A Look at History
Steamer Edward L. Ryerson Returns to Straits of Mackinac
BY FRANK STRAUS

Mackinac Island columnist Jeannette Doud has shared with Town Crier readers the good news that the steam-powered ore boat Edward L. Ryerson has gone back into service. Its owner, Mittal Steel, will run the venerable Great Lakes freighter back and forth between Lake Superior and lower Lake Michigan for the remainder of the 2006 shipping season. As a result, Mackinac Islanders may soon have the chance to see this beautiful vessel.

Among lovers of Great Lakes shipping, the Ryerson is a classic - the last ore boat to be built as an oil-fired steamship (rather than a motor vessel), the last pre-1,000foot ore boat, and the last ore boat to be built without a selfunloading crane. She is a "straight deck" ore boat, one of only two remaining in commercial service on the Great Lakes. Most bulk cargo vessels have sloped hull sides and partitions, and a movable crane topside, to speed up the loading and unloading of cargo.

The Edward L. Ryerson was built for the Inland Steel Company in 1959-60 by Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company in the Wisconsin city of the same name. (Famous for submarines, Manitowoc is today the home of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, and the home of a salvaged engine from the old Chief Wawatam.) It is 730 feet in length, that being the upper limit demanded by the Soo Locks at that time. Thirteen ore boats of the John F. Kennedy era were 730 feet long, and all 13 of them shared the honors of being the largest boats on the Upper Lakes for a time. (The Edmund Fitzgerald, built in 1958, was 729 feet long.)

The Edward L. Ryerson arrives at the Escanaba ore dock Saturday evening, July 22, to pick up a load of taconite pellets for Indiana Harbor. It was her first trip since 1998. (Photograph courtesy of Dick Lund, www.dlund.20m.com)

In August, 1960, the Ryerson carried her first cargo of iron ore south from Escanaba through Lake Michigan to Inland Steel's East Chicago, Indiana, blast furnace. The company's Indiana Harbor dock had "buckets," lifted by cranes, to scoop the iron ore out of the vessel's boxy hull compartments, so a self-unloading crane was not necessary.

As the production of enriched taconite iron ore increased on Lake Superior in the 1960s, Inland Steel sent the Ryerson through the Soo Locks many times. Carrying ore southward toward Indiana or steaming northward in "ballast," she was a frequent sight from Mackinac Island. She could carry up to 27,500 tons of iron ore, but usually hauled a bit less. With her size and capacity, she was the flagship of the Inland Steel fleet, carefully painted in the firm's colors of red, white, and silver.

The technology of the time had allowed the Ryerson's designers to create a hull that consisted of nothing but subtle curves. From her slightly raked bow to her cream-spoon shaped stern, she was the thoroughbred mare of the Upper Lakes. The pilothouses of 1960 were still up front, allowing the vessel's master to see the water as well as watch it on instruments. A proud pilothouse, set off by a ribbon of glass windows, spanned the boat's forecastle from port to starboard.

Fully loaded, the Ryerson drew 28 feet, calling for careful seamanship in threading through the Round Island Channel off Mackinac Island's harbor, with its depth of 30 feet, as well as many other trouble spots on the Minnesota-Indiana shuttle run.

Trouble came for the Ryerson in 1970-72, when a strange new vessel was assembled in Erie, Pennsylvania. The Stewart J. Cort was the first 1,000-footer to go into revenue freight service on the Upper Great Lakes. A new lock at Sault Ste. Marie had multiplied the size of the vessels that could carry iron ore by more than two. Unlike the Ryerson, the new Cort had many straight lines. Her hull, topsides, pilothouse, upper engine rooms, and even her funnels were defiantly square and boxy. While the Fitzgerald could carry up to 26,600 tons of ore, and the Ryerson could carry up to 27,500 tons, the Cort could haul up to 58,000.

Several vessels that had originally been shorter than the Ryerson were summoned back to shipyards to have extra feet welded into their hulls. For example, U.S. Steel's Arthur M. Anderson had originally been built in 1952 to be 647 feet long. In 1974-75, 120 additional feet were inserted into her hull, and she became 767 feet long, giving her many additional decades of useful life. But no similar work was performed to the Ryerson.

More 1,000-footers were built in the 1970s. Unlike the Cort, they did not even have a pilothouse up front. Their masters stood in boxes above the engine room and looked, not at the water, but at instruments that told them where they were. Then, starting in 1980, came the long downturn of the U.S. iron and steel industry.

The Edward L. Ryerson had shuttled tirelessly for Inland Steel from 1960 through 1985. Now it was time for a rest. The Ryerson's first summer down-time came in 1986-87. She was recalled, then laid up again. After several recalls, she was tied up to a Sturgeon Bay dock in December 1998. As seven seasons crept by, the chance that the one-time "Queen of the Lakes" would be recalled to active duty seemed slimmer and slimmer.

Historians say that when Jean Nicolet led an expedition westward in 1634 through the Straits of Mackinac, he was looking for India and China. Nicolet never found either country, but in the 2000s, Asia found the United States. The Chinese economic boom led to a worldwide increase in the price of and demand for steel, and the Inland Steel mills fell into the hands of the India-born Mittal Steel Company. Among the global steel conglomerate's forgotten assets was the 730-foot ore boat lying "on the beach" in upper Wisconsin. Someone remembered the vessel and "ran the numbers," as the saying goes. At

the current price of iron ore and steel, it had become economic sense to recall the aging, nonself unloading Edward L. Ryerson from her long nap and put her back into revenue service on the Great Lakes.

As with her first summer 46 years ago, the old ore boat's first active trips were to shuttle, back and forth, from the docks at Escanaba down to northwest Indiana. Then, in late July, came the orders that the Ryerson had been waiting for. She would, once again, feel under her keel the cold, blue-black, almost purple waters of Lake Superior. She would once again perform the work for which she had been designed.