Sailing into History: Great Lakes Bulk Carriers of the Twentieth Century and the Crews Who Sailed Them by Boles Frank

Author:Boles, Frank [Boles, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781628962802
Publisher: Michigan State University Press

CHAPTER 5

LOADING AND UNLOADING

The thing which in my judgment most influenced the change in type and size of the bulk freighters on the lakes came about through the invention of the Hulett unloader.

—William Livingstone, president, Lake Carriers’ Association, 1902–1925, quoted in Eric Hirsimaki, “The Hulett Story”

Although many people watched freighters as they made their way up and down the lakes, boat watchers rarely observed the docks where the boats called. A freighter on the water might be romanticized, but the dirty, hardscrabble docks that the ships visited, near steel mills, quarries, huge piles of coal, and other industrial settings, were much harder to cast in a romantic light. The ports were working sites, not very different from the nearby factories. As in the work in those factories, speed mattered. The relatively short trips made by the ships, usually a week or less, made speedy loading and unloading a priority. The boats made money moving cargo—not while the cargo was being loaded or unloaded. The longer a boat was tied to a dock, the less profit it made. As a result, the loading and unloading facilities at commercial harbors on the Great Lakes, and eventually on the boats themselves, became models of mechanical efficiency.

In the final years of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, this dedication to efficient cargo handling led to a series of devices designed to load and unload iron, coal, and stone at speeds far surpassing those achieved at the nation’s saltwater ports. In the second half of the twentieth century, the goal to load and unload quickly led to a radical transformation of the ships themselves, eliminating the need for portside assistance when unloading. 1

Despite these fundamental changes, there were pieces of continuity that linked loading and unloading operations throughout the twentieth century. The most notable example of continuity was the design of the ship’s hold. Nineteenth-century Great Lakes freighters used beam and stanchion construction in the holds: horizontal beams spanned the cargo hold, while vertical stanchions placed at regular intervals held the beams in place. The design was strong and sensible, but the large number of beams and stanchions in the cargo hold got in the way of loading and unloading. To simplify this, the cargo hold was redesigned. Stanchions and beams were replaced by arched girders and heavy steel plating placed on the deck between cargo hatches. The result was one long, continuous hold that required no internal support. In 1904, the Augustus B. Wolvin was the first ship to have this kind of hold, and this unobstructed design continued to serve as the model for all Great Lakes freighters throughout the twentieth century. 2

Having created a vast, open space for cargo, engineers turned to the question of how best to fill this cavern. In 1888 iron ore became the leading commodity shipped on the lakes, and it would remain the largest cargo into the twenty-first century. 3 Because moving iron ore was the largest part of the ship’s work, loading and unloading techniques were designed first and foremost with iron ore in mind.

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