The Potato Ships of Lake Michigan
~
The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
By Theodore S. Charrney
A century ago Chicago was among the busiest ports in the world. In 1892, Chicago’s incoming and outgoing waterborne tonnage was surpassed only by London, New York and Hamburg, Germany, in that order. The majority of lake boats were sailing schooners, and by the late eighties their number exceeded 1700.
The sailing season was only eight months, shipping insurance available April 1st and discontinued on the last day of November. Thereafter underwriters increased the premium, often too high to sail in profit, By mid- December the ships were idle and as many as 500 lined the river in winter berth. A few captains carried Christmas trees on their final voyage in an effort to round out the year’s profit or cut its losses.
Enter: The Potato Via Logging
When potatoes became a crop in the Grand Traverse Bay area on Michigan’s west shore and in Door county Wisconsin, a new final voyage cargo became available. For the next quarter century a few sailing vessels, their holds filled with potatoes, would tie up in the Chicago River and vend their inventories to the merchants on South Water Street market Bordering the main channel of the river this mile-long commercial center was the magnet that attracted the potato ships to Chicago.
The trade in potatoes carried on by the schooners was a natural outgrowth of the logging industry. When the lumberjacks cut their swath through the state of Michigan, they left behind a forest of stumps, slash and toppings.
However, after denuding the forests, they had no further use for the land and allowed it to revert to government through tax delinquency. The land sold cheaply to immigrants and settlers who converted the once wooded tracts into agricultural, and later, resort areas.
This second wave of pioneers must have been discouraged by the sight that met their eyes. To clear forty acres of such stumpage with axes was the labor of two years or more.
Most homesteaders did not have resources to carry them that long. The beginning of the fruit growing industry was on just such land. It was a simple matter to rake up the slash and burn it, and plant orchards among the remaining stumpage. After ten or twenty years the trunks and stumps would rot and molder away by the action of the elements, while the orchards were flourishing.
Field crops presented a different problem.
Homesteaders took up land along the coasts of Michigan and Wisconsin, that had lately been visited by the lumber carrying schooners, and planted a cash crop of potatoes among the stumps on a portion of the land. During the growing season the obstructions on another comer were cleared away. Thus it was possible to have forty or more acres of arable land in a couple of years and still plant and harvest potatoes.
The stumps were burned, dynamited and some treated with chemicals to hasten disintegration within a season or two. Horses, ropes, chain falls and winches fought the stubborn trunks before the land was finally cleared. Then the settler could grow what the land best suited and possibly turn his back on potatoes.
Potatoes came out of Charlevoix, Michigan as early as 1888 and by the middle nineties several ships a year were bringing in potato cargoes, selling them piecemeal and sometimes it was well into March before their stocks were gone. It was then time to refit for the sailing season and return to lumber ladings.
The Chicago Evening Post of November 5, 1900, noted: POTATO BOATS ARRIVE. First of the fall cargoes from Michigan reach Chicago. The first of the regular run of potato hookers arrived in port last night. With the increasing likelihood of storms as the season draws to a close, some schooners are taken out of the lumber trade, and the owner, who is usually the captain of the boat, invests a part of the season’s earnings in a cargo of potatoes at some port in the potato raising district of northern Michigan. The cargoes are then brought to Chicago and retailed direct from the boat, while the work of putting the vessel in winter quarters goes on. As the potatoes are purchased at a low price from the farmer a very handsome profit usually is pocketed by the captain to round out the earnings of the year.
“We always figured that the sailing fleet is about ready to quit,” said Deputy Collector James Nash at the barge office, “when the potato fleet commences to arrive. That is the first stage. Next the Christmas tree boats will begin coming down and then it will be off with the windjammers until next season.”
Nowhere else have I found a reference to the water-borne potato trade other than Chicago, although there is little doubt some other lake cities or communities were involved with the traffic. Chicago’s preeminence in the potato trade was due to the easy accessibility of the South Water Street market. Here came the merchants from every part of the city to purchase their green groceries, fruits, seasonal foods and whatever packaged comestibles were procurable in that day. Poultry, game and imported commodities too, were vended on the street, and in season, Christmas trees and greens and potatoes were no exception.
Here, at two and three o’clock in the morning, drays, carts and wagons began to arrive for the business measure of the day. Truck farmers came with their produce and sold either to the middle man, known as the commission merchant, or directly off the wagon to anyone, grocer or consumer.
The morning hours were the busiest and traffic crawled at the pace of a snail, as crates and boxes, bushels and barrels, horses, wagons and humans, mixed together among the fruits, vegetables and varied merchandise in a great congested mass.
In the afternoon business slacked off and by sundown all was quiet. As darkness closed in, thousands of rats came out of their hiding places in the cellars and from among the river pilings and cleaned up the day’s grist of accumulated garbage.
In 1897 and again in 1900, the schooner A.M. Beers came into Chicago with potatoes, both cargoes originating at Sutton’s Bay on the east arm of Grand Traverse Bay on Michigan’s west shore. Fortunately a reminiscence of the winter spent on board the Beers came to me from William H. Brandt of Milwaukee. He was an impressionable youngster of about twelve years at the time and remembered the adventure as a blocked out incident in his early life.
The A.M. Beers was owned by his father and was a two masted schooner of 211 tons, 104 feet long, 24 feet across her beam and a 9 foot hold. Built by Charles Cash of Algonac, Michigan, in 1864, she was a typical lumber hooker of the period. Within two years the vessel came to Lake Michigan where she plied for Chicago interests until 1887, after which the vessel was registered at Milwaukee. Henry Brandt became her skipper in 1897 and acquired ownership the following year.
William Brandt’s narrative reads:
“I spent a winter aboard the Beers in Chicago, 1900-1901. We docked in Illinois Central Slip C (which was about a block east of Michigan Avenue) and had about 8000 bushels of potatoes aboard, which were sold during the winter, mostly to commission houses then on old South Water Street. Most of the time potatoes were bought and sold by captain-owners to give them something to do during the winter months. On the Beers they were carried in bulk but I do not know how they were loaded.
“Every weekday morning, horse drawn trucks from the commission houses would pull up beside the Beers unhitch one of the horses, which was then used to lift or haul sacked potatoes out of the hold by a tackle attached to the fore or main boom. The boom was then swung out over the truck. This went on for about four months.
“The potatoes were kept from freezing by means of four stoves, two in the hold, one under each hatch, one in the cabin and the other in the foc’sle, so somebody had to be on board all the time. I don’t remember any potatoes freezing despite the fact the ice in the slip was thick. We’d walk on it when necessary. After the morning rush or sometime during the day, we’d sack potatoes, or perhaps shovel snow off the deck and rails. Dad would go out collecting or finding new customers and I’d do the cabin work – cleaning and cooking. On nice days there was also ship work to be done, repairs and getting ready for the next season. Evenings and Sundays we’d read the newspapers and magazines. Incidentally, our mail was delivered right to the ship when properly addressed, ‘Schooner Beers, Illinois Central Slip C., Chicago, Illinois.“’
Less than two years later the Beers final document was surrendered at Milwaukee on October 7, 1902, with the endorsement “Vessel total loss – stranded.” Her end came at Glen Haven, Michigan near Sleeping Bear Point while northbound to pick up a cargo of potatoes. During a good lump of sea the Beers anchored herself for security, but the chain parted and she was driven on the beach where she stood fast and was broken up by heavy seas.
Attesting to the profitability of the potato trade, one Charles Nelson brought such cargoes into Chicago for seven years beginning in 1901. He was a native of Norway and came to the inland seas from a salt water career, to serve as sailing master on lake schooners. By 1880 he was on the lakes while residing at Ahnapee (present day Algona) in Wisconsin and a short time later took up residence in Chicago.
Schooner ROUSE SIMMONS. Image courtesy of Alpena County George N. Fletcher Public Library.
During the nineties as owner, first of the Mary E. Packard and later the Margaret Dall, he traded in Christmas trees on his final voyage of the season. By the turn of the century, Nelson switched to potatoes in a larger ship named the Ida. In 1908, while northbound for her annual potato lading the vessel was struck by an early equinoctial and capsized off Frankfort, Michigan. The crew was taken off but the vessel went out of registry, a total loss. The stout Milwaukee built vessel had sailed the lakes for forty years. Thereafter, Captain Nelson re-entered the Christmas tree trade and in 1912, in another schooner, the Rouse Simmons, which proved to be his coffin. She was lost with all hands in a late November blow off Two Rivers, Wisconsin, while carrying a cargo of Christmas greens to Chicago.
The late season voyages of the potato ships were not performed without peril. In 1901, the schooner Pride, 83 tons, was wrecked on Washington Island, at Death’s Door in Green Bay north of Door county peninsula. The vessel was loading a cargo of potatoes when a late November gale put her on the beach where she was broken up by the waves.
The Oldest Schooner Afloat
Seven years later the scow schooner Seaman came a cropper at about the same place when the vessel stranded on a shoal. She had traded in potatoes from Sutton’s Bay as early as 1898. At the time of her demise her cargo consisted of a deckload of slabs and 3000 bushels of potatoes and the entire cargo was lost with the ship. When the Seaman was lost she was the oldest laker in American registry having been built in 1847, thus rounding out a sailing career of 61 years.
Port Death’s Door
The French courier-des-bois and fur gatherers named this northern entrance to Green Bay, Port-des-Morts (Death’s Door). Down through the years lake commerce has had no argument with this fatal designation. It is presumed by many historians that LaSalle’s luckless ship, the Griffin the first sail craft on the Great Lakes met her doom here. Subsequent annals of Lake Michigan tell us that currents and foul weather in this area have combined to administer the coup-de-grace to hundreds of once proud ships of both sail and steam. The area is a veritable graveyard of ships.
The Thomas C. Wilson, 30 tons, brought potatoes into Chicago harbor from Charlevoix in 1892 and found them so profitable that in the spring, when her supply was depleted, the vessel sailed north for another cargo. She loaded at White Lake just above Muskegon in late April while the spring storms were sweeping the lake. In his haste to get back to the marketplace her skipper gambled with the weather. While at the mercy of the storm in mid-lake some boards parted and the vessel sprung a leak that could not be controlled by her pumps. Filling fast she was picked up by the appropriately named tug Welcome and brought into Milwaukee harbor where she was put up on the boxes. This is the only reference to a spring potato cargo that I have been able to find, all others were November passages. Nine years later this same vessel was wrecked at Egg Harbor in Door county while on another venture in potatoes. Because of the lateness of the season the craft could not be taken off the beach and it was hoped that she would hold fast until spring. But heavy seas, even in the protection of Green Bay, flattened and reduced her to a total loss. She lay on the beach six months before surrendering her papers.
Another vessel that came to grief was the Margaret Dall, frequently referred to in the press as the Maggie Dall. The vessel had traded in potatoes from Sturgeon Bay in 1900 and again in 1902. Four years later while returning to Chicago with a potato cargo, she fell victim to winds and a good lump of sea drove her on the beach at South Manitou Island. There she was broken up by the heavy seas of the next few weeks.
Several other ships with potato cargoes were lost but cannot be positively identified.
The potato growing areas in Michigan extended from just above Muskegon to Charlevoix. Sutton’s Bay on Grand Traverse Bay appears to have been the busiest shipping point. In Wisconsin, Door County was the only growing area reported and reached from Sturgeon Bay in the south to Washington Island in the north.
The end of the potato ships came in the second decade of this century when the sailing fleet began to disappear. Attrition reduced the once mighty armada to less than 400 ships of sail by 1910. The swaddling oil industry in Texas as well as the southern lumber areas bought many of the remaining lakers and moved them to the gulf states for operations there. During the early years of World War I when the German submarine menace made inroads on British shipping, the Empire called upon its colonies to replace lost bottoms. As a consequence many of the Great Lakes lumber hookers were brokered into the Caribbean and sailed thereafter under British registry. Of course the greatest factor in the elimination of the potato ships was the takeover of much of lake shipping by the railroads. And so this colorful off season occupation of lake- faring men passed into history.
Read More of Inland Seas Online
