The Great Lakes / The Vessels That Plough Them: Their Owners, Their Sailors, and Their Cargoes, Together with a Brief History of Our Inland Seas

by James Oliver Curwood

One of the largest and fastest boats on the Lakes. Carries 2500 people and her fastest speed is 20 miles an hour.

From a Photograph by Detroit Photographic Co.

When his ship passes into Lake Erie he enters upon new and even more thrilling pages of history. Near Put-in-Bay his captain can point out to him where Perry and his ships of war engaged and whipped the British fleet in 1813; for nearly a hundred miles his vessel will travel over the very course taken by the fleeing British ships, and that course, if he follows it to the Thames, will lead to the scenes of the fierce battle that was fought there, and of the sanguinary conflict with the Indians in which the famous chieftain Tecumseh was slain. And all this time he will see rising along the white stretches of shore the smoke of great cities, and hundreds of miles of wooded beach, where unnumbered millions might pass their summer holidays without crowding. And when he enters the Detroit River he looks out upon quiet Canadian shores and little “Sleepy Hollow” towns, still characterised by the quaint French atmosphere and peacefulness that marked them a century ago.

Now he begins to see the crowded, noisy, jostling pleasures of popular river resorts; then comes Detroit, the greatest excursion city on the Lakes. Here again history may add to the pleasure of his reflections, for three nations have fought for and possessed Detroit. He passes Belle Isle, the greatest pleasure ground in the world with the exception of Coney Island, and a few minutes later can almost throw a stone upon the island that was once the home of the famous Indian chief Pontiac, and where the plans for that bloodthirsty warrior’s assaults upon the whites were made. Then follows the course across beautiful Lake St. Clair, and the slow journey through Little Venice, where again the crowds and music and gay vessels of one of the most popular resorts in America greet his eyes for many miles; where every bit of land that thrusts itself out of the lake is lined with summer cottages and lakeside inns. Here the tourist may stop for a dollar a day or two dollars a day, and may mingle freely with bankers and merchants and millionaires as well as with the “common herd.” It is a mixed, happy, cosmopolitan life.

From Little Venice the tourist’s ship enters the St. Clair River, along which live innumerable captains of ships. It is a paradise of beauty, yet along its length one may buy cottage sites cheaper than he can purchase ordinary city lots. Here the traveller will see the tents of happy campers from the city, comfortable inns, and now and then a summer resort hotel—a mixed life, one of pleasure for the man with a family and little money as well as for him who has more than he knows well how to spend.

Steamship “North West” in American Lock.

Once out upon the bosom of Lake Huron, the scenes begin to change. Now there are miles of shore on which there is hardly a habitation to be seen. From Saginaw Bay northward for hundreds of miles along the Georgian Bay and Michigan shores, the grandeur and beauty of the wilderness are seen from the deck of the vessel. As one progresses farther north the scenes become wilder and wilder, until the captain may tell you that you are looking out over regions where the bear and the deer and the wolf make their homes; and if you have a drop of sportsman’s blood in you, he adds to your excitement by saying that you may see big game from the deck of the ship before the trip is over. At times, and for long distances, the vessel seems to be picking her way between innumerable islands, and if the course is through Georgian Bay their number bewilders the traveller. They are on all sides of him. Here and there upon them are resort hotels; more numerous still are the simple, homelike places where the city worker and his family may stay at comparatively small expense, and along the mainland are the homes of settlers and farmers, nine out of ten of whom are glad to accommodate summer visitors at prices which make living there as cheap as at home.

Farther northward the tourist’s ship carries him deeper into the wilderness country, through St. Mary’s River, with its forest-clad shores and islands, broken here and there by little cottages built and owned by city people; through the locks at the “Soo,” and into Lake Superior. Beyond this, as one captain expressed it to the writer, “there is howling wilderness on every shore.” At times the traveller may have glimpses of the Canadian coast, from which the unbroken wild stretches northward to Hudson Bay; his eyes may travel over the hazy distance of the greatest moose- and caribou-hunting country on the continent; and when near the Michigan shore he may see the smoke rising above the great copper mines of the Upper Peninsula. And at the end of this northern route he comes to Duluth, the second greatest freight-shipping port in the world, and destined to become one of the most important cities in America.

At the Straits of Mackinaw, however, the tourist may turn into Lake Michigan instead of continuing into Superior: and if so, he soon comes within sight of Beaver Island, famous for all ages in history as the one-time stronghold of King Strang and his Mormons—an island about which piracy once flourished and where more than one vessel, in the years of long ago, met a mysterious and tragic end at the hands of buccaneers as bloodthirsty as any that ever roamed the seas.