sorts,”– often more than one at a time. This situation particularly described the typical Great Lakes freight vessel. Alexander McDougall (1845-1923)
was born in Scotland and emigrated to Canada at the age of nine years. He had unusual affinity for the water and skill as a sailor coupled with a keen business mind. He rose rapidly in his profession to become a ship’s master at the tender age of 25 years.2
Consequently, he was
keenly aware of the business aspects of Great Lakes marine traffic. Captain McDougall was cognizant of both the financial necessity for con- sorts and the perplexing engineering problems attendant in actually towing them safely and economically. Most consorts,
or
“barges.” were former
schooners or bulk carriers which had had their engines and boilers decom- missioned. Such vessels often would not tow easily–a tendency made worse by heading seas and even the prop wash from the towing vessel. It was to the design of the ideal con- sort that Captain McDougall turned his fertile imagination. He knew that the design was constrained by very strong economic forces. He wanted a design that gave the greatest carrying capacity for a given draught (draft) or displacement.3
There were about 1,600 steam-pow- ered vessels plying the Great Lakes in 1893. Some 30 shipyards dotted the Great Lakes busily building, repairing or maintaining them. The typical lake steamers of the period had screw pro- pellers and boilers and engines near the stern. The hulls were long and relative- ly narrow. The principal structures of the vessel were located on a deck well above the waterline. The deck was nor- mally perpendicular to the high sides of the vessels.4
Captain McDougall’s innovation was
to remove this deck entirely. The struc- tures of the upper deck were “…re- placed by a plain curved and closed deck over which, when the vessel is in a storm, waves may sweep harmlessly, thus avoiding the shock received by a ship with high sides.”5 The first whaleback vessel, Barge
101, was launched at the Robert Clark Shipbuilding Company’s shipyard at Rice’s Point in Duluth, Minnesota, on Saturday, June 23, 1888. The vessel’s ends were built in Wilmington, Delaware, while the hull plating was rolled at a steel mill in Cleveland, Ohio. The “parts” were moved to Du- luth by rail and assembled there.6 Since the vessel’s design was so radi- cally different from conventional Great Lakes practice, the barge,
costing
$40,000, was built entirely with Mc- Dougall’s own capital. Urban legend
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN 71
FROM THE AUTHOR’S COLLECTION: BUFFALO, NY; 1895
This picture (above) is from a stereopticon view of whaleback barge No. 130 and was pro- duced from a photo made during the navigation season of 1895. The photo purports to show the barge being loaded from one of the numerous Great Lakes terminal elevators in Buffalo harbor. Actually, the elevator has several of its marine legs extended into the hold of the barge, indicating that it was really being unloaded. The elevator was being filled in anticipation of the end of the Great Lakes navigation season, after which all shipments from the elevator would be by rail. The pig-snout stern, turret aft structure, the wheel- house and the lifeboat of Barge 130 are all clearly shown. Barge 130 was built for the Bessemer Steamship Company and did dual service as an ore and grain hauler for Bessemer at the time of this photo. It was launched on June 3, 1893, at West Superior, Wisconsin. After their disposal by the Pittsburgh Steamship Line in favor of larger, more efficient vessels, many whaleback steamers and their consort barges found new life ply- ing the coastal waters of the United States–particularly the east coast. Such is the case with the whaleback steamer Bayport, seen here (below) taking on a load at the C&O Rail- way’s Newport News, Virgina, coal dock. Of interest in this view is the Bayport’striangular anchor threaded through one of the three hawsers on the ship’s bow. The coal dock seems not to have pockets so that coal is loaded directly from rail cars into the hold of the ship. The dock master’s office appears behind and to the left of the hopper cars.
NEWPORT NEWS, VA; CIRCA 1911
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