Marine City High School - Mariner Yearbook (Marine City, MI)

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It took a schooner three weeks or a month to go from Buffalo to Chicago. They did not sail straight up the lake, but tacked back and forth and then sailed into the port they wanted to go to. There was no way by which they could get on Lake Superior at this time. If a schooner wasn’t going to carry a load of coal to Chicago from Buffalo or Dunkirk, the men would put on a load of sand for ballast, and then when the boat was in the vicinity of Chicago they would drop anchor, throw the load of sand off, sail into the harbor and get a load of grain or whatever they were after. The loading and unloading had to be done by hand, as they had no cranes to do it with. The largest of the schooners in the seventies carried about 40,000 bushels of grain. This would be a small amount today. When copper was discovered south of Lake Superior, the mine owners used sailing vessels for a time to ship the copper. It was soon found that it was nec- essary to have boats that weren’t dependent on the whims of the wind and weather, so the mine owners combined and bought a small steamer, which was named after Samuel Ward, a resident of Newport and the leading shipbuider of the county at that time. The boat was built in Newport, now Marine City, and the Captain was George Cottrell of this town. As there were no canals at the “Soo” then, the owners hauled the “Samuel Ward” over the portage on slides and rollers, an under- taking which took seven weeks. Ten years later, in 1855, the first canal at the “Soo” was in the process of being constructed. The canal cost nearly a million dollars, and it took two years to build it. Much of the timber used in the building of this canal was chopped, hewed , and cured here in Newport. It was then loaded on the steamers Marquette and Wyandotte and taken to the “Soo.” This part of the work was directed by Samual Ward. Each lock at the “Soo” was three hundred and fifty feet long. When the boats ne ared the locks, they would drop their anchor and lower their yawl boat. The men in these boats would open the gates of the lock. In the case of the sailing vessels, they would pull the schooner into the lock, shut the gate, and then open the gate at the other end. The same process was repeated for the other locks. After the schooner had passed through the locks, she was warped, by using the anchor, out into the lake, until they were far enough to use their sails. This took a great deal of time and labor. Of course, the steamboats of that day went through the locks on their own power, but they, too, had to open and shut the gates themselves. The common sailor and able seaman received from ten to fifteen dollars a month only. The captains were considered well off if they got from eighty to ninety dollars a month. The able seaman of today gets a hundred and five dollars a month, while the captains get anywhere from three hundred up to six hundred dollars per month. The first port from which iron ore was shipped was Marquette. The ore was loaded by the use of dump carts and wheel barrows. Other ports on Lake Superior that were opened to navigation in the eighties were Ashland, Two Harbors, and Fort Williams. Captain Lawrence of Marine City took the first load of coal into Fort Williams in 1883 on the Tutonia. The harbor was so shallow that most of the coal had to be lightered ashore. 15

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soloist and later came to this country. He then toured the United States and Canada, appearing as soloist with many of the principal orchestras of the country. He also toured the country with the Mozart Opera. He since has been instructor of piano at some of the leading Conservatories in Chicago and New York. Raye Roberts Platt, a graduate of this high school, is now doing research work for the American Geographic Society in New York City. Judge Carr of the State Supreme Court, who married a graduate of the Class of 1906, was once Superintendent and Principal of the school here. Dr. Parker, now one of the most famous oculists of the country, was born here and educated in our schools. SAILING By Bruce Beattie It is known that the majority of people in Marine City make their living by sailing. Therefore, anything pertaining to sailing is of vital interest to the citizens of Marine. This article is not only the result of information gleaned in the usual way, and of questioning various old sailors, but also is from an interview with Captain Harry Lawrence, who sailed on the Great Lakes from the early seventies until about ten years ago. The first boats that were navigated on the Great Lakes were huge canoes which were paddled by crews of from eight to ten men. Then the French intro- duced a boat which they called the bateau, which was was a flat-bottomed boat with sharp pointed ends. In 1679 La Salles Griffin was the first sailing vessel to pass up the St. Clair river. In 1765 there were two sailing vessels traveling be- tween St. Clair and Detroit. The first steamboat to sail up the St. Clair river was the Walk-ln-The-Water, which was also the first steamboat to sail on the Great Lakes. She was built at Black Rock, near Buffalo, in 1818. In the latter part of the 1 9th century schooners were the most prominent of the boats on the Great Lakes. These schooners were towed through the St. Clair and Detroit rivers by tugs. A tug would tow from one to eight schooners up the river into the lake until they were able to use their own sails. Then they would cast off the tow line and pick up the schooners that were bound down the river. They did not go through the South Channel of the St. Clair river where our boats now go, because there was no cut through which the boats could enter into Lake St. Clair from that channel, as there is now. They went through the North Channel by Algonac, around Point Duchene and then out into Lake St. Clair by the way of the Middle Channel. These tugs had no lights to guide them in the rivers, so they had to drop anchor if the night was too dark. There were very few light- houses at this time. About the only lights there were were those like the one at Fort Gratiot, above Port Huron, to guide the boats to the entrance of the rivers. The schooners had no heat on board except that which was in the galley. Con- sequently sailing was rather a cold job in the spring and fall of the year. 14

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Steamboats used wood for fuel instead of coal as they do now; consequently there were many wood docks along the rivers. The wood wouldn’t last as long as the coal, nor could they carry such a large amount. Another phase of early sailing on these rivers and lakes pertains to passenger and ferry boats. The first steamboat to carry passengers up the St. Clair river was the Walk-ln-The-Water, in the summer of 1819. The first passenger boat to run regularly between Detroit and Desmond (now Port Huron), was the Argo, in 1830. In 1840, Captain Samuel Ward, of Newport, placed the Huron on the river route, with Captain Eber B. Ward, also of Newport, as master of the boat. After this time regular passenger service between Detroit and Port Huron was established. The ferries which were operated at Newport ran across Belle river instead of St. Clair river. The fares were as follows: six cents for each person; man and horse, nine cents; horse and carriage, one shilling. Louis Chartier received the first license to run a ferry across Belle river in 1823. When the towns on the Canadian shore began to flourish, they began operating ferries across the St. Clair river. Quite a few strange sights have passed up the St. Clair river of late years — that is, strange to this generation of people. Among these was that of a dead whale which was dragged up the river in 1893. The men who were dragging it stopped back of where the Edison plant now is, and exhibited it for two or three days. The inside of the whale was furnished like a room, and they charged an admission to go down into it. In the same year three ships, exact duplicates of the boats in which Columbus came across the Atlantic, sailed up the river. These same boats, or boats like them, were towed up the river about seven years ago. Many boats have burned along the river, among them the Str. Wolf, which burned while making her last trip of the season. Two lives were lost. The Gettysburg burned while being repaired at Kenyon’s Shipyard. She was re- built and used on the ocean by the United States Government during the World War. The Tampa and Aztec, both very old boats, burned to the water’s edge at the mouth of Belle river during the past year. More boats have been built in Marine City than any other town in the county. Samuel Ward, of this town, built the St. Clair, the first of many built at Marine City by the Wards. Among the shipyards were those owned by Morley Brothers and by McLouth. Several ocean boats were built for the United States Govern- ment during the war at the McLouth shipyard. Only one steel boat has been built in Marine City, the Oliver H. Perry, a large steel fishing tug being built at the McLouth shipyard about three years ago. Shipbuild ing in the county has died out since steel ships are being used instead of the wooden ones. Sailing today is a pleasure compared with what it was thirty or forty years ago, for the ships were smaller and built of wood, hence they couldn’t stand the 16