The 𝘐𝘴𝘩𝘱𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 — Summer 2003
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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
By Roger M. Jones
This article was written in September 1941, shortly after Jones got off Cleveland Cliffs’ steamer Ishpeming several months before Pearl Harbor. A good friend of Jones, Jewell Dean, then Marine Editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, asked him to write it. Jones says, “When Dean saw what I wrote about the Wickwire and Donner Steel Docks in Buffalo, he decided it would be better not to have it appear in print.” So the article was not published, until now.
BACK ROW: Ed Grady, deckwatch; Phil Clucas, wheelsman; Ray Greenwood, wheels- man; John Donohue, deckwatch; Joe Schultize, watchman; Elmer Koski, watchman MIDDLE ROW: Joe Van Koenel, Third Mate; Fred DeSeur, First Mate; Captain D.J. Hyslop; John Johnson, Second Mate FRONT ROW: Deckhands Roger Jones, Chuck Bozic, Art Kennedy (Fred DeSeur and John Johnson later became captains in the Cliffs fleet.)
Fundamental to our national defense is the transportation of iron ore down the “1,000 mile highway” from Lake Superior to the steel mills bordering lakes Michigan and Erie. Ordinarily, college students (summer sailors) are not employed on lake vessels because they can only sail for a few months in the summer. But due to a shortage of seamen, I had little difficulty getting a job this summer (1941). I finished my last exam at Reserve [Case Western Reserve University] about 4 P.M. on June 6. By midnight, I was aboard the 530-foot, 11,000-ton Cleveland Cliffs freighter Ishpeming, which was unloading ore in Ashtabula.
We cleared Ashtabula about four in the morning on the seventh, bound for Presque Isle/Lake Superior. For the first two or three weeks, I spent all my time off catching up on sleep. Little rest during our two week exam period and hard work which I wasn’t toughened to, made me ready for the bunk whenever we weren’t working. On most lake ships, the deckhands do not work on the watch system — four hours on, eight off, four on, and eight off — as does the rest of the crew. Rather, the deckhands work a straight eight hour day — 7:30 to 11:45 and 12:45 to 4:30 six days a week. Sundays and all legal holidays, no unnecessary work is done. All too frequently however, we were in port on Sunday and holidays, and working in port is considered necessary. Actually, the eight hour day is theoretic. Seldom did we work exactly eight hours any day. Often we arrived at the loading or unloading dock, the fueling dock, or the Soo Locks in the middle of the night. When this happened, the deckhands would work straight through until the ship cleared. Sometimes we were turned to for as long as 24 hours at a time. In this case, we would get our time back by not working for the next two days. Oftentimes we worked for only an hour or two in the night while at the fuel dock or locks. To get this time back, we turned to at 9:30 instead of 7:30 the following morning.
We were lucky to have a mate who was fair about overtime. He always asked us how much time we had coming and saw to it that we got our time back. The previous summer I worked on a boat where the mate [shorted] the deckhands out of a lot of time by not giving back all the overtime we had coming.
At midnight Sunday night we arrived at the Soo Locks. It was immediately apparent to me that added precautions had been taken to protect these locks since I passed through them in the summer of 1940. Actually, the Sault Ste. Marie Locks are the bottleneck through which our entire national defense program must pass. It is apparent to everyone that the backbone of our entire national defense is steel. And it is through these Soo Locks that 70 million tons of ore must pass to supply the iron ore for that steel. If anything happened to these locks, our steel mills would be forced to curtail production and within a few months, entirely stop production.
Without steel, few if any national defense industries could operate. Government officials and high army officers are well aware of the importance of the locks and have taken steps to protect them from any possible damage. High fences and barbed wire completely surround the locks, a detachment of soldiers from nearby Fort Brady patrol the locks 24 hours a day. All visitors are barred from the locks and crewmembers are forbidden to throw anything overboard or take pictures while their ship is in the locks. Mobile anti-aircraft guns, searchlights and other wartime equipment are stationed at Fort Brady. Coast Guard boats search all small vessels approaching the locks, and they investigate all small objects floating toward the locks. The mate of every large boat must make a complete inspection of the entire ship looking for explosives and any sign of tampering with the steering gear or machinery. If everything is all right, the yellow and black quarantine flag is flown from the foremast. Without this flag flying, no ship is allowed to approach the locks.
Once this summer when going up light, we were assigned to the small antiquated Canadian lock. Here members of the Canadian home guard patrol the locks and enforce the same regulations that are in force on the American side.
Monday afternoon we arrived at Presque Isle to load. Presque Isle is a rock-bound peninsula just outside Marquette, Michigan. The only dock in the harbor is the ore dock of the Lake Superior and Ishpeming Railway, a subsidiary of the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company. Arriving at an ore dock is very routine to lake sailors, but is always an experience for new men.
When the bow of the ship passes the end of the dock, a 30-foot boom is swung out with a deckhand sitting in the bo’s’n chair at the end. When the end of the boom is over the dock, the chair is lowered away. By this method, men can be landed on the dock to catch the lines, while the ship is still 30 feet out from the dock. This is necessary because the ship is stopped by the cables rather than the ship’s engines. As soon as the boat is alongside the dock, about 12 ore chutes are lowered and a “run” is put in. Before the second “run” is loaded, the boat must be shifted along the dock to other pockets. The deckhand handling the forward lines hauls one of the cables up the dock about 150 feet, then all of the other lines holding the ship are taken off, and by heaving in on the forward deck winch, the boat is pulled ahead. Usually a boat is shifted seven or eight times during the loading process. Although the all-time best record for loading a 10,000-ton cargo on the lakes is 16½ minutes, we usually loaded in from 3½ to 4 hours.
This summer, due to the threat of war, the government allowed lake freighters to load deeper than had previously been permitted. So it was that this summer, the 34-year-old Ishpeming cleared Allouez with the largest load she had ever carried — well over 11,000 tons. Also due to the press of national defense, another method for bringing down more ore was devised by the Cleveland Cliffs Company. Cliffs boats carry a lot of ore to Buffalo where the size of the load is limited considerably because of the shallow draft in Buffalo Harbor.
Thus boats bound for Buffalo would have to load 1,500 to 2,000 tons less than when bound for other Lake Erie ports. This was remedied when Cliffs implemented a plan to load deep draft and then clear for Cleveland or Ashtabula. Instead of unloading the entire cargo at one of these ports, they would only be lightered enough for them to proceed to Buffalo where they would unload the balance of their cargo. We arrived at the lakefront dock in Cleveland one night and just 22 minutes later departed for Buffalo — lightered of 1,400 tons. We weren’t even in Cleveland long enough to go to the dock office and make a phone call!
During the 3½ months I was on the Ishpeming, we loaded ore at the three upper lake ports of Presque Isle, Ashland and Allouez. We unloaded in Toledo, Huron, Cleveland, Ashtabula and Buffalo. Four times we carried coal from Sandusky to Buffalo, Ashtabula to Buffalo, Ashtabula to Duluth, and Toledo to Duluth. As little coal as possible is carried this year, and the larger boats are kept exclusively in the ore trade. Enough ore to last until spring must be brought down!
Pet hates of all deckhands are the Wickwire and Donner Steel Docks in Buffalo. The Wickwire Dock is located several miles down the Niagara River, only a few miles above Niagara Falls. The channel leading to the dock is very dangerous with a swift current. Most boats do not attempt the trip after dark, and it is the only place on the lakes where a pilot is used. When the ship reaches the Black Rock Lock, the deckhands leave the ship and take a taxi to the dock — a three or four-mile trip. We arrive at the dock a half hour before the ship gets there. Making a landing at this dock is ticklish business. When the ship is still a quarter of a mile above the dock, she begins to turn around and drift down to the dock with the current. Several hundred feet upstream, the bow is nosed into the bank.
Heaving lines are then thrown from the deck to the men on shore. Invariably these lines fell short and it was necessary for us to wade into the river to get them. When we finally got the lines ashore, we secured them to dead men (steel cables anchored in the ground). When the bow is thus held in, the stern can be eased back to the dock. Each time we arrived at Wickwire, there was another boat at the dock making doubly dangerous our docking. Last year a deckhand on the Ishpeming had his leg broken while making a landing at Wickwire.
Another headache is Donner Steel, located several miles up the winding Buffalo creek — almost as bad as the Cuyahoga. Here, the deckhands are landed on the abutments of two railway bridges several hundred feet below the dock. The dock itself is very narrow — about a foot and a half wide — covered with pipelines, piled with coal and ore; there are pieces broken off all along and many of the spiles are missing. It requires considerable skill and the grace of God to walk along the dock carrying two heavy cables and avoid falling between the ship and the dock.
While out in the lake, the deckhands’ work is entirely different. Most of the time we were kept busy chipping paint, painting, chipping paint, scrubbing the deck, chipping paint, scrubbing whitework … and chipping paint. The mate of the Ishpeming was a fond believer that everything should be chipped and scraped before it was painted, and chip we did. We had three electric chipping hammers and a half dozen hand hammers. For weeks we did nothing else but stand on a scaffolding suspended in a hatch and chip the combing. The electric hammers weigh ten to twelve pounds and they kick plenty! On top of that, they make a racket not unlike machine gun fire.
Shortly before I got off, I had the job of chipping the deck under some store rooms elevated about a foot off the deck. In order to do this, I had to alternate lying on my stomach, side and back using the hammer as best I could. Eight hours of this was too much. Another difficulty in chipping was that a powerful chemical rust preventative in the paint covered you along with the paint chips and dust. This chemical caused a burn much more painful than sunburn. Some of it would always get in our eyes, even though we wore goggles, causing a condition not unlike pink eye. This was finally overcome, to some extent, by smearing a thick layer of Vaseline on our face and neck and wearing a celluloid mask.
I was lucky to be assigned to the Ishpeming, as she has unusually good quarters and crew. The entire deck crew, with the exception of one wheelsman, was under 30 years old. Most of them were deferred from the draft by reason of the importance of their jobs to national defense. A harder working or easier-to-get-along-with crew couldn’t be found. Most of them are studying for their third mate’s license, which they will write for as soon as they have invested the required amount of time. Unlike the ship I was on the previous summer, there were few changes made in the crew. She has aboard now practically the same crew that fit her out last April. Largely responsible for this is the first mate. Although a mate who works his men hard and doesn’t like to see anyone standing around idle, he knows how to handle men. By joking with the men and often working alongside them on deck, he could get any amount of work done without complaint. Last year the mate, third mate and a watchman were on the Cliffs’ freighter LaSalle when it struck a rock and came close to sinking in the Armistice Day storm. Master of the Ishpeming is a Scotch Canadian of the old school. Blunt, gruff, he was all business. An hour before the ship was loaded or unloaded, he would pace up and down the deck, impatient to be away. All Lake skippers are out to make as many trips as possible and every minute counts. Woe be unto the man who is late getting back and holds up the ship, even though it is for only five or ten minutes.
Even though the work is hard and the hours long, sometimes irregular, most sailors — including myself — enjoy sailing. They say it gets in your blood — I hope not, as I have other plans for the future.
So it was with no little regret that I left the Ishpeming in Ashtabula on September 16 and headed back to school. Through sailing for this year? Maybe not. I intend to take a week off school in November and make one trip up the lakes as relief man. They say you’re not a real sailor unless you’ve made a late fall trip when the temperature is around zero and a northwest gale is blowing.
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