Great Lakes Giants Series No. 5: CAPTAIN ALEXANDER McDOUGALL — Fall 1993
~
The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
Author: Mike FitzGibbon
The First Reactions to his design came in harsh. “You Call That Damn Thing A Boat? It Looks More Like A Pig.” Everybody laughed except Colgate Hoyt, associate of John D. Rockefeller, who had ore to move.
The genius and perseverance of Alexander McDougall in developing, building, and promoting the whaleback vessel in the face of skepticism and derision has been such a popular story that it has overshadowed and obscured the interesting and larger story of the giant’s life. More than a shipbuilder, McDougall was also a first-class seaman, inventor, surveyor, developer, entrepreneur and devoted family man. His life (1845-1923) spanned the explosive growth years in the coal and ore industries, the transition from wooden schooners to steel freighters, the maturation of Duluth and other lake cities, the building of the Soo Locks to connect Superior with the lower Great Lakes, and the rise of the passenger ship business. In many ways, the dynamic, aggressive, innovative, and multifaceted personality of Alexander McDougall reflected the age in which he lived.
The purpose here is to introduce us to Alexander McDougall, the man.
Of course, in this limited space, can only be an introduction.
Manhood At Age Ten
Born in 1845 on the Island of Islay off the west coast of Scotland, the young McDougall emigrated to Canada in 1854 with his parents, two younger sisters, and a younger brother. The family was part of a wave who left the British islands in the mid-1800s because of financial hardship. Many of them came to the Great Lakes region to find work in industry or to establish farms. Like many immigrants, the McDougalls set their destination for a town in which family and/or friends had preceded them. That was Collingwood, Ontario, a Scotch community dependent upon a grist mill and sawmill.
McDougall’s father, Dougal, found immediate work in the sawmill. However, within a year he died of a sawmill accident. Support of the family fell to Ellen McDougall, milliner and midwife, and to the ten-year-old Alexander. McDougall helped his mother raise potatoes and vegetables on a half-acre they cleared themselves. He also cut wood for sale and caught fish which he sold aboard passenger ships when they docked at Collingwood en route to Chicago. Then he brought fish home to feed the family.
That left little time for school. Between 1856 and 1859 he averaged
only three months of school a year. This, plus some school which he attended in Scotland and two years of night school a decade later was McDougall’s total formal education. At fifteen he contracted to peel hemlock bark, a dollar a cord. Within a six-week period he was able to peel, dry, and stack ten cords of bark which he claimed was “a record for all times.” The next year McDougall became an apprentice blacksmith and gained valuable experience in working steel and iron.
Although these were hard years, he later remembered them as valuable experience, especially the blacksmithing. Evident in these early years was the development of McDougall’s work ethic, boundless energy, and curiosity.
At sixteen, he left his family to seek his fortune on the Great Lakes, and at an advantageous time. The breaking Civil War was about to explode demand for copper and iron. The Marquette range in Upper Michigan was already producing large amounts of iron ore in 1861, and by the end of the decade the Menominee mines were also producing. The construction of a canal at Sault Ste. Marie in 1855 had already connected the vast resources of the Lake Superior region to the lower lakes. The ore business plus the already established coal, grain, and lumber businesses, made the 1860’s dynamic for Great Lakes shipping. Increased business begged for larger, longer, and faster vessels. In 1861 the primary cargo vessels were schooners and sidewheel steamers. Just beginning to make an impact were steam powered propellers and iron ship construction. The great advantage of iron and steel was almost unlimited potential for size. By 1886 the wooden cargo ships had effectively given way to the steel ship. The launching of the 300-foot Onoko in 1882 is commonly considered the turning point. Built of iron, propulsion aft, pilot house forward, continuous deck broken only by a single deckhouse for the crew, she was the future of bulk carriers. With a capacity of 3,000 tons which could carry 110,000 bushels of wheat, she was the largest on the lakes. Over the next two decades freighters lengthened from ten to twenty feet per year with corresponding increase in beam and draft.
Enter McDougall
Into this dynamic industry came ruggedly built Alexander McDougall, deckhand aboard the passenger and cargo steamer Edith. After attempting to join the Union army and rejected for his age, he rejoined the Edith and finished his first season sailing between Collingwood and Chicago. At the end of the season, McDougall returned home bearing gifts for his family, a new cook stove, a full sack of corn meal, and a box of silver coins from shining the shoes of passengers. McDougall looked back on that, “Often since then I have made in a single year what seemed a fortune to me, but I was never so rich in my life as when I took the new stove and the meal and the dimes back to my mother.”
Up The Chart
Deckhand, to porter, second mate, mate, pilot, and finally captain–it took two decades. McDougall’s first command came in 1870, the steamer Thomas A. Scott. He sailed her for one season and, during a time when a captain was responsible for negotiating his own freight rates, he made a great profit sailing between Chicago, Erie, and Buffalo.
In September of that year, McDougall left the Scott to help oversee the building of the China, India, and Japan for the Anchor Line. At the time these were the largest iron boats to have been built in the Great Lakes region, and are remembered as three of the most majestic to have ever plied the lakes. Passenger and freight steamers, the three identical boats were 210 feet long with 32-foot beams and 14-foot drafts. The regular run for the ships was Buffalo to Duluth with stops at Erie, Cleveland, Detroit, Mackinac Island, Marquette, and Hancock. In 1871, McDougall sailed the Japan as captain, a position he retained until 1875.
McDougall The Captain
For three seasons McDougall was master of the passenger and cargo steamer City of Duluth. She sailed fourteen day trips from Chicago to all the ports on Lake Superior. The vessel carried a wide cargo variety, including buffalo skins, fur and wheat. However, the primary cargo was building materials – cobblestone, lumber, and sandstone – for building the towns on Lake Superior shores.
McDougall’s next command was the Hiawatha, largest, and one of the last wooden steamers on the lakes. The Hiawatha primarily carried ore from Superior to the East, and railroad iron back to the west for the many railroads being built in the Superior region.
During these sailing years, McDougall’s seamanship became well-known. For example, at the end of his second season on the Japan, nearing the mouth of the Soo at five a.m. on November 27th, McDougall and his ship were hit by “the greatest storm (he had) ever experienced.” Buffeted by what he recalled as hundred mile-per-hour winds, and very little sea room with which to work, the Japan was caught in a deep trough. For two hours McDougall worked to get the vessel head to wind, all the while drifting sideways toward the rocks of Crow Cape. Only when the ship was close enough to the rocky shore did the rebounding waves allow McDougall to get the ship turned. “It was one of the happiest experiences of my life, thus getting head to the sea, and we got up into safety until the wind slacked up. It was eighteen degrees below zero then.” When the storm abated and McDougall was able to survey the damage, he found “300 or 400″tons of ice on the ship. A large portion of the cargo of flour had broken out of its barrels and become soaked into a paste. Yet the captain and crew considered themselves lucky since “all the vessels that were outside of Whitefish Point came to grief.”
McDougall The Fisherman
In the 1870s, as today, shipping on the lakes was seasonal, effectively ending with the coming of December snow and ice, and beginning again with first thaw. Shipping was also very sensitive to fluctuations of the economy. Hence during his first years on the lakes, McDougall spent the winters on a variety of jobs, including making flour barrel hoops, coal prospecting, cutting, timber, and fishing. Although McDougall fished for profit, fishing was one of the real passions of his life; he seemed fascinated by the catching, preserving, and selling of fish.
Commercial fishing on the Great Lakes was a great source of wealth in the 1860s and 1870s. In 1865 alone, fishermen caught 100,000 barrels of fish valued at $800,000. Relatively unrestricted fishing on the Lakes meant severe competition, making commercial fishing risky. Although McDougall engaged in small fishing ventures during the winter months of 1870-71, and 1872-73, his first truly organized attempt at commercial fishing came in the Spring of 1876 when the shipping prospects for the coming year appeared bleak. McDougall entered into a partnership with Alex Clark who operated four fishing boats tending twenty miles of net. For the venture McDougall, with money loaned to him by a friend, built his first vessel, a small fishing steamer, Sisquit.
The partners contracted to supply fish to the Buffalo, Erie, and Chicago markets. They headquartered their operations at Marquette where plenty of herring was available for bait. McDougall had noted on a previous trip to the area aboard the Japan that large schools of trout congregated around Stannard Rock. With the gill nets not yet ready, the partners baited 2,000 hooks and immediately met with success. “So, it went with lots of herring for bait and endless stock of large trout at Stannard Rock. We filled fish cars, packed in ice, for all our markets. The gill nets we set to work for whitefish; then we began to salt and pack in one hundred-pound half-barrels for regular salt fish trade.” The work was brutal. They took the fish out by dog sled and horse team 18 miles sometimes, in ten below cold.
Unfortunately, the success of McDougall’s fishing venture was short. The sluggish economy which had affected lake shipping for the 1876 season also affected the fish trade. Clark and his crew deserted McDougall who lost his whole investment. Deeply in debt, he was advised boyfriends to take advantage of a new bankruptcy law which would have allowed him to escape his creditors. McDougall however refused. He worked to pay back every debt he and his partner owed at Marquette.
To Russia
Economic downturns which affected lake business also provided McDougall with a unique opportunity to travel to Russia in 1875 to study the Russian grain trade. During 1875 the Russian Grand Duke Alexis had toured the Great Lakes to study American lake ships and grain elevators. In conversation with E.T. Evans, General Manager of the Anchor Line that operated the Japan, the Duke discussed the Russian practice of loading and transporting grain. With shipping prospects for the year being poor, Evans encouraged McDougall to learn all he could about the construction and operation of grain elevators so that he could go to Russia.
McDougall left for Russia in the autumn of 1875 with instructions to study the feasibility of building a canal or railway between the Volga and Don rivers, to get a concession to sell grain elevators in Russia, and to study shipping practices not only in Russia, but in Europe as well. McDougall enjoyed his trip immensely. On his way to and from St. Petersburg the places McDougall visited included his hometown on the Isle of Islay, London, Hamburg, and Paris.
Of all the adventures McDougall must have had on his trip, it is telling that he only related one in his autobiography. While in St. Petersburg, he had an opportunity to ring the bell of St. Isaac’s church. “I have been up on the top of the great St. Isaac’s and helped the old caretaker ring the great bell. We, standing under the bell, could hardly span it with open arms from the bell edge to the clapper, which was about the size of a beer barrel. The noise inside while ringing it was not unpleasant.” McDougall returned from Russia with a great deal of useful information. However, opportunities which he had gained to contract with certain grain firms in Russia came to naught due to the poor American economy. Nevertheless, McDougall considered the technical and business knowledge which he gained on his trip to be invaluable later.
McDougall The Stevedore
In the late nineteenth century, ships were still loaded and unloaded by hand. Backbreaking shovel and wheelbarrow work consumed enormous time. When labor was short, vessels sat idle.
While commanding his own vessels, responsible for the loading and unloading of cargo, McDougall realized the need for organizing and systematizing stevedoring. “While it was difficult to get stevedores, I undertook to do the unloading of our rails by paying the crew extra and hiring any men I could get on the docks to help. I found I could hire the crew and dock men and make a profit. Then I found that the railroad company would allow ten cents per ton for neat piling… (and was) encouraged to specialize in this stevedoring work.”
McDougall’s organization of stevedores proved very profitable and reflected his penchant for business and for organizing men. “Because of my long experience with working men, knowledge of human nature, fellowship with workers gained from being one of them, this new venture proved very profitable, and my unusual success in handling the stevedoring became generally known.” In 1881 McDougall established himself permanently at Duluth, Minnesota and immediately entered into contracts to handle the loading and unloading of cargos for various companies.
Wary of the rough and tumble lot which usually made up the labor force on the docks, McDougall took advantage of the large number of Swedes then immigrating to the Duluth area, and for whom he had a great deal of respect as honest and industrious laborers. Within a few months, McDougall had over a thousand men working for him and controlled the trade of chartering grain and insuring cargos in Duluth and nearby ports.
By 1881, McDougall’s relationship with the Duluth area was an old one. When he first came to Duluth in 1868, there were less than 100 inhabitants and the port had yet to be built. In his autobiography McDougall remembered coming ashore at Duluth for the first time while serving aboard the Meteor as pilot and mate: “We extended our trip to the base of Minnesota point where our few passengers were landed on the gravel beach to begin to build a town later called Duluth. In those days sail vessels and also Lake Superior steamers carried a stern yawl boat and I was an expert in such a surf boat, and probably I was the first of our party to be ashore at a point of rock and gravel beach, which now is the foot of Third Avenue East.”
McDougall, Port Builder
In 1871, McDougall built a home in Duluth and brought his mother and three sisters to live there (his brother Duncan had been killed in Georgian Bay in 1864 when the sailing vessel he was on was lost with all bands). At this time Duluth was on the verge of becoming the central port for the rapidly growing Lake Superior grain and ore trace. The completion of the Lake Superior railroad to Duluth in 1869 had increased the shipment of grain to Duluth from the Red River Valley of Minnesota. The completion of the Duluth port in 1871 helped alleviate the hazardous landing conditions at Duluth and opened the city to regular lake shipping.
By this time, McDougall already realized the potential of Duluth as a port city and over the next several years he remained constantly in the Duluth trade. He also spent his winter months fishing and trapping in the area. In the middle of the 1870s, the depression which throttled shipping and stifled Duluth’s boom, drove McDougall to try commercial fishing and embark on his trip to Russia. Rapid growth of Duluth was interrupted until the late 1870s when the Minnesota lumber trade took off. With a similar revival in the coal, ore and wheat trades, Duluth became the most important port on the upper Great Lakes. It was within this climate of development that McDougall organized his cargo handling and insurance business in 1881, establishing himself firmly in the business of lake shipping and a major player in the development of Duluth.
Ship Builder
Firmly established at Duluth and retired from active sailing, McDougall began to entertain plans for establishing a shipyard in the city to build a barge of his own invention with a very radical design. “While Captain of the Hiawatha, towing the Minnehaha and Goshawk through the difficult and dangerous channel of our rivers, I thought out a plan to build an iron boat cheaper than wooden vessels. I first made plans and models for a boat with a flat bottom designed to carry the greatest cargo on the least water, with rounded top so that water could not stay on board; with a spoon-shaped bow to best follow the line of strain with the least use of rudder and with turrets on deck for passage into the interior of the hull.” To these original plans McDougall soon thought of adding a cabin on turrets to the aft deck and making his design into a steamship. In order to make his model a reality, McDougall had to rely on every bit of experience gained over the years, every friendship he had cultivated, and nearly every dime he had made.
Initial response to his design was brutal: “She has no flat deck and bulwarks to keep the waves off.” Potential investors said that the boat with its rounded design would rollover, that it could never keep the water out, and the spoon shaped bow would never be able to keep its nose into the waves, but would be pushed from side to side.
“There Goes Our Last Dollar”
McDougall could not attract investors. To prove his design, he had to risk everything he had and build one. “I could get but little encouragement
and with the first money I could accumulate I built No. 101 on my own land, chiefly by stevedores.”
Because Duluth lacked the adequate resources in the 1880s for building a ship, McDougall had the two conoidal ends of the barge built in Wilmington, Delaware and shipped to Duluth. The 191 ft. Barge 101 was launched from Duluth in 1889. As she slid down the ways, Mrs. McDougall turned to her sister-in-law, “There goes our last dollar.”
“I brought her to Two Harbors by the tug Record; there 1,200 tons of coarse ore were run into her many hatches without trimming, and she was towed to Cleveland. I was on board and all kinds of fun was made of her. At that time my business office was on the corner of Superior street and Third Avenue West…It was often full of lake captains, all making fun of my boat, and I joined in good-naturedly with them. Then in 1889 I made a model for No. 102, which was to be nearly twice as large as the first barge. I showed this model to many ship owners who wanted iron ships. The rates were high at that time, but all I could get was sympathy. So I took my model to Colgate Hoyt, New York, an associate of John D. Rockefeller, who had much lake ore to move, and I told him of my patents and plans; also of my past experience, which he carefully investigated, with the result that I agreed to sell to a company all my patents for $25,000 and take it in stock in the company on condition that twenty percent of the balance of the stock would be saved for me; the company to carry my additional stock until I could pay for it.”
Immediately a company was organized called the American Steel Barge Company. The directors named in the original articles of incorporation of the American Steel Barge Company were: Colgate Hoyt, Charles L Colby, James L. Colby, Charles L. Wetmore, Edward B. Bartlett, George W. Weiffenbach, Robert D. Murray, and Pinckney F. Green, all of New York City, and Alexander McDougall of Duluth, Minnesota.
“I began at once and built No. 102 and No. 103. We made self trimming vessels with double bottoms and numerous hatches, which worried the other lake ship owners very much. In quick time I built the whaleback steamer Colgate Hoyt, which had compound engines, and she proved to have cost so little, with such good results in operation, that the lake fraternity feared competition more than ever. I then built other tow barges on my own land, even though we were very crowded there.”
Whaleback Decade
The vessels were commonly called pig boats. Overall, more than forty whalebacks were built between 1889 and 1898, including one on the west coast, two on the east coast, and one in Great Britain.
In 1923 McDougall looked back upon the era of the whaleback, with special pride in three of the vessels; one because of its beauty and singularity, and two because of the broader accomplishments their careers on the seas represented. The Christopher Columbus was the only whaleback passenger vessel ever constructed and McDougall considered it “the most wonderful ship contracted for and constructed to that time.” The ship was built for the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, the tercentenary of Columbus’s discovery of the New World. Having made models to prove the viability of a whaleback passenger vessel, McDougall agreed to build a ship which would run twenty mph, load 5,000 passengers in five minutes and unload them in less time, and be built in three months. He also agreed to build her for $365,000. The keel was laid on September 7, 1892 and the ship was launched on December 2nd. On her trial run the Christopher Columbus lived up to all of McDougall’s promises, carrying 7,500 passengers and easily cruising at twenty m.p.h. The ship was truly magnificent, 362 feet long with a beam of 42 feet and a draft of 24 feet. Her five decks were lavishly decorated and equipped. “In the grand saloon are carpets of Wilton velvet, wainscoting and paneling in carved oak, chairs and lounges of russet Turkish leather; mauve tints predominate in the mural decorations. There are aquariums, statues, paintings, etc. Baths, barber shops, and restaurants have first class fittings and give excellent service.” During the World’s Fair the ship carried 1,700,000 passengers to and from the fairgrounds at Jackson Park. At the conclusion of the Fair, the Christopher Columbus continued active service for over forty years and it has been claimed that she carried more passengers than any other passenger vessel on the Great Lakes.
The City of Everett was another of which McDougall was exceptionally
proud. Although the vessel itself had no outstanding qualities, she was built at Everett, Washington, a city in which McDougall had taken a great interest as a potential successor to Seattle, the premier port in the state. He believed that both Seattle and Tacoma were disadvantageous sites for a great port due to the topography which prevented easy access to the cities either by sea or by rail. In 1891, with the backing of Colgate Hoyt, McDougall began laying plans for a port and shipyard at Everett.
Although McDougall’s ambitious plans for Everett, Washington never came to fruition, she boasted the only whaleback steamer ever built on the West Coast. The City of Everett was launched from the Pacific Steel Barge Company in 1894. The Everett had an eventful career. First chartered to deliver food to India s famine, she then sailed through the Red Sea and became the first American steam vessel to pass through the Suez. The ship was in service for over thirty years until she foundered and was lost in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Charles W. Wetmore, launched at Duluth in 1891, was like the City of Everett, a whaleback of standard dimensions. However, the short career of the Wetmore represented the first success of the whalebacks outside of the Great Lakes, and gave “McDougall’s Dream” its first general respect as a viable cargo vessel. While the ship was laid up in Kingston, Ontario for minor repairs, McDougall conceived a plan to use the Wetmore to run the rapids of the St. Lawrence. In a telegram to his principals in New York, McDougall wrote: “All river pilots and our captain say it is not safe nor possible to run the rapids. Am still of the opinion it can be done and will proceed to do so unless I hear from you to the contrary.” Receiving no answer from New York, and being unable to find a willing pilot, McDougall resolved to take the Wetmore through the rapids himself. He brought the whaleback through “without a scratch” and the Atlantic Ocean was opened to the whaleback.
The Wetmore proceeded to Liverpool, England with a cargo of wheat. She was severely criticized by the English who were especially concerned with the lack of facility which the small, fixed turrets provided for loading and unloading. Nevertheless, in 1893 a British whaleback, the Sagamore, was built. For the most part the Sagamore resembled her American counterparts, however special turrets and grain handling apparatus were added.
Upon returning to the United States, the Wetmore was loaded with building materials for Everett. “In her cargo were desks for the school, a pulpit for the church, two sawmills, tools for the shipyard, paper mill machinery, nail factory machinery, and various materials for small manufacturing plants.” Arriving at Everett via the Straits of Magellan, the Wetmore unloaded and entered the West Coast coal trade. However, a series of misfortunes ensued and she was lost in 1892 off the Oregon coast.
Short as her career was, the Wetmore did more than any other whaleback save the Christopher Columbus to advertise and prove the viability of the whalebacks. However, by the time the last whaleback was built in 1898, serious problems with the seaworthiness, capacity, and loading and unloading of the vessels were apparent. Indeed, the last whaleback to be built, the Alexander McDougall, was constructed with a conventional bow to better confront the seas. Though ship-building technology had made the whaleback an anachronism in only fifteen years, some of her better features were incorporated into later bulk freighters, thus making the whaleback more than an historical anomaly.
More Worlds to Conquer
The man continued to grow. McDougall delved successfully into Duluth real estate. He also relocated the American Steel Barge Company to nearby Superior, Wisconsin to enlarge his operations and build ships faster.
Most important, in 1892 McDougall contracted with the Merritt brothers to ship all their ore and to control their ore docks on Lakes Superior, Michigan and Erie. McDougall was attempting to take advantage of the huge ore deposits which were discovered in the Mesabi range in upper Minnesota. Once again, McDougall’s intuition and vision proved correct as the Mesabi became the largest ore producer in the upper Great Lakes.
Backed by Rockefeller money, McDougall also helped found the Duluth, Missabe & Northern Railway Company to connect port and mines. McDougall himself oversaw the layout and construction of the road and ore docks at Duluth. To facilitate the loading of ore at the docks, McDougall invented a plow to rake the ore off the flat railroad cars.
McDougall’s confidence in his new venture was such that he proposed formation of a new state, the State of Superior, which would combine the northern ends of Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He believed that a commercial state which encompassed the Mesabi and Gogebic ore ranges, Rainey Lake gold fields, and millions of acres of timber would consolidate the vast wealth of the area under uniform laws and not leave it to the “whims of three different legislatures.”
At the beginning of 1893 McDougall was reaping the benefits of his successful inventions and prosperous business ventures. “I was in a better position than I had ever been before. All the hard work of thirty years since I started as deckhand at twelve dollars a month without a penny in my pocket, a green boy from the backwoods, seemed to be coming to fruit.” By the end of the year, however, McDougall found himself with almost nothing to show for his efforts. The country was hit by the severe economic depression in 1893 which would extend through the following year. The shipyards and industries at Everett, Washington shut down and stockholders in the companies, McDougall included, received nothing from their investment. The contract between the American Steel Barge Company and the Merritts cancelled. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company was forced to withdraw its backing from ore ventures on the upper Great Lakes. Worst of all, McDougall found that his investment in the barge company which he had founded in 1889 was not protected and he was forced to pay back his original investment of $150,000, leaving him without a profit for a half dozen years of work.
In part, McDougall’s financial setback was from the depression. However, it also pointed up his penchant for betting the farm on his dreams. Although he blamed his losses on “some lawyer’s smartness” and the lack of foresight of F.T. Gates, a representative of the Rockefellers, yet, as hard as the losses were for McDougall, he took them with his customary resolve and marked down his financial setback as valuable experience. He also took heart in the knowledge that he “never broke faith with (his) associates who trusted (him).”
For the next several years McDougall steered a more cautionary course and tried to recuperate from his severe losses of 1893. Between 1895 and 1898 he was occupied with mining for gold in Utah and Montana. Ultimately, the mining venture was a failure, yet it seemed to have a salutary effect on McDougall by keeping his active mind engaged and away from his troubles in Duluth.
In 1899 when McDougall was offered a chance to develop a line of boats to trade on the Mississippi between New Orleans and St. Louis, he entered the venture with his old vigor and idealism.
The original plans for the shipping venture came to naught. However, McDougall grew increasingly excited about the prospects of navigation on the Mississippi and the challenges it posed. Again, McDougall boldly rolled the dice. His Mississippi operations became a large part of his life, but we will stick with the charter of INLAND SEAS®, and stay with his Great Lakes career.
In 1902 McDougall, always interested in the welfare of Duluth, became involved in the development of the Great Northern Power Company to bring hydro-electric power to the city.
During this period McDougall also advocated for improvements to the port at Duluth, including new fog signals and an extended breakwater which would protect ships entering the harbor in a northeast gale. The impetus for these improvements was the foundering of the steamship Mataafa which tried to enter the port in a November gale. Hitting the north pier, the ship was disabled and carried to shallow water where she broke in half. With the storm raging such that rescue attempts were impossible, nine men froze to death in the stem section only a quarter mile from shore.
None of this kept him from reentering the shipbuilding business. McDougall established a scrapyard and drydock at his old home of Collingwood, Ontario in 1908. He also obtained a long-term lease for a drydock at Kingston, Ontario which he operated in the interest of the Collingwood plant. During operation of the Collingwood yard more than fifty ships were built.
McDougall continued to experiment with new types of ships. In 1915 he introduced plans for a seagoing canal ship with a flat bottom and wedge-shaped bow which would be simple to build and require very little water in which to maneuver. Backed by the prominent businessmen Julius Barnes and Ward Ames of Duluth, McDougall founded the McDougall-Duluth Co. to build his new ships as well as more conventional vessels. When the United States entered World War I, needing new ships, McDougall closed down the Canadian plants and expanded his Duluth operations, founding a new townsite named Riverside. This plant built 46 ships for the war. McDougall alternately built eight shipyards, four drydocks, and 200 ships.
With all his other interests during the last 15 years of his life, McDougall’s fondest memories were associated with the time he spent in his basement laboratory in Duluth. Between 1906 and 1923 McDougall patented more than 40 of his inventions in the United States, Canada, France, and Great Britain. He was especially proud of his pumping apparatuses. As early as 1885, when the schooner Guido Pfister went ashore at Duluth and broke up, McDougall used his pump to recover her load of coal. “This was, as far as I know, the first coarse material handled by means of pumping, and ever since I have had a great deal to do with centrifugal pumps in digging sand and gravel for Duluth’s use.” McDougall used a special pump during his mining in Utah and Montana to pump up sand and leave the coarse gravel in the river. He also developed a pump which could separate fine ore and soil.
McDougall The Person
As fascinating as his career was, McDougall’s relationship to others is the most outstanding aspect of his life. With friends and business associates he expected and returned honesty, frankness, and trust. McDougall was also quick to aid a person in need and slow to condemn or blame. With his family, McDougall shared a close relationship and his pride in the accomplishments of those he loved is clearly apparent.
McDougall married Emmeline E. Ross in 1876. When appropriate, Emmeline would accompany her husband on his trips aboard ship. McDougall recalled with pride how on one trip aboard the City of Duluth his wife, along with other passengers, were forced to pull on the anchor to get the ship to shelter when her engine went out six miles from shore. “I tied together all the small lines on board and attached them to an anchor, which we then towed ahead the length of the line and dropped. All the passengers, including my wife, pulled on this line to hurry the boat to shelter in the canal, for it was threatening bad weather.”
Emmeline McDougall supported her husband throughout his many endeavors. Her remark, “there goes our last dollar,” when the first whaleback barge was launched has become part of the lore of the pig boat. She died in January, 1908.
The McDougalls had six children, three of whom died at birth. Their eldest boy, Ross, died at the age of twelve and it was the psychological blow of this event to which McDougall contributed his wife’s declining health and death. Alexander lived on to May 22, 1923.
Though McDougall is lately remembered for the whaleback, true perspective shows he was one of the hundred or so giants who implemented the whole industrial complex of ships, mines, docks, rails and mills that made the Great Lakes great.
Note
The predominant source used was The Autobiography of Alexander McDougall, edited by Janet Coe Sanborn, published by The Great Lakes Historical Society, 1968.
Read More of Inland Seas Online
