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Marine Historical Society of Detroit Lecture on Marine Ope: Zons ut Ford Motor Company Presented by Clare J. Suider, November 19, 1959 Ladies and Gentlemen: Since this is a gathering. of the Marine Historical Society, I shall start by giving you a little history of our Department. ‘ It was in the year 1915 that the Ford Motor Company purchased the Rouge property. That was also the year that the Henry Ford Hospital was, opened, and Ford had already built one million cars. On April .1,.1917, construction of,our present Rouge docks was started, and on July 11, 1918, Ford lauhched its first Eagle boat “for World War I. . During 1919 and 1920 the Coke ovens, Blast Fur- nace, Power House and Foundry were completed, which required our Marine Services to deliver the raw bulk materials that are too costly to move by any other means than by water. On July 11, 1923, the first steamer came up the Rouge River, and by August, 1924, both the M/S HENRY FORD II and the M/S BENSON FORD were put into service. By this time Ford had built ten million cars and was assembling some cars in some foreign countriés. By 1924 Ford had built 15 million cars; by 1931, 20 million, and so on until today we are building cars and trucks at the rate of over ten thousand units per day. This requires a lot of steel and ships to deliver millions of tons of raw material each year. We are part of the Steel Division, which produces approximately one-half of our steel requirements. We own and operate three bulk vessels; in addition to the HENRY and BENSON, we have the S/S WILLIAM CLAY FORD which was built in 1953 and which is much larger than the other two. These three ships can deliver about 75 per cent of our requirements during a normal year. Vessels from other companies are hired to haul the balance. This includes our winter coal requirements from Toledo, the foreign ore we import from Liberia and Chile, and some. iron ore, coal, limestone and pig iron. During a normal year, we deliver to the Rouge via water approxima- tely two million tons of iron ore, 500,000 tons of limestone and 24% million tons of coal to fulfill our requirements. This means that we will unload an average of nearly two ships per day at our dock during the navigation season. We havea dock that is 2300 feet long and which has three bucket type unloaders. We can unload 17,000 tons of cargo of ore in nine hours. During the year, we will arrange cargoes from many ports on the Great Lakes which require: the coordination of getting