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I more or less finished the first layer of insulation in the Great Living Room Ceiling Refinishing today-- take that, ice dams! (And, no doubt, they will.) But that's not what I wanted to talk about today.
Something like 100 miles north of here, in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, there's an old lake freighter kept as a museum. Her name is Valley Camp, and you can read about her at http:\\www.thevalleycamp.com
She was a fairly typical lake freighter of her day. I toured her, many MANY years ago now, in company with my grandfather.
Grampa's first and middle names were Moses Solomon. I always wondered whether his dad (whose meat name was William, same as mine) was that much of a bible-thumper, or whether he just didn't like the kid. Asking around leads me to follow the bible-thumper theory, but that's for another day.
Grampa took me through the ship, and he knew more about her than the tour guide did. He pointed out how all the decks in the engine spaces were open gratings; there was little forced ventilation, there was a big coal fire down there near the keel, and they had to get the heat out somehow.
He also pointed out a device that looked like a small engine, mounted in the aft recesses of the engine room. Oddly enough, it looked like an engine because that was what it was.
"That's the steering engine," he told me. "See that pipe there, running forward? Isn't a pipe. It runs all the way to the bow of the ship. When the helmsman turns the wheel, the wheel turns the shaft, and this little steam engine cranks those chains one way or the other. Up above here, there's a huge steel tiller attached to the rudder. The chains pull the tiller side to side. And that's how they steer the ship."
I was impressed.
"Now, see that brass wheel there?" It stuck out of the steering engine below the shaft. It was about six inches in diameter, polished smooth, and it had a hand crank handle attached near its rim. "That's the emergency steering station. If that shaft to the wheelhouse breaks, or binds, the chief engineer has to get on that little wheel, and he has to steer the ship using commands shouted down through the voice tubes."
"How does he see to steer?"
"He doesn't. He follows commands shouted down from the wheelhouse."
"That doesn't sound like much to steer the ship with."
"It's more than what you have if the tiller chains break. If that happens, you have nothing."
Grampa knew, because that's what happened to him.
We've always been pretty good at being born too late for one war and too early for the next, but Grampa got hauled into the US Navy during World War I. After training aboard the USS Kentucky-- a ship notable for a brilliant, innovative design that was exactly the wrong answer to the biggest warship design question of her day, making her one of the least successful major warships we ever had-- he got assigned to serve aboard a US Navy-owned freighter, the USS Sioux.
Now, there's a reason Grampa recognized the design features of a lake freighter so well. The Sioux was built in the same Ohio city where the Valley Camp was, perhaps in the same shipyard, and within about ten years or less.
This begs the question of just how a lake freighter would get from Lake Erie to the Atlantic Ocean some forty years before the Saint Lawrence Seaway was completed. The answer was that there were, in fact, canals back then, and a ship could traverse them-- if it was small. Very small.
The Navy commandeered the Sioux, got her to the Atlantic, put a crew and a cargo aboard her, and sent her across the Atlantic in convoy. This was late in the war, of course; the US didn't get involved until the last year. Even so, submarines were a danger. World War I subs weren't too effective, but World War I antisubmarine warfare was even less so.
It was the sailor's oldest enemy that almost killed them, though. They were caught in a gale in the Bay of Biscay, and damned if those chains on the steel tiller didn't break.
Grampa worked in the engine room. There he learned the joys of crawling under the boiler and such to scrape rust and to slap red lead primer around-- he always called catsup "red lead." He didn't fit in that well with the rest of the crew, because he was so strict about his religion. But the crew grew to like him anyway. It was good to have somebody you could leave half your money with when you went ashore for a bender. Somebody you knew would give back every penny when the cops brought you home.
He told me his most vivid memory of his service was feeling the ship fall off into the troughs of the waves. Then, as he was trying to keep his feet, he heard a sound like a train wreck and looked up just in time to see sea water falling down through those decks, the decks made of grating, like a waterfall. A wave had smashed in some of the portholes and doors in the engine house, and water was pouring into the engine room. This was Bad, because if it got as high as the firebox-- which was very close to the ship's bottom-- it would kill the fire, shut down the boiler, and the ship would sink. Simple as that.
The engineer got the pumps going. All hands laid aft to the tiller, where their only hope was to get a hawser on and steer the ship by muscle strength until things got under a bit more control. They did it-- with the sea water three inches below the firebox.
Then the crew had to heave the tiller this way, heave it that way, in response to the Captain's orders. They managed to do that too.
The Sioux was just about wrecked. She made it into port, where she was moored alongside a battleship; I seem to remember Grampa saying she was the USS Texas, but I'm not sure. The marvel of marvels was that every so often he could hear some machine running aboard the battleship, something with a high-pitched whine to it. His crewmates told him that was the electrical generator. When it was running, the battleship was talking to home, talking to the naval command in the United States, by radio. With no cables or anything! He'd heard of radio, of course, but he'd never been that close to it before. And at that time he thought he'd never be that close to a radio again in his life.
Sioux was a freighter, and not much of one at that. She needed much in the way of supplies and repair work before she would be seaworthy (for some small value of seaworthy) again. But she was about as far down the priority list as you could get. She sat there in port, waiting, and while she waited the war ended.
But wait, there's more!
The Navy asked her former owners if they wanted her back. Former owners didn't even have to ask about her condition. The Navy had paid them much more than the ship was worth. "Nope, we'll keep the money you gave us," they said.
So you have a half-wrecked freighter nobody wants. However, due to the laws at the time, the Navy couldn't just sell her as scrap in France. They had to have her steam all the way back to the United States, and then scrap her there.
Needless to say, when the ship was just going home to be scrapped, nobody spent a great deal of time or money fixing her up for her return voyage. So finally, after all that, in condition hardly better than when she reached port, the USS Sioux headed for home.
The officers assured the crew she was seaworthy. And then the crew found out that all the officers had boxed up their personal possessions and had shipped them home aboard another vessel.
But the sea has a sense of humor. Nobody had ever seen a calmer, more pleasant voyage than the Sioux had on her way home. And then she got home, and they scrapped her. End of career.
It was the end of Grampa's career as a sailor too. But I can't blame him for that.
Something like 100 miles north of here, in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, there's an old lake freighter kept as a museum. Her name is Valley Camp, and you can read about her at http:\\www.thevalleycamp.com
She was a fairly typical lake freighter of her day. I toured her, many MANY years ago now, in company with my grandfather.
Grampa's first and middle names were Moses Solomon. I always wondered whether his dad (whose meat name was William, same as mine) was that much of a bible-thumper, or whether he just didn't like the kid. Asking around leads me to follow the bible-thumper theory, but that's for another day.
Grampa took me through the ship, and he knew more about her than the tour guide did. He pointed out how all the decks in the engine spaces were open gratings; there was little forced ventilation, there was a big coal fire down there near the keel, and they had to get the heat out somehow.
He also pointed out a device that looked like a small engine, mounted in the aft recesses of the engine room. Oddly enough, it looked like an engine because that was what it was.
"That's the steering engine," he told me. "See that pipe there, running forward? Isn't a pipe. It runs all the way to the bow of the ship. When the helmsman turns the wheel, the wheel turns the shaft, and this little steam engine cranks those chains one way or the other. Up above here, there's a huge steel tiller attached to the rudder. The chains pull the tiller side to side. And that's how they steer the ship."
I was impressed.
"Now, see that brass wheel there?" It stuck out of the steering engine below the shaft. It was about six inches in diameter, polished smooth, and it had a hand crank handle attached near its rim. "That's the emergency steering station. If that shaft to the wheelhouse breaks, or binds, the chief engineer has to get on that little wheel, and he has to steer the ship using commands shouted down through the voice tubes."
"How does he see to steer?"
"He doesn't. He follows commands shouted down from the wheelhouse."
"That doesn't sound like much to steer the ship with."
"It's more than what you have if the tiller chains break. If that happens, you have nothing."
Grampa knew, because that's what happened to him.
We've always been pretty good at being born too late for one war and too early for the next, but Grampa got hauled into the US Navy during World War I. After training aboard the USS Kentucky-- a ship notable for a brilliant, innovative design that was exactly the wrong answer to the biggest warship design question of her day, making her one of the least successful major warships we ever had-- he got assigned to serve aboard a US Navy-owned freighter, the USS Sioux.
Now, there's a reason Grampa recognized the design features of a lake freighter so well. The Sioux was built in the same Ohio city where the Valley Camp was, perhaps in the same shipyard, and within about ten years or less.
This begs the question of just how a lake freighter would get from Lake Erie to the Atlantic Ocean some forty years before the Saint Lawrence Seaway was completed. The answer was that there were, in fact, canals back then, and a ship could traverse them-- if it was small. Very small.
The Navy commandeered the Sioux, got her to the Atlantic, put a crew and a cargo aboard her, and sent her across the Atlantic in convoy. This was late in the war, of course; the US didn't get involved until the last year. Even so, submarines were a danger. World War I subs weren't too effective, but World War I antisubmarine warfare was even less so.
It was the sailor's oldest enemy that almost killed them, though. They were caught in a gale in the Bay of Biscay, and damned if those chains on the steel tiller didn't break.
Grampa worked in the engine room. There he learned the joys of crawling under the boiler and such to scrape rust and to slap red lead primer around-- he always called catsup "red lead." He didn't fit in that well with the rest of the crew, because he was so strict about his religion. But the crew grew to like him anyway. It was good to have somebody you could leave half your money with when you went ashore for a bender. Somebody you knew would give back every penny when the cops brought you home.
He told me his most vivid memory of his service was feeling the ship fall off into the troughs of the waves. Then, as he was trying to keep his feet, he heard a sound like a train wreck and looked up just in time to see sea water falling down through those decks, the decks made of grating, like a waterfall. A wave had smashed in some of the portholes and doors in the engine house, and water was pouring into the engine room. This was Bad, because if it got as high as the firebox-- which was very close to the ship's bottom-- it would kill the fire, shut down the boiler, and the ship would sink. Simple as that.
The engineer got the pumps going. All hands laid aft to the tiller, where their only hope was to get a hawser on and steer the ship by muscle strength until things got under a bit more control. They did it-- with the sea water three inches below the firebox.
Then the crew had to heave the tiller this way, heave it that way, in response to the Captain's orders. They managed to do that too.
The Sioux was just about wrecked. She made it into port, where she was moored alongside a battleship; I seem to remember Grampa saying she was the USS Texas, but I'm not sure. The marvel of marvels was that every so often he could hear some machine running aboard the battleship, something with a high-pitched whine to it. His crewmates told him that was the electrical generator. When it was running, the battleship was talking to home, talking to the naval command in the United States, by radio. With no cables or anything! He'd heard of radio, of course, but he'd never been that close to it before. And at that time he thought he'd never be that close to a radio again in his life.
Sioux was a freighter, and not much of one at that. She needed much in the way of supplies and repair work before she would be seaworthy (for some small value of seaworthy) again. But she was about as far down the priority list as you could get. She sat there in port, waiting, and while she waited the war ended.
But wait, there's more!
The Navy asked her former owners if they wanted her back. Former owners didn't even have to ask about her condition. The Navy had paid them much more than the ship was worth. "Nope, we'll keep the money you gave us," they said.
So you have a half-wrecked freighter nobody wants. However, due to the laws at the time, the Navy couldn't just sell her as scrap in France. They had to have her steam all the way back to the United States, and then scrap her there.
Needless to say, when the ship was just going home to be scrapped, nobody spent a great deal of time or money fixing her up for her return voyage. So finally, after all that, in condition hardly better than when she reached port, the USS Sioux headed for home.
The officers assured the crew she was seaworthy. And then the crew found out that all the officers had boxed up their personal possessions and had shipped them home aboard another vessel.
But the sea has a sense of humor. Nobody had ever seen a calmer, more pleasant voyage than the Sioux had on her way home. And then she got home, and they scrapped her. End of career.
It was the end of Grampa's career as a sailor too. But I can't blame him for that.
