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Sparrows Point and Cliffs Victory, and con- verted the attractive J.A.W. Iglehart, in addition to performing repairs, inspections and improvements on many of the Lakes fleet. Across the river from the yard once stood an open-end mill-type building, obviously equipped with an overhead crane and lettered "Lehigh" on the gable end which faced the river. It has fascinated me these many years, and only when I learn of its use and dis- position will that obsession be removed. Nearer the river mouth, the Calumet Ship Yard and Dry Dock Company operated along a slip adjacent to 95th Street. It performed the alterations on the sand sucker Gilbert, long familiar to workers in downtown Chicago. It also produced the small package freighter Glenshore, in service on the Michigan side of our lake. The company folded quietly after 1957. Rail-to-Water Transfer Corporation trans- ships Illinois and Kentucky coal, unloaded railroad hopper cars through its dumping machinery, into lake vessels for movement to Wisconsin, Michigan and other power- plants sites. Joseph H. Frantz, long a star performer on runs to Oak Ridge and Port Washington, south and north of Milwaukee, still call in the Calumet. At times it was joined by the old Crispin Oglebay and the stentorian W.W. Holloway. Attractive McKee Sons frequently took trans-lake hauls. Salties sometimes load kaolin here, a process so dusty that it's performed only on dark nights. Thruster-equipped lakers entering the Calumet to load at Rail-to-Water usually go astern from the harbor to the loading plant, a slow-motion procedure. A tug takes a stern cable from the vessel, supplying a bit of extra muscle and more importantly, steering the boat! With no quickwater on the rudder, a backing vessel can exert little lever- age, and when a single screw is a right-hand wheel, backing to port is at least difficult. (Operators of small boats can testify that it's usually impossible.) With the tug handling the stern, the bow thruster keeps the sharp end of the laker in the chosen path. Outward bound, the vessel usually needs no tug. The rudder is effective when going ahead, the thruster is on tap and, in a pinch, an anchor can be dropped to pin the bow while the stern goes around. Early in the century, the ill-starred Lake Michigan Car Ferry Transportation Company ran from an indentation in the north bank MAY x JUN, 1985 Page 61 of the Calumet between 92nd Street bridge and the E J E Railway bridge. Traces of this rudimentary slip appear in an aerial photo- graph of 1936 vintage, and its was still re- presented on a chart I purchased in the 1960's, even though by that time it had been filled. The Rock Island Railroad had switched the ferry landing. The company failed after three of its impractical car-ferry barges were lost in violent Lake Michigan weather, and its attempt to operate with Pere Marquette 16 also came to grief. Bulk cargo represented the greater part of lake traffic in the Calumet area, but such crane boats as Clifford Hood and G.G. Post appeared at times. One riverside industry, Ford Motor Company, had plans which ap- parently didn't mature. Its Chicago Assembly Plant lies south of the river at Torrence Ave- nue. By the late 1920's, Ford had constructed a concrete wharf with railroad trackage con- necting to the plant. A whirler crane on a four-legged gantry was installed; whether to unload components shipped in by water or vehicles bound outward was never plain. The only utilization I know of was the tying off there of the Ford barge Lake Inaha, which lay in the dock for years until it was sold off-lakes. In the optimistic early years of the Seaway, the lovely Prinses Irene attempted regular passenger-freight service out of Lake Calumet Harbor. Also, in the days before containers, one could purchase a bill of lading and be shipped out of the Harbor to Montreal or beyond. My wife and I enjoyed such a trip in Transpacific, learning about Gemuss eintoft, ei, lauchs, Halsten beer (from Ham- burg - where else?) and the dubious joys of battling a fedderteufel in a narrow bunk. All such activity has fallen to technology by now. Another of the many vessel types to trade in the Calumet was the self-unloading crane barge, Marquis Roen. Little heralded, it has sailed away unnoticed. Astern, this one bore gear into which the bow of a powerful tug, usually the John Roen V, could be fitted to power the long haul. In the river, John hauled from the bow while a local tug handled the stern. This combination long pre-dated the Presque Isle set and deserved more notice than I have known it to have received. Where there is water, humanity wants to "go for a boat ride". The Calumet offered this opportunity. In source material I found a