Hoover & Mason Unloaders at the Illinois Steel Co., South Chicago, Ill.
A young man named Alexander E. Brown could not bear, in the old days, to see the ore so awkwardly unloaded, and in 1880 started the procession of ore unloading devices. There are now several successful ore unloaders of which the Brown hoist, the Hoover & Mason, and the Hulett are probably the best known. With the Hulett unloader the operator has to be an aviator, as his position is directly above the grab bucket. He descends into the hold with the bucket, comes up with it and is with it in its entire journey from the boat’s hold to the dump and back again. It must be dizzy business.
The Hulett Unloader. Note the Operator’s Head in White Spot Just Above the Grab
Time is too precious to hold the boat at the dock long enough that each bucketful, large as it is, can go directly to its final bin. It is dropped just back of the unloading machine from which it is again picked up by other buckets which carry it back toward the furnaces and deposit it in cement ore troughs awaiting further journey to the ore house, from which it goes to the furnaces. The empty ore boat immediately coals with whole car loads of the fuel dumped into chutes leading to her bunkers by the car dumper and proceeds on her way back to the mines for another cargo of ore. The round trip, including loading and unloading, requires but seven days.
A Good View of the Hatch System of Modern Ore Boats and Four Hulett Unloaders at Work
As in many other lines of commercial endeavor of to-day, speed and large tonnage have been the aim and it would seem that in ore handling and conveying devices the limit has about been reached. The big steam shovels, gravity docks, ore tanks or boats, and unloading and coaling devices, with the low cost of water transportation have made our modern iron and steel preëminence possible. To show the importance to us of this water transportation, we might mention that the rate for carrying ore from Lake Superior ore ports to the Lake Erie furnaces has been as low as $.0007 per ton per mile while the transportation cost by way of a well operated railway at that particular time was more than $.005 per ton per mile—more than seven times as much.
