Whaleback Ships and the American Steel Barge Company by C. Roger Pellett (review)

134 The Michigan Historical Review McCammack situates these encounters within the Great Migration and demonstrates that, though the circumstances and forms of African American encounters with the natural world had changed, nature “remained integral to their culture, both recalling a way of life left behind and a complement to modern urban conditions” (p. 5). Nature, then, was a site for continuity and tradition as well as a space for innovation and evolution. Landscapes of Hope makes an important contribution to the fields of African American history and environmental studies. Moreover, though it focuses on Chicago, the discussion of Idlewild enriches our understanding of that piece of Michigan history, and McCammack’s approach should prove a useful model for work on Detroit and other cities in Michigan. Matthew Mace Barbee Siena Heights University C. Roger Pellett. Whaleback Ships and the American Steel Barge Company. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2018. Pp. 216. Paper: $39.99. Among the most distinctive craft to sail the Great Lakes were the whaleback freighters and barges of the American Steel Barge Company, with their rounded decks and unusual bows and sterns. Among those fascinated by them is Roger Pellett, who in his retirement has volunteered with the Meteor, the last surviving whaleback, now a museum in Superior, Wisconsin. To the history of the fleet and the company that built it, he brings years of experience in business and training in naval architecture and marine engineering. The reader is well served by Pellett’s even-handed take on the strengths and weaknesses of the whaleback design. Most historians give inventor and patent-holder Capt. Alexander McDougall the credit. Pellett looks critically at McDougall’s initial barge, and he credits the improvement in later barges and steamboats to the middle managers brought in to assist the company and, in particular, Robert Clark (p. 42). Pellett notes a variety of ways in which he feels McDougall was wrong. The captain believed in smaller hulls, which he felt would be easier to handle in the smaller Great Lakes harbors (p. 85). Moreover, smaller hulls would also be capable of transiting the Welland Canal and going to sea, where McDougall envisioned an even larger market for his designs. A chapter is dedicated to efforts to sell the design in Britain, as well as to establish a shipyard for building them in Washington state. Both failed. While Pellett draws attention to the fact that the American Steel Barge Company’s yard in Book Reviews 135 Superior was capable of rapidly fabricating the central body of the whalebacks, the company often had to bring in the more complex bow and stern plates and sections from other yards. The eighteen steamships the company produced were powered by eleven different engine designs from other companies. In addition to questions of ship design, Pellett explores the operations of the company that produced them. Referred to as the Hoyt syndicate, the principals in the American Steel Barge Company had a wide range of other investments. The shipyard was moved from Duluth, Minnesota, to Superior, where the syndicate owned the Land and River Improvement Company. Steel was supplied by the West Superior Iron and Steel Company, another Hoyt syndicate venture (p. 57). On the Great Lakes, where most of the steamers and barges remained, however, the company operated most of the whalebacks in their own fleet, which then had to compete with potential customers of the shipyard. Pellett’s analysis suggests that the business was going to take several years to achieve positive cash flow. When the economy failed in 1893, John D. Rockefeller was brought in to prop up the company and eventually took control. When his iron and steel, and related investments, were brought into the United States Steel merger, most of the whalebacks became units in the massive Pittsburgh Steamship fleet. Big Steel, which controlled the mines, railways, and shipping facilities, was not interested in smaller hulls or smaller harbors. And as Pellett effectively demonstrates, the whaleback design could not be stretched much past 400 feet in length in an era where the new hulls were passing 500 and would soon be 600 feet long. Unlike the excellent line drawings, there are several poorly reproduced...