[Gutenberg 52976] • The Great Lakes / The Vessels That Plough Them: Their Owners, Their Sailors, and Their Cargoes, Together with a Brief History of Our Inland Seas

This profusely illustrated book, as entertaining as it is informing, has the twofold advantage of being written by a man who knows the Lakes and their shores as well as what has been written about them. The general reader will enjoy the romance attaching to the past history of the Lakes and not less the romance of the present—the story of the great commercial fleets that plough our inland seas, created to transport the fruits of the earth and the metals that are dug from the bowels of the earth. To the business man who has interests in or about the Lakes, or to the prospective investor in Great Lakes enterprises, the book will be found suggestive. Comparatively little has been written of these freshwater seas, and many of his readers will be amazed at the wonderful story which this volume tells. Mr. Curwood's volume belongs to the American Waterways Series. The facts of the lake freight traffic which he has here presented are doubtless in great part new to most Americans, and are of unquestionable value to students who wish an accurate grasp of the main features of our present material development, and of its probable trend in the future. One is continually meeting the city where in 1907 "was built more tonnage than in any other city of the United States," the "richest country on the fare of the earth," the "greatest freight traffic road in existence," the "greatest waterway of commerce in the world," until even the adult head is in a whirl comparable only to that of the boy on his first visit to the wonderland of a Barnum and Bailey. The boy who starts down at the bottom and rises to do things is much in evidence—the two who began in overalls and grease, pulling and heaving with common laborers until they stand to-day "monuments to courage and ambition, the earth's two greatest builders of ships"; the poor ten-hour-aday mechanic of a few years since, "whose word is now law in the directing of more than a hundred vessels, the greatest fleet in the world"; the president of five steamship companies who began as a messenger-boy at Lansing, Michigan, "with just two assets: his clothes and his ambition"—and many another.

Contents

PART I

THE SHIPS, THEIR OWNERS, THEIR SAILORS,

AND THEIR CARGOES

I—THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP'S

II—WHAT THE SHIPS CARRY—ORE .

III—WHAT THE SHIPS CARRY—OTHER CARGOES

IV—PASSENGER TRAFFIC AND SUMMER LIFE

V—THE ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY OF THE INLAND SEAS

VI—BUFFALO AND DULUTH: THE ALPHA AND OMEGA OF THE LAKES

VII—A TRIP ON A GREAT LAKES FREIGHTER

PART II

ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE LAKES

I—ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY

II—THE LAKES CHANGE MASTERS

III—THE WAR OF 1812 AND AFTER

This book originally published by Putnam in 1909 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.