The WILLIAM G. MATHER-Saving Great Lakes Maritime History – Summer 1990
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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
By Timothy J. Runyan, PH.D.
Christening of the WILLIMA G. MATHER. Image taken by Alan W. Sweigert.
For anyone living near the Great Lakes, getting a boat for Christmas is something special. But shortly before Christmas in 1987, the Great Lakes Historical Society became the proud owner of a very special boat- the 618-foot ore carrier William G. Mather.
When Cleveland-Cliffs, Inc. offered its last remaining Great Lakes vessel to the Society in March of 1987. many of us considered it a way to fulfill a lifelong dream. For years, the Society had hoped to create a facility in Cleveland to complement its maritime museum in Vermilion and thereby bring the fascinating story of the Great Lakes to a larger audience. The Mather, built in 1925 and laid up in Toledo since 1980, profaned to become such a facility. An actual artifact of Great Lakes history would be put on display and opened to the public.
The Mather might have met the fate of other older lakes vessels – a trip to the scrapyard – had not GLHS trustee Robert Hosler approached Cliffs director and GLHS trustee emeritus James Ireland about preserving her. As early as 1985, Hosler and fellow trustees Alexander Meakin and Morris Bradley began holding conversations with Cliffs executives to explore the possibility of converting the vessel into a museum. Sam Scovil, then president of Cliffs, supported the idea, as did his successor Tom Moore. But could the Society afford to acquire such a monumental project as this one? How much would it cost? Could we raise the funds to renovate her so that we could be proud of the final product? And would the vessel serve our needs as an educational center?
To try to answer those questions, we established a Mather Committee, chaired by Society Trustee John Burke, a retired aircraft hydraulics industry engineer, and composed of trustees with close ties to the Mather and to Great Lakes shipping. Burke, whose grandfather was Marine Manager for Cliffs when the vessel was built and whose aunt christened the vessel, sailed on the Mather as a youth. Committee members included R. Gregg Ross, Marine Manager for Canada Steamship Lines; Captain Wayne Bratton, owner of Trident Marine Services and the cruise boat Holiday; Harrold “Bud” Gobeille, a retired electrical industry manufacturer’s representative whose father was Marine Manager for Cliffs in the 1950,s; George Palmer, Chief Inspector for the American Bureau of Shipping; Frank Castle, Vice-President, Marine Transportation, for Oglebay Norton Company; Frank Samsel, owner of his own marine supply and services company; Arthur Brophy, Manager of the Ore and Coal Exchange; Capt. Edgar Jacobson, retired Fleet Captain for the Columbia Transportation Division of Oglebay Norton; Jack Culbertson, retired Fleet Engineer for Cliffs and ship keeper on the Mather, and myself, a maritime historian and professor of history at Cleveland State University.
After formally accepting possession or the vessel in December, 1987, our first task was to assess her condition. According to Culbertson, she was in good shape for a vessel built in 1925, save for cosmetic work and one major problem. While the vessel was laid up in the Maumee River, a vagrant had started a fire on board which left the owner’s and officers’ dining rooms badly burned. But several Society members made trips to visit the Mather and came away enthusiastic about the virtues of this particular vessel, so we continued our explorations.
One early idea was to preserve only the pilot house or the forward end of the Mather rather than the entire vessel, on shore rather than in the water. It soon became clear that feasibility studies were necessary. With the assistance of a grant from the George Gund Foundation, we employed North American Marine to conduct a survey of the Mather and we retained the architectural firm of Dickson Associates to begin planning studies for the vessel’s conversion into a museum. The same grant funded evaluations by a naval architect and by consultants from the museum ships William A. Irvin in Duluth and Valley Camp at Sault Ste. Marie. The result of those early studies was that we should renovate the entire vessel and preserve her afloat.
More Tough Questions
The surveys and evaluations brought us to another tough question – would we have to drydock the Mather to inspect her hull and make repairs? And at what cost? Initially our insurers required drydocking as a condition of insurability, but research of the vessel’s history showed that she had undergone hull repairs and was evaluated as sound before her lay-up. After considerable study, the insurance company agreed to our request that drydocking not be required. That hurdle passed, the project could proceed. But by then it was April, 1988.
The next question was an even tougher one. Where does one put a vessel with a 62-foot beam that is longer than two football fields? The logical spot was Cleveland’s East Ninth Street Pier, where a new lakefront park called North Coast Harbor was being created. The location was between the headquarters or the U.S. Coast Guard’s Ninth District and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga Port Authority, and seemed a natural place for a vessel museum. Fortunately, the North Coast Harbor staff and Board of Trustees felt the same enthusiasm and encouraged us in our efforts to place the vessel at Ninth Street. Next came discussions with the City of Cleveland’s Director of City Planning, Hunter Morrison, and Mike Perrigo of the Division or Building and Housing which led us to realize that the Mather would be treated as a building and determined what modifications were necessary to meet city codes. Encouragement also came from then mayor George Voinovich, who wrote a letter in support of the project.
Unfortunately, the logical spot for the Mather was next to Burke Lakefront Airport, and the Mather’s superstructure infringed on the airport’s flight path. When we first began to consider the Mather project, we had submitted a petition for a “Determination of No Hazard to Air Navigation” to the Federal Aviation Administration. With support from the City’s Department of Port Control, in June of 1988 (after 13 months of waiting), the Society received permission to place the Mather at the East Ninth Street Pier during the summer months, provided her mast was lowered and she was ballasted to an acceptable height.
With permission granted by the FAA, our next task was to get the vessel from Toledo to Cleveland. But she could not be tied up at the lakefront while the work of renovation took place, so we began to look for a place to moor her in the Cuyahoga River. Unfortunately, the Flats along the banks of the Cuyahoga had become Cleveland’s newest entertainment center, and dock space in the river was in high demand and was very expensive. We spent months searching for dock space, going as far as Lorain’s Black River where LTV Steel had offered space to the Society. But no space was available year-round for a 618-foot vessel. Fortunately. we found that the city-owned dock site at Collision Bend on lease to the G & W shipyard was available for part of the year. But where could we put the Mather for the rest of the year? I had knocked on doors up and down the riverfront for weeks when Donald Joyce of the Mid-Continent Coal and Coke Company proved a true friend of the Mather by offering us his company’s dock, a few hundred yards to the south of G & W’s, for the remainder of the year. We would have to move the boat from dock to dock, but at least we had a place for her.
The Mather Comes Home
The difficulty of finding docking space was forgotten, however, when the Mather returned to Cleveland on October 8, 1988, amid the fanfare of television cameras and newspaper articles. Finally, we could begin to plan the renovation in earnest. The next challenge, of course, was raising money – lots of money -to do a first-class job of renovation. Preliminary estimates by Dickson and Associates, myself, and others indicated that we were looking at an $800,000 project. But several trustees and members came forward with contributions, and in the summer of 1988, we received two generous grants. The Junior League of Cleveland provided funds to repair the interior fire damage, and the Elizabeth Ring Mather and William Gwinn Mather Fund agreed to match that grant with funds for towing, insurance, and general repairs. But we needed a great deal more. Rick Pollak and Gary Conley at North Coast Harbor, Inc., provided invaluable help and advice with fundraising. Then educator and budding Great Lakes historian Jan Copes put in hours of research and writing, and we submitted additional grant proposals to various foundations in the winter and spring of 1989.
To get the support of Cleveland area foundations, however, we had to show them that the Mather Museum would be an asset to the city. More than simply a restored historic vessel, the Mather had to be developed as an educational resource. To that end, Copes began a survey of area school districts to determine how the Mather could be used to teach Great Lakes history and complement what was currently being taught about the Great Lakes in area schools Then chairman Burke conducted a tour aboard the vessel for local teachers, who gave us their ideas on what a school field trip the to Mather should be like, and using those ideas, Copes began work on curriculum materials for eventual student visitors to the Mather.
The foundations responded to our plans to teach Great Lakes history aboard the Mather, to tourists and adult visitors as well as area students. In March of 1989, the Cleveland Foundation and the Gund Foundation both committed substantial grants to the project, provided the Society meet a combination of outside and internal fundraising goals. A fundraising campaign directed at members and trustees began, and plans were laid for a corporate campaign to help us meet the Cleveland and Gund Foundation challenges. And in the spring and summer of 1989, we received grants from the George W. Codrington Foundation, the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation, the Cleveland Clearinghouse, and the Samuel Livingston Mather Trust. Over $400,000 had been committed to create the Mather Museum, but we needed more.
The spring of 1989 also saw a lengthy process of negotiations with North Coast Harbor to develop a lease agreement that would allow the Society to moor the Mather at the East Ninth Street Pier once the renovation was complete. As summer approached and the Society had neither a firm lease nor sufficient funds to do the renovation, those of us associated with the project had to face the disappointment of knowing that the museum would not be open in the summer of 1989, as we had hoped. But instead of giving up, we continued to negotiate, to raise money, and to plan.
One part of our plan had to be revised, though. We had intended to place the Mather on the East Ninth Street Pier during the May to October tourist season and then tie her up in the river during the winter. As every sailor knows, winter gales on Lake Erie can send waves crashing over the break wall, and the harmonic action created by such waves can create forces that can tear a vessel from her moorings. The Ninth Street Pier was not equipped to hold a vessel the size of the Mather during winter conditions. But moving the vessel back and forth from the lakefront to the river was expensive and risky, and we had learned the hard way how difficult it was to find docking space in the Cuyahoga. So we asked the firm of Matrix Engineering to study the pier and propose a mooring system that would reinforce it in such a way that it could hold the Mather year-round. Our insurers needed convincing, but once the mechanics were worked out they approved of the system.
Another major hurdle was crossed. But summer was drawing to a close and this issue alone had consumed four months. And remember the Federal Aviation Authority? They had only agreed to our seasonal mooring at East Ninth St. We now notified their offices in Chicago and Detroit that we wanted to place the Mather at the pier year-round. More forms followed. Then we found that encapsulating the asbestos on the Mather would cost about ten times more than we thought it would. We needed even more money. Once again, the project was on the brink.
Good News
Things began to look up in the fall, though. The Society and North Coast Harbor came to terms on a lease agreement. Sam Scovil, the former Cliffs CEO, volunteered to chair a corporate fundraising effort for us. During the next few months, contributions flowed in from Cleveland-Cliffs, the American Steamship Company, the Interlake Steamship Company, Oglebay Norton, LTV Steel, Eaton Corporation, Algoma Steel, Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue, Ernst and Young, BP America, TRW, The George Garretson Wade Trust, and First Boston Bank, totaling some $260,000. Then the Society, supported by the Jennings Foundation grant, was able to hire a full-time director to guide the Mather project through the next year. Rebecca McKinnell, who holds a master’s degree in museum science and historic preservation and who has worked for the Western Reserve Historical Society, came on board in December. As the Christmas season of 1989 came around, we had a lease, we were nearing our foundation, corporate, and internal fundraising goals, and we had a director in place. And, yes, the FAA found the Mather would represent no hazard to air traffic at Burke Lakefront Airport, even if it were moored there year-round.
Finally, in 1990, the renovation began. A dedicated group of volunteers began to gather on board the Mather every Saturday and later Wednesdays, rain or shine, and made remarkable progress in restoring the lustre of this former fleet flagship. Meanwhile, pencils, calculators, and adding machines in my office were in almost constant service trying to make the $700,000 (that had been raised) stretch to cover the bids for carpentry, painting, interior renovation, and mooring reinforcements, and to determine how much more was needed. As the summer of 1990 approached, we were still submitting grant proposals, awaiting word on those already submitted, developing curriculum materials, and planning a video presentation for Mather visitors.
The WILLIAM G. MATHER today at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Image from News 5 Cleveland taken by Igor Oliyarnik.
With new mooring structures in place and contracts let for much of the renovation work, the eventual arrival of the Str. William G. Mather to the lake-front was no longer in doubt. Of course, we did have a problem with the height restrictions at the pier when some miscalculations put us eight feet over the limit allowed by the FAA, but we sorted that out. The last bout simply served as a continued reminder that it’s not over until it’s over. Our last move in the Cuyahoga River to Collision Bend for the repair work was the penultimate move. Next stop – the Cleveland lakefront.
We had frequent setbacks in our efforts to make the Mather Museum a reality, but we were gratified by the support we received from the community, from the marine industry, and from the trustees, members, and interested volunteers who believed in the project. We wouldn’t give up this ship because she has become a symbol of what the Great Lakes Historical Society is all about The Mather Museum, along with the Society’s museum in Vermilion, the USS Cod, and the journal Inland Seas®, is yet another way for the Society to fulfill its mission to preserve and interpret the history of the Great Lakes. The project involved the efforts of far more individuals than those whose names have been mentioned here. The support and enthusiasm of North Coast Harbor, Inc., the City of Cleveland, the foundation and corporate communities, and our Society’s trustees and members, has never wavered. All those involved have the satisfaction of knowing that their contributions have helped to preserve a piece of Great Lakes history.
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