A Very Superior Whale
On Saturday, June 23, 1888, a new steel ship slid off the ways into the water in Saint Louis Bay at the western end of Lake Superior. Its builder and owner, Captain Alexander McDougall, watched with great satisfaction as his brainchild floated gently in the water to great applause from the crowd. At the same time, McDougall’s wife, Emmaline, standing a short distance away, turned to her sister-in-law and remarked: “There goes our last dollar.”1 Her words, recorded in McDougall’s autobiography, reveal the hopes and fears placed on this new ship.2
Simply named the 101, the vessel, called a “whaleback” for its low, rounded appearance, represented to its builder a new direction in Great Lakes bulk freighters. The unique navigational and meteorological characteristics of the Great Lakes convinced McDougall, an experienced sailor, that existing vessels were inadequate to carry the growing volume of cargoes. Constructed to carry bulk quantities of iron ore, coal, and grain, whalebacks had their greatest success from 1888 to 1894. Unlike most shipbuilders, McDougall and his financial backers envisioned constructing not only vessels to haul iron ore but also cities and ports that would become hubs in a new network of transcontinental shipping and transport.
Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin have produced iron ore since the Civil War. The growing demand for steel from railroads, skyscrapers, machinery, and other industrial uses prompted a need for raw materials, and the ore from Minnesota’s Mesabi Range, easily accessible and in plentiful supply, filled it. The year the whaleback entered service, 5.1 million tons of ore passed through the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, making it the leading cargo in 1888. During the 1880s, a shrinking number of cargoes traveled by sailing schooners, with engines instead powering the numerous passenger and package freight steamers on the Great Lakes. The need for large-capacity vessels to haul ore and coal was the catalyst for the new ship design.3
Great Lakes steamships from this period inherited their form from sailing vessels, whose features included a wedge-shaped bow, flat sides, and a relatively flat bottom to deal with the low water depths of many channels and harbors. The removal of rigging that cluttered the deck allowed easier access for ships’ crews and the addition of primitive mechanical unloading equipment. A new design, the wooden bulk freighter R. J. Hackett, built in 1869 by Elihu M. Peck of Cleveland, offered a long, clean deck broken by numerous hatches that provided access to an open, barnlike cargo hold. The design proved functional, and vessel owners adapted it to their needs. The great stands of lumber available for shipbuilding and available skillsets of builders meant that it wasn’t until 1882 that metal hulls entered the bulk trades, with the freighter Onoko. Iron and steel hulls presented the opportunity to design ships specifically to haul these heavy cargoes.4
Among the innovators was Alexander McDougall. Born on the island of Islay, Scotland, in 1845, he had gone to sea at age sixteen after his family immigrated to Collingwood, Ontario, in 1854. In the late 1860s, he made a crucial friend in the Cleveland-based captain and ship owner Thomas Wilson, who and the barge , in 1880. In 1881, after commanding the during its first season, McDougall moved to Duluth to open his own firm as shipping agent and chandler.
