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i and 1925: The Watershed Years (Continued DETROIT III of 1912 and the rival SEEANDBEE, built in 1913 for the Cleveland & Buffalo Transit Company. The Edwardian richness of the "D-III" survives with her smoking room, the "Gothic Room", now the foyer of the Dossin Great Lakes Museum. Fashions of the twenties preferred simpler, more delicate decoration. Details in the grand salons of the new sisters were derived from the Villa Madama in Rome. The ceilings were of figured and lightly coffered plaster and could be compared favorably with those of arcade lobbies in prestigious new office buildings like Detroit's Buhl Building which opened in 1925. The New York firm of W. & J. Sloane planned the decor of the new sisters; the interior designer Louis Keil who had pre- pared all the earlier steamers had died in 1918. In profile, the sisters had but three funnels, although the center one exhausted two uptakes that were merged at the hurricane deck. In the twenties, nobody was putting four stacks on ocean liners any longer, and the sisters went with the fashion. SEEANDBEE and the lowly river carferry LANSDOWNE retained the distinction of being the only Great Lakes ships with four stacks. GREATER DETROIT was brought out first, a week before Labor Day, 1924. She had been launched nearly a year earlier at Lorain, Ohio, and since then she had been taking on her engines and cabins at the Orleans Street shipyard in Detroit. On August 27 she moved down the river to the D&C Wayne Street wharf. That afternoon, Detroit's Acting Mayor John Lodge presented her with her colors, gift of the city for which she was named. Presiding over the pageantry that was his usual D&C specialty was the ebullient company president, A. A. ("Gus") Schantz. The next afternoon, Captain Eugene Hayward guided her down the river on her way to Buffalo. Aboard were 1,450 passengers who took up all 650 staterooms, and 125 cars shared the freight deck with 300 tons of cargo. When she arrived in Buffalo the next morning, the Buffalo Police Band led a parade off to the City Hall. (Continued on page 3) USS. SABLE Editor's Collection Steel passenger sidewheeler (US. 223663) built in 1924 by American SB. Co., Lorain (Hull #786): 518.7 x 58 x 21.3; 7,739 gross tons. Converted to training carrier in 1942 and renamed b) USS SABLE. Scrapped at Hamilton in 1948. a2 ~ a