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followed the exit of whalebacks from general cargo to specialized fields. Whalebacks, be- cause of their design, were not efficient handlers of iron ore, coal or grain. In the 20's, however, many of them were converted to sand suckers, self-unloaders or crane ships. Modifications to the Cort came after her deck had been raised, giving her a dis- tinctive look. She foundered on November 30, 1934. As the 1930's arrived, shipping companies were continuing to experiment with various ship types, aimed primarily at developing a ship that could be as free as possible of dock- side facilities. Self-unloaders had been extant for about two decades, but they had a minor disadvantage of still requiring dockside equipment for loading. Crane vessels could load themselves, but were not especially good at placing goods at the dock, especially bulk commodities such as coal or stone. Crane boats were good at unloading steel or pig iron into railroad cars on tracks along the dock, but were unable to place the product far enough from the water's edge to please most of the ship's customers. From these problems came a variety of rather strange solutions, with their roots enmeshed in the prosperous times of the late 1920's as well as the debilitating times of the early 1930's. A rather cumbersome hybrid of the two types of vessels made its first appearance about this time. The Jupiter was one of the first to combine cranes and a boom-equipped unloading mechanism. Mounted on its deck were two travelling "whirlies", but an elevator and boom ap- paratus was also installed. In operation, the cranes would clam bulk commodities out of the ship's hold and deposit it into an ele- vator which would carry it to the boom and over the side. In theory it was a good system. In mechanics there were apparently numerous "bugs" that needed to be removed. Much of the problem perhaps stemmed from the equipment, as well as the economic times. The boom was very short, the center weight of the ship quite high, and the unloading time (not counting mechanical malfunctions) was quite long. Interlake sold the Jupiter in 1933. The subsequent owner could do no better with her and the entire apparatus, cranes and all, was removed in 1934, and the Jupiter returned to being a conventional bulk freighter which enjoyed a long life lasting until the late 1950's. SEP + OCT, 1985 Page 117 In Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, home of most of the self-unloader conversions of the 1920's, the crane-conveyor system was not abandoned, however. Captain John Roen liked the versatility of the system, and pat- terned several subsequent conversions along these lines, perfecting as he went. Roen used a system somewhat similar to the sand-sucker conversions of the Leathem D. Smith Ship- yard. Roen converted a World War I "Laker", the Fred W. Green, into a crane conveyor vessel, equipping it with two cranes and a boom. The Green's profile was quite unusual, since it had cabins amidships, with a crane mounted fore and aft of the cabins, and the boom mounted at the forepeak. The economics of the operation were obvious. The cranes could allow the vessel to carry the bulky cargoes, while the boom option gave the ship the ability to discharge stone (Roen's biggest commodity for this ship) almost as far from the dock's edge as a conventional self-unloader. After many years of loading pig iron onto the increasing number of vessels at its Detroit dock, the Nicholson Transit Company finally converted its small bulk freighter E.C. Pope to a crane vessel in 1935. Thereafter, Nichol- son owned a variety of older and smaller ships, they often experimented. Several ships, such as the Adrian Iselin, Tampico and Steel King, received cranes in the en- suing years, only to find that the ship was either too old, too small, or in too bad shape. These vessels then were reconverted to bulk freighters. The next major Great Lakes operator to recognize the versatility of crane vessels eventually became the largest operator of such ships. In 1936, Columbia Transportation Company mounted two unusual steam-powe- red whirlies on their 366-foot G.G. Post. After- wards, the Post featured several unique characteristics that would endear her to ship watchers for almost 35 years. Until the Post, the crane vessels were limited in lifting capacity because of the limita- tions of their design, and their mounting on rails on the deck of the ship. The Post, however received two stationary cranes which were each mounted on a pivot on the ship's deck. Featuring increased lifting capacity, the steam cranes also had longer booms (65 feet) to allow them to reach all of the corners of the holds without the need to move laterally. The sta- tionary mount also gave the cranes greater stability than the earlier conversions. However,