Rail and water interface: Pt. I–Whaleback vessels
Table 2: Makeup of
U.S.Steel Great Lakes steamship fleet at inception, February-May, 1901
Steamship Line Bessemer Minnesota Pittsburgh American
National Steel Total Owner
John D. Rockefeller Soo Line
Andrew Carnegie
American Steel & Wire Co. Mutual Transportation Co. ransit Co.
Menominee T 90 } 69 43
Table 3: Roster of whaleback steamships and barges Pittsburgh Steamship Company; December, 1901
Steamships
Name Origin Alexander McDougall A.D. Thompson Colgate Hoyt E.B. Bartlett
Frank Rockefeller James B. Colgate John B. T
revor
Joseph L. Colby Samuel Mather Thomas Wilson James B. Neilson Henry Cort
Barges
Name or number Alexander L. Holley Sir Joseph Whitworth John Scott Russell 105 107 109 110 111 116 117 118 126 127 129 130 131 132 133 134 137 201 202
Origin Bessemer Steamship Company
Bessemer Steamship Company (formerly 102) Bessemer Steamship Company (formerly 103) Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company
Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company Bessemer Steamship Company
Minneapolis, St. Paul & Buffalo Steamship Co. (Soo Line) Minneapolis, St. Paul & Buffalo Steamship Co. (Soo Line)
Steamers 25 12 11 12
Barges 31 10 2 0
beam, drawing 24 feet of water and dis- placing 4,000 tons. She was equipped with a triple-expansion marine steam engine with cylinders of 20″, 42″ and 70″ diameter. Steam was provided by six Scotch boilers 11 feet in diameter and 12 feet long. Each boiler could pro- vide 160 p.s.i. steam pressure. The maximum cruising speed of the
vessel was 20 knots. She was a grey- hound on the Great Lakes, making the seven-mile run between the Van Buren Street docks in downtown Chicago to Exposition Pier at the Fair Grounds in about 25 minutes.14 She was leased in 1899 to the Goodrich Transportation Company of Chicago for excursion service between Chicago and Milwaukee. Between late June and early September each year she ferried excursionists between the two cities, typically carrying about 250,000 passengers per season with a crew of 165. During her World’s Fair service she
was said to have carried about five mil- lion passengers and was famous for the speed with which she could disembark a full passenger load. Whether this is “urban legend” or not is speculative, but the literature mentions this figure several times, including in a 1907 in- terview with Mr. McDougall himself. She could disembark 5,000 passengers in five minutes.15 Anyone who travels commercially on the world’s airlines today can only marvel at such efficiency. For her Milwaukee service the Columbus was retrofitted with these luxury appointments: • a main dining room comparable to any found in a luxury hotel, • a refectory (a dormitory-type din- ing hall), palm garden (a fashionable icon of the time) and a lunch counter, • a soda fountain and even • a barber shop.16
Who owned the whalebacks? One of the joys of researching arti-
wave resistance which makes their speed-to-horsepower ratio very high.13 While Goodall’s paper was well-re-
ceived, the commentary which accom- panied it was scathing about the sea- worthiness of the current design. Improvements, it was felt, could only (and must) make the vessels better.
The only passenger whaleback On December 3, 1892, one of the
76
most famous and successful Great Lakes steamers was launched from the American Steel Barge Company’s West Superior
shipyard. Built for the
World’s Fair Steamship Company (which owned a total of 30 excursion vessels of many types), the Christopher Columbus was the only passenger-car- rying whaleback ever built.
The specifications for the vessel were as follows: 362 feet long with a 42 foot
cles such as this is stumbling onto to a large and perplexing question, then finding its answer. Such was the case of the ownership of the whalebacks. Common sources were unsatisfactory, so more digging was required. Besides Captain McDougall, the pri- mary player in the drama of the whale- backs was none other than John D. Rockefeller. After having successfully assembled the Standard Oil Trust, Mr. Rockefeller turned his steely (no pun intended) gaze onto the nascent iron ore industries in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the iron range of northwestern Minnesota. His interest turned to action in early 1893. During that time he organized the
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