A Howard Sprague painting depicting bustling activity at the Duluth ore dock in the 1890s. Whaleback barges and whaleback steamers are depicted getting cargo of iron ore. | FROM “THE MISSABE ROAD” BY FRANK A. KING
ORE BOATS
THE LEGEND LIVES ON BY ERIC CHANDLER When I was nine, my family climbed onto the deck of the M/V Roger Blough. During a rare open house in Duluth, we saw first-hand that lake freighters are huge. Vessels that only travel the Great Lakes are traditionally called “lakers” or boats, even though they’re technically ships. The Roger Blough first sailed in 1972, so when I stepped on board in 1976, it was relatively new. At 858 feet long, the boat has been stuck in my mind ever since. My family lives in Duluth now. Sometimes I see the Roger Blough floating by and it makes me smile. When I looked into ore boats, I learned they’re connected to everything else. Shipping is connected to iron mines, railroads, ore docks, the Soo Locks and steel mills. As a curious amateur, it was hard for me to focus on just the ore boat piece of this network. Three things surprised me. First, the earliest shipments of ore happened from places I didn’t expect in interesting vessels. Second, the scale of ore shipping today is bigger than I thought. And third, ore shipping has a massive impact on our economy. 16
DECEMBER 2020
A profile depiction of the completed M/V Mark W. Barker, the newest laker expected to launch in 2022. | THE INTERLAKE STEAMSHIP COMPANY Thanks to Laura Jacobs at the University of Wisconsin-Superior (UWS), I was able to explore the university’s Lake Superior Maritime Collection. With her help, I was able to zero in on the first ore boats. Iron ore was discovered near Marquette, Michigan in 1844. One source from UWS said a test batch of Marquette Range ore was sent to Pennsylvania steel mills in 1850. There were only a couple of small steamers and just a few schooners on Lake Superior at that time.
on the steamer Baltimore. This small consignment to Detroit was the first commercial shipment of iron ore on the Great Lakes. According to a brief history published in the 1910 Annual Report of the Lake Carriers’ Association (LCA), the first ore shipped “in any quantity” on Lake Superior happened in September, 1853. Four unnamed vessels took those 152 tons from Marquette to Sault St. Marie (“the Soo”) where they were portaged around the rapids and shipped to steel mills in Pennsylvania.
Then, two sources pointed to a “six barrel” shipment from Marquette in July 7, 1852
Then the LCA report says the steamers Samuel Ward, Napoleon, and Peninsula
NORTHERN WILDS
shipped ore from Marquette in 1854. Supposedly, Mr. McKnight and his horse carted every pound of freight around the rapids at the Soo that year. Construction of locks on the St. Mary’s River connecting Lake Superior to Lake Huron began in 1852. The Soo Locks were finished in 1855 and McKnight’s horse was probably happy about that. The brig Columbia was the first craft to carry Marquette Range ore through the new lock on August 17, 1855 when it took 132 tons to Cleveland. Then ore was mined from the Vermilion Range in Minnesota and shipped by railroad to Two Harbors. The steamer Hecla and the Ironton carried the first ore from there on August 1, 1884. The Ironton was a schooner used as a consort barge, towed by steamships. Then, the Mesabi Range opened up near Mountain Iron, Minnesota. Barge 102, a “whaleback” designed and built in Duluth by Alexander McDougall, carried the first Mesabi Range ore from the Allouez dock in Superior, Wisconsin on November 11, 1892.
