From Scriber’s Magazine for March, 1890.
The first steamer on Lake Erie was the Walk-in-the-Water, built at Black Rock, near Buffalo, by one Noah Brown, and launched May 28th, 1818. She was schooner-rigged, 135 feet in length, 32 feet beam and 13 feet 3 inches deep: her tonnage was 38360⁄95 tons. Her machinery was brought from Albany, a distance of three hundred miles, in wagons drawn by five to eight horses each. She left Black Rock on her first voyage August 25th, and reached Detroit, 290 miles, in 44 hours 10 minutes. “While she could navigate down stream, her power was not sufficient to make headway against the strong current of the Niagara River. Resort was therefore made to what was known in the early days as a “horned breeze.” The Walk-in the-Water was regularly towed up the Niagara River by a number of yokes of oxen, but once above the swift current she went very well.” She made regular trips between Black Rock and Detroit, occasionally going as far as Mackinac and Green Bay on Lake Huron, until November, 1821, when she was driven ashore near Buffalo in a gale of wind and became a total wreck. Her engines, however, were recovered and put in a new boat named the Superior, in 1822. Soon after this the first high-pressure steamer on the lakes was built at Buffalo. She was named the Pioneer. In 1841 the first lake propeller was launched at Oswego. This was the Vandalia, of 160 tons, said to be the first freight boat in America to make use of Ericsson’s screw propeller. She made her first trip in November, 1841, and proved entirely successful. In the spring of 1842 she passed through the Welland Canal, and was visited by large numbers of people in Buffalo, who were curious to see this new departure in steam navigation, and the result was that two new propellers were built in that year at Buffalo, the Sampson and the Hercules.
Soon after the introduction of steamboats, and because of them, when as yet railroads were not in this part of the world, Lake Erie became the great highway of travel to the western States, and it was not long until magnificent upper cabin steamers, carrying from 1,000 to 1,500 passengers, were plying between Buffalo and Chicago. The writer well remembers making the voyage in one of these steamers late in the autumn of 1844, and that, owing to the tempestuous state of the weather, we had to tie up most every night, so that the voyage lasted nearly a whole week. The crowd of passengers was great, but it was a good-natured crowd, bent on having a “good time.” Dancing was kept up in the main saloon every evening till midnight, after which many of us were glad to get a shake-down on the cabin floor.
THE “PRINCETON.”
First propeller on the lakes that had an upper cabin—one of a fleet of fourteen passenger steamers plying between Buffalo and Chicago in 1845—had twin screws, and a speed of eleven miles an hour.
The year 1836 marks an important era in the navigation of the Great Lakes, for in that year the first cargo of grain from Lake Michigan arrived at Buffalo, brought by the brig John Kenzie from Grand River. It consisted of three thousand bushels of wheat. Previous to that date the commerce of the lakes had been all westward, and, curiously enough, the cargoes carried west consisted for the most part of flour, grain and other supplies for the new western settlements. In 1840 a regular movement of grain from west to east had been established.
In the early years of the grain trade the loading and unloading of vessels was a very slow and irksome business. As much as two or three days might be required to unload a cargo of 5,000 bushels. In the winter of 1842-43 the first grain elevator was built at Buffalo, and a new system of handling grain introduced which was to prove of incalculable benefit to the trade. The schooner Philadelphia, of 123 tons, was the first to be unloaded by the elevator.
The Canadian steam traffic on Lake Erie commenced with the steamers Chippewa and Emerald, plying between Chippewa and Buffalo; the Kent, which foundered in 1845; the Ploughboy, owned by a company in Chatham, and the Clinton, owned by Robert Hamilton, of Queenston. A much larger Canadian steam traffic developed on Lake Huron. One of the earliest passenger steamers on the Georgian Bay was the Gore, of 200 tons, built at Niagara in 1838, and called after the Lieutenant-Governor of that name. That boat, which had plied for some years between Niagara and Toronto, was placed on the route between Sturgeon Bay and Sault Ste. Marie. On Lake Huron proper, the Bruce Mines was probably the earliest Canadian steamer. She was employed in carrying copper ore from the Bruce mines to Montreal, and was wrecked in 1854. Shortly after, on the completion of the Northern Railway, in 1854, the company, with a view to developing their interests, entered into a contract with an American line of steamers to run from Collingwood to Lake Michigan ports tri-weekly and once a week to Green Bay. In 1862 six large propellers were put on the route. Later, a line of first-class passenger steamers began to ply twice a week from Collingwood and Owen Sound to Duluth at the head of Lake Superior. Among the steamers of that line, which became very popular, were the Chicora, Francis Smith, Cumberland, and Algoma. These in turn were superseded by the magnificent steamers of the Canadian Pacific and other lines elsewhere referred to.