1896 there was an obituary for H. J. Webb of Cleveland. Forty years before, Mr. Webb had pioneered in the business of vessel brokerage. Mr. Webb managed ships for their owners, dispatching the ships and finding cargces to keep them busy. In time, Webb's business became the common pattern of managing lake ships. Some shipowners operated their own large fleets, like Alva Bradley of Cleveland whose ships served the Marquette Range from the 1850s, but these were unusual. On his death, Webb's firm passed to his panther, Wo Co Richardson, and it comes down to us as the maroon-and- pink Columbia freighters today. Another obituary of 1896 was for Captain Elihu M. Peck, also from Cleveland. In 1870 Captain Peck had built the prototype of ore carrying steamers, R. J. Hackett, which was first with the silhouette common to lake freighters until recent years. Demturst ore carrier built of tron was Brunswick, built at Wyandotte in LoS eandaetost. oy. Collis one tina: fall. At Cleveland the Globe Iron Works brought out the "monster iron floating warehouse" Onoko the next spring and retrieved the cause of iron bulk freighters. In 1886 Globe JOM TINS slieGio SUES Cewerie) lows ship, the Spokane. Steel hulls cost much more than most vesselmen could afford. In the late 1880s began the slow process of gathering such steel freighters into large fleets. Some shipowners like Captain Thomas Wilson sold stock or bonds to finance each new steel ship; by 1896 three steel ships had joined the wooden ones in the Wilson fleet. More often, the iron mining and ore marketing firms built the