MAY • JUNE, 1994 VOLUME XLII; Number 3 GREAT LAKES MARITIME INSTITUTE DOSSIN GREAT LAKES MUSEUM Belle Isle, Detroit, Michigan 48207 TELESCOPE Page 58 MEMBERSHIP NOTES • There are two new books available at the museum's gift shop that will be of interest to members. Iron Fleet-. The Great Lakes in World War II bv George J. Joachim traces the contributions made to the war effort. Beginning with the late 1930’s, bulk carriers and passenger ships remained idled due to the Depression. With the outbreak of war in Europe, several Great Lakes passengers ships and package freighters were requisitioned for service overseas. When the United States entered the war, transportation of raw materials became vital. Each chapter details the cooperation of government agencies, Lakes Carriers' Association, vessel crews and dockside companies in meeting production quotas. Also covered are placement of soldiers to guard the Soo Locks, problems of dwindling numbers of men to serve aboard Great Lakes vessels and shipbuilding activities around the Lakes. This book 139-page book retails for $21.95. Queen o f the Lakes by Mark Thompson honors a particular group of Great Lakes vessels that were given this title when launched. Beginning with the Frontenac, launched on Lake Ontario in 1678, the histories of dozens of vessels are detailed. Not only is the usual background data provided, but so is the role that economics played in changing the interior design of cargo holds and overall ship design that produced the modem ships of the late 1970's and 1980's. Some well-known vessels are covered such as David Dows, Onoko, Christopher Columbus, Victory, Zenith City, Samuel F.B. Morse, Augustus B. Wolvin, and 600-footers built in the early 1900's. Canadian vessels are well represented with the title given to W. Grant Murden of CSL in 1914 and the Lemoyne in 1926. The modem lakers include the Carl D. Bradlley in 1927, the first seIf-unloader to have the honor and the Wilfred Sykes in the late 1940’s. With the boom in shipbuilding in the 1950’s and 1960's, the title of Queen of the Lakes changed rapidly. This 224-page book retails for $32.95. Both of these books are published by Wayne State University Press as part of their Great Lakes Books publications. MEETING NOTICES • The annual Curator Robert E. Lee Dinner will be held at the St. Clair Inn on Friday, September 23,1994. The dinner notice is included in this issue. Reservations will be limited to 110 persons. CONTENTS* Membership Notes, meeting notices, etc. 58 Detroit River Crossing by Evelyn McLean 59 Sailing Aboard the John W. Boardman in 1940 by Lawson Browne 65 Fiftieth Anniversary of the USCG Mackinaw by Kathy McGraw 69 Great Lakes & Seaway News Edited by Don Richards 73 Published at Detroit, Michigan by the GREAT LAKES MARITIME INSTITUTE Printed in the United States by Macomb Printing, Inc. OUR COVER PICTURE ... Transportation across the Detroit River has developed rapidly from the small ferries to those able to withstand the harsh ice conditions in winter. As tunnels and a bridge were built between Detroit and Windsor allowed for a direct linkbetween Canada and the U.S., the number of ferries declined until only the carfloats, pushed by tugs remained on the Detroit River. The cover photo was taken by John Polacsek as the R.G. Cassidy made her last crossing fromDetroit to Windsor in April, 1994. The back cover photo of the Detroit River shows a much different waterfront as six ferries are docked in Detroit and several passenger ships are docked further upriver in the downtown area. Telescope is produced with assistance from the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, an agency of the Historical Department of the City of Detroit. MAY *JUN, 1994 Page 59 DETROIT RIVER CROSSING by EVELYN G. McLEAN For decades the twenty-five mile border be­ 1906, the construction of the Michigan Central Rail­ tween the international cities of Windsor and Detroit way tunnel commenced. At a cost of $8,500,000 twin has been threaded by commercial traffic ducts from steel tubes 262 feet long and 23 feet high were sunk numerous points along the shores. The solutions to into prepared trenches and encased in cement. It its the problem of transportation posed by the natural first year of operation, 1910, the rail artery conducted barrier have been many, ranging from shuttling fer­ over 243,000 cars. Its continuing and current utiliza­ ries, to rail and automobile tunnels, to the obvious tion has disproved the grim speculation of early 20th Century answer, an aerial highway. critics who feared cave-ins. The idea of a bridge was first seriously pro­ By 1924 the need for more rapid and versatile posed in 1903 by engineer George S. Morrison, transportation precipitated a new group's campaign to whose death caused the abandonment of the proposal. raise funds for the erection of a bridge, under the aegis Private interest in a tunnel prevailed, based on the of former Detroiter Joseph A. Bower, whose banking success of the Grand Trunk Railway tunnel at Port interests had taken him to New York. Construction Huron which had opened in 1891. On October 1, began three years later, and the work was accom­ Tug C.A. LORMAN towing section of Detroit-Windsor tunnel. TELESCOPE Page 60 plished within the promised thirty-six months. levard to the island. The sky-slung Ambassador Bridge was com­ The vehicular Detroit-Windsor Tunnel opened pleted early in America's great bridge-building pe­ for traffic on November 3,1930. It was engineered by riod between 1925 and 1936. Its main span stretches Hugh Kellner, who began planning in 1925. The between its towers on self-anchored cables across actual construction, employed the same method as the 1,850 feet of the busiest commercial waterway in the Michigan Central Railway tunnel, took only slightly world, fulfilling the design of the firm of Smith, over two years to complete. It has remained essen­ Hinchman and Grylls (engineered by Jonathan Jones tially unchanged since its opening, other than for and the renowned Leon S, Moissieff) in spite of modifications to the approaches at its extremities. structural setback imposed by the shifting river bed. Two single traffic lanes permit trucks, buses, and cars As spectacular as the bridge is in its size and to move with reasonable speed across the border. grace, the view it affords from its walkway of the Ferry service has been recorded here since river's traffic is perhaps even more stimulating. A 1802, when Geoffrey Godefroy was issued a license, pedestrian gains a panoramic impression of the chan­ facilitating the passage of livestock, produce and nel sweeping past metropolitan skyscrapers and freight people across the Detroit River. The rail service's yards on its flanks. Upstream, the Detroit River barely extension from Niagara to Windsor in 1854 spurred begins its course out of Lake St. Clair before it's the expansion of such ferries to convey Detroit's interrupted by Peche Island (reputedly the summer products to New York and the East, but freight cars camp of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh), split by Belle didn't cross until 1867, an event somewhat overshad­ Isle and rhythmically spanned in part by that civic owed by Canadian Confederation and the British park's low-arched bridge to the American shore. The North American Act. United States Coast Guard station on the island's The steamer Great Western (launched in 1867 south-east point oversees traffic to the downriver and named after the parent company) was the first narrows approaching LaSalle and Wyandotte, where railroad carferry to operate here. It replaced in part, the spewing industrial stacks of Michigan's shore the ferries Ottawa and Windsor, which had been built contrast with the Canadian setting of flat, marshy in Detroit by Dr. George B. Russel for the railroad's farmland and fishing grounds. Below this point the passengers and freight. Like many of its type, the river's final bend around Ontario's peninsula corrects Great Western was prefabricated in Scotland. Its iron the topographical whim which here places Canada plates arrived in 1865 and were assembled at Henry south of its American neighbor. Jenkin's shipyard above Walker's distillery and upon Beneath the bridge from mid-March to Christ­ completion it was placed under the command of Capt. mas glide great longships of the lake fleets bearing John D. Sullivan. grain, ore, coal and limestone. Interspersed is an Two of the muscled old ferries which still ply abundance of local pleasure craft and work boats, all upstream for a mile or so, and did so under their own scuttling over submarine telegraph and telephone power until last year, have given service for nearly a cables (the first laid in mid-1857, the latter in 1881), century. S.S. Huron was a propeller driven ferry and and the tunnels conveying automobiles and trains had transported laden freight across the three-quarter across the international boundary. mile channel since 1875, the year of her registry at A wooden bridge spanning the shallow channel Sarnia. Her sister ship, S. S. Lansdowne, demonstrated between Detroit and the north shore of Belle Isle the purely functional characteristics of Scottish de­ burned in 1915, and was not replaced until 1923. sign and was aesthetic by accident of today's stylistic During those years people travelled from Detroit by over-refinements and, perhaps by time colored nos­ ferry to a dock on the park's south side. Frederick Law talgia for the robust, grassroots, 19th century spirit. Olmstead, Central Park's planner and a landscape Huron's clinker-built hull emerged from the architect with Chicago’s World's Colombian Exposi­ yard of Smith and Company at Point Edward, to be tion, was named consultant on the planning of Belle fitted with coal fired boilers to supply power to the Isle in 1881.