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a | MARINE REVIEW. A SHORT HISTORY OF THE LAKES INVOLVED IN AN ENTERTAINING AND CORRECT ACCOUNT OF THE ASTONISHING DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICA'S GREAT FRESH WATER FLEET. & Mary D. Hartt in Boston Transcript. All good Americans boast of the greatness of the great lakes; but few possess the data to make good their boast. Most of us need a dose of statistics, now and then, as a tonic to patriotism. We need to tell ourselves over again that our five lakes with their connecting waterways have a water surface of 95,000 square miles; that the coast lines of the sys- tem enclose more than half the fresh water area of the globe; that from Duluth on the west to Ogdensburg on the extreme east is 1,279 miles. Let us recall that "through this mid-continental waterway passes a com- merce of greater magnitude than all the ccastwise commerce of the states bordering on the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico;" remembering, too, that unlike the merchantmen of the Atlantic seaboard, the ships of the great lakes are built from American designs for American owners by American capital employing American labor, and are manned by Ameri- can seamen and carry American produce.. Armed by this impressive array of facts, who shall convict us of empty boasting? Commercially speaking, there are but four great lakes--Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie. Lake Ontario, linked by the Niagara into the | quintet of waters, is at the same time divorced from it by the impassable rapids and cataracts of the river's course. Only little fishes' go that way into Lake Ontario. On the other hand, the "hydraulic staircase" of the Welland canal, built to circumvent the difficulty, acts as'a sieve to keep out the bigger lake craft. The Canadians are planning to change all that. They will deepen their 14-foot channel and substitute for the present twenty-five locks two huge pneumatic ones. Moreover, they propose to connect the St. Lawrence with Lake Champlain, and Lake Champlain with the Hudson, so that giant freight carriers, floated through the chain of the lakes and up the St. Lawrence, may pass to the sea either by New York or by Quebec. However, it takes two nations to play at that game and we shall see what we shall see. The problem is as old as lake navigation. 'More than 200 years ago the Chevalier de La Salle, sailing up Lake Ontario into the Niagara river on his way to Mackinac, encountered the."Everlasting No" of the cataract. The explorer might have been daunted; but La Salle was a debtor, as well, and the trip to Mackinac meant a cargo of marketable furs--a sop to his creditors. Therefore, the chevalier straightway determined to go around the giant obstruction, and, since he could 'hardly carry his brigan-: tine with him, build a new boat above the falls. The party of artisans whom he sent out under the Sieur de La 'Motte to select a place for a ship yard, fixed upon a safe and convenient spot at the mouth of Cayuga creek, five miles above the falls, and there laid the stocks for the new barque. Obstacles were well nigh countless. Save for the timber which ~ was felled on the spot, all the materials for the boat had to be carried by hand nine miles around the falls. Seven small cannon and two massive anchors were 'transported after this painful fashion. Then the Indians, suspicious and unfriendly, made repeated, attempts to burn the half-fin- ished craft. However, by May, 1679, the barque was ready for the water, and, amid military, religious and convivial formalities, the Griffon was set afloat. She was a strange medieval-looking craft of sixty tons burthen, bearing a griffin carved about her prow, and flying an eagle- blazoned flag-at her masthead. On the morning of the 7th of August, 1679, the Griffon left her moorings, and sailing up the swift current of the "streight above the great fall" entered presently upon the unsailed expanse of Lake Erie--the modest harbinger of mighty fleets to come. Without a chart, with only the vague warnings of the Indians to guide them, La Salle and his crew of thirty men proceeded fearfully up the lake, sounding as they went. On the 25th a furious gale swept down upon them and raised so great a sea that the party on the Griffon gave themselves up for lost. All betook themselves to their devotions: except the pilot, who 'did nothing but curse and swear against M. La Salle, who had brought him thither to make him perish in a nasty lake and lose the glory he had acquired by his long and happy navigation on the ocean." However, the gale soon abating, the wrathful pilot worked his ship successfully across the "nasty lake" and came. safe to Mackinac. Here the Griffon was loaded with valuable furs and with a crew of six men started back to Niagara. But she never came to port, nor is anything known of her fate " save that two days after she sailed a great storm burst over the lakes. Doubtless the brave little bark succumbed to its fury, thus becoming the first wreck as she had been the first vessel on the inland seas. EARLY STAGES OF STEAM NAVIGATION. We have no record of the building of any more vessels by the French. but after the surrender of Niagara to the English, in 1763, both trading vessels and ships of war were launched on the lakes. The war of 1812 placed two fleets of swiftly built boats upon the great waterways between Canada and the United States, but that picturesque story is unfortunately not a part of the history of lake commerce. It was not until 1818, 139 years after the wreck of the Griffon, that the next step in the evolution of lake craft was taken, and steam followed sail. In that year the first side-wheel steamer, the Walk-in-the-Water, was built at Black Rock, near Buffalo, for freight and passenger service to Detroit and the upper lakes. She was a comical-looking craft of 338 tons burthen, rigged with two masts and sails, with no guards except at the wheels, no bulwarks aft, and no upper deck. Her engine, a low-pressure, square cross-head affair, was not powerful enough to stem the swift current of the Niagara river. Therefore her captain was obliged at each sailing to employ a "horn breeze" (fifteen yoke of oxen) to haul her up the "rapids" into the lake where she could take care of herself. For something less than four years the Walk-in-the-Water ploughed the inland seas.. Then one dark night, just after she had left port, a heavy gale drove her back to seek shelter in the river. Harbor there was none. nor harbor light. In the pitchy blackness the little steamer failed to make the mouth of the Niagara, but was forced to cast anchor off Buffalo. Toward morning her hempen cables parted, and she dragged ashore at the foot of Main street, a hope- less wreck. When her enterprising owners began to talk of replacing her Z oe eo [September 27, i sprang up between Black Rock and its suburb, Buffalo, for oe teaeeoe ee the ship yard. Buffalo at last prevailed, upon condition that she would deepen her harbor sufficiently to float the craft. | When the time for the launch arrived the villagers, fearful that the paid work upon the channel had not been thorough enough, turned to with pick and shovel and themselves dug out a clear passage for the new ship-- the Superior. That was the home-made beginning of the finest harbor on lakes. : : - Folldwing the Superior, launched in 1825, came a long line of side- wheelers. The great movement toward the west had begun to make trans- portation lines both necessary and profitable. Not only western emi- grants and their household effects, but supplies of all sorts for the pio- neering communities went west by the lakes. It was an era of experi- ment in the building of steamboats. Each new boat was built on a new model. There were round prows and narrow prows, flat bottoms and deep keels, low-pressure engines and high-pressure engines, vertical en- gines, walking beams and square cross heads, one smoke stack, two smoke stacks, three smoke stacks. It was even said that so great was the diver- gence in machinery that the shore folk could recognize a steamer in a dense fog by its individual wheeze and cough. Low-pressure engines were at first the more popular because they: were considered more safe. A pressure of 30 to 40 Ibs. of steam was regarded as most hazardous. Now we do not think 250 lbs. too much. In 1841 a new type of vessel appeared upon the lakes. ine Vandalia, a screw propeller, built at Osweeo, passed up through the Welland canal in that year and excited great curiosity on Lake Erie. She was, to quote an eye-witness, "an uncouth little craft, sloop-rigged, with smoke stack extreme aft, surmounted by a huge wire bonnet emitting a continuous volume of smoke, fire and cinders, together with an unearthly rasping noise." Propellers began at once to be built in considerable numbers for the freight trade, and they flourished side by side with the paddle-wheels until 1856, when, the railroads having stolen away most of the passenger traffic, the side-wheelers began to decline. Today many a Chinese river boat is propelled by an engine made in the fifties for use on the great lakes. COURSE OF TRADE TURNS TO THE EAST FROM GRAIN FIELDS AND MINES. Up-to 1830 the course of trade on the lakes was from the east, west- ward. At about that time the tide of western grain began to flow east, swelling in volume with such amazing rapidity that in eleven years the trade had increased 40 per cent. .At first schooners came laden down the lakes to Buffalo, where the grain was hoisted out of their holds in bar- rels and transferred to canal* boats in bags on men's shoulders! But the growing traffic soon made the delays and expense of this pedestrian method unendurable, and in 1841 Joseph Dart of Buffalo built the first steam transfer and storage elevator in the world. He was warned when he proposed to build, that the cheapest elevator in the world is an Irish- man's back; but time told another tale. Boats unloaded by the new method cleared light, and returned with fresh cargoes before their old- fashioned neighbors had done disposing of a single load by the '"TIrish- man's back." New elevators were rapidly built upon the plan of the first. The principle was the same simple one in use today. An endless chain of steel buckets, bolted to a strong canvas band, revolves within a steel shaft, or "leg,"' which is lowered into the hold of a grain-laden boat. Round goes the bucket-band, scooping up the grain to carry it to the lofty cupola -- of the elevator, and there, in turning over the head pulley, to toss it out into great bins. With increased facilities came increasing trade. Iron ore from the Superior region began to come east in considerable quantities, and to- gether with the immense shipments of wheat effected a complete revolu- tion in the shipping on the great lakes. At first sailing vessels rapidly increased in number and size; but very soon even the big new schooners were found to be too small and too slow, and steam propellers began to take their place. Then as the shipments of ore became more and more heavy, wooden vessels were superseded by great ships of steel. In 1886 only six steel ships plied these waters. Now the bigger boats are all of steel and even canal barges are being built in that material. The vicissi- tudes of storm on the lakes having convinced ship builders that navigation on them is at least as dangerous as on the Atlantic coast, 90 per cent. of the vessels turned out by the ship yards are practically sea-going craft. 'Most of the ships built in 1899-(total value $10,500,000) were steel steamers, 450 to 500 ft. long, of 7,000 to 8,000 net tons capacity, equipped with triple expansion and quadruple expansion engines of 1,800 to 3,000 H.P., and-in most cases with water tube boilers. The transformation has been little short of miraculous. Many residents of lake cities remember when the lakes were flashing all over with sail. Now the sailing vessel has almost entirely disappeared, and instead of "white wings" we have long black hulls and trailing clouds of sooty smoke. _. The mercantile fleet on the great lakes today rivals anything on either Atlantic coast. Even in comparison with the ocean greyhounds, the modern steel freighter of the lakes is not unimposing. Contrast the dimensions of the John W. Gates of the American Steamship Co.'s fleet with those of three of the 'biggest Atlantic liners-- i Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse and the Oceinic. ee = Lo 3 / John Ww. Gates. St. Louis. Withelm. Oceanic. éngth over, all. 30. sacr 498 554 iV Length of keel'... ax, nie 478 535 625 685 Beate «07 one, eatin 52 62 66 68 Depth yi ee 30 42 43 49 And still they grow. Only the straitened limits of the St. Mary's river, the Detroit river and the channel across the St. Clair flats, confine the expanding models. The canal at Sault Ste. Marie, built in 1855, so deep that it was expected to accommodate the commerce of a century to come, ae outgrown and enlarged by 1881, enlarged again in 1886, and now, the ae Ee scarce complete, demands still further enlargement. rough the locks at the Sault passes a continuous line of sailing craft whalebacks, barges, propellers'and steamers. "Nowhere on the globe can there be seen a more impressive movement of shipping." The "Soo" gee ie year more than six times as many vessels as went through the ee enna Nor were they, as one might naturally suppose, a multitude of small craft. The tonnage of the lake carriers going through St. Mary's Falls canal in 1899 was 22,000,000--more than three times that registered