Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Marine Review (Cleveland, OH), 1 Dec 1904, p. 18

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eee Me A. -Rewalcy -N-.-E Rf. Vb. Mw shoveling it up- AMS ont | on the barrow and wheeling it along the gang plank ashore. Whatever ore was carried in the hold was hoisted to the deck by horse power and then wheeled ashore. In. 1867 little deck engines were ~ installed to take "the place of horses and the inven- tion was con- sidered a won- derful improve- ment: = in fact it was consid- ered so revolu- tionary by some masters that they insisted upon having the horses until the superiority of the engine was manifested to them by the dispatch with which vessels employing it. could be unloaded and clear again for upper lake ports. As the channels were deepened and the vessels consequently grew in size, the problem of unloading became a serious one. It was attacked by Mr. Alexander E. Brown with a great deal of energy and with the result that the Brown hoisting and conveying machine was designed to meet this special purpose. Since then other rigs have been invented including the Hoover & Mason equip- ment and the Hulett machines with clam shell buckets, so that remarkable dispatch in unloading has now been secured. In this connection it is interesting to observe that vessel de- 'signers on the great lakes have actually adapted the design of vessels to the unloading equipment installed upon the docks. In some parts of the world vessels engaged in the ore trade carry their own unloading equipment with them, that is, they have a deck installation; but on the great lakes the unloading equipment is exclusively the function of the dock. In order to show clearly how dispatch in unloading has been developed on the great lakes, it is only necessary to refer to the record established by the steamer Augustus D. Wolvin at Conne- : aut last July. The | dock of the Pitts- burg & Conneaut Dock Co. at Con- neaut is equipped with four Hulett clam shell ma- chines and_ four Brown _ electrical machines. These eight machines worked upon the Wolvin. The act- ual time that the Wolvin was under the machines was 4 hours, 30 min- utes, or from 7:22 THE HOOVER & MASON MACHINES ON THE ERIE DOCKS AT CLEVELAND, THE BROWN CONVEYING MACHINE At CONNEAUT. « Peso A NE The average time that the four -~Fiuleet clam shell ma- chines were working upon Ker wasi4 hours, 6 min- ites, daring which time they took out 7,257 Sross tons of ore. The aver- age time that the Brown elec- trical machines were working upon her wa- 25 outs, 5 ax minutes, during which time they took out 2,688 gross tons. The max 1 mm wim amount taken out in any one hour was 681 tons by the No. 3 Hulett machine) During the last. honur-ot this time fifty men were employed in the hold of the ship working the ore away from the sides of the vessel in order to facilitate the unloading buckets. This record established by the Wolvin was, of course, made under special conditions but it is by far the best record yet obtained on the great lakes. Last year these four Hulett machines took out 5,200 tons of ore from the steamer James H. Hoyt in 3 hours, 52 minutes, but on the Wolvin, as noted, they discharged 7,257 tons in precisely fourteen minutes more time than they al- lowed the Hoyt's cargo. Nowhere else in the world could 9,945 gross tons of ore have been taken out of the hold of 4 vessel in this brief space of time. It is the testimony of those that have dealings on the coast that the terminals at the coast ports are not what they should be. Vessels are still unloaded at nearly all of the eastern cities by slow and cumbersome methods. This is, of course, in a measure due to the mixed cargo that coastwise vessels carry and the conditions under which the companies are obliged to handle freight. But even granting this, there is room for much improvement. Probably no man in the country has given greater attention to the handling of freight at receiving ports than Mr. Alexan- der E. Brown, and it is. his. opinion that. a ship. de- signed upon com- mon sense lines for the carriage of bulk freight on the ocean has not yet been designed. He also believes that the field. far... the application of modern facilities for unloading at

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