Readers of WoodenBoat Magazine may be familiar with George Jepson. A native of Marquette, Michigan, he has contributed several articles to the magazine dealing with Great Lakes history. Using these articles as a foundation, his book Sailing the Sweetwater Seas traces the history of wooden ships on these Inland Seas. This is an informal history. There are no footnotes, and a selected bibliography limits readers’ avenues for additional research. The book is beautifully produced. Photographs are presented in large formats that in many cases reveal interesting details. The book’s visual effect is enhanced by six of Robert McGreevy’s magnificent paintings and pencil sketches of Great Lakes vessels. In addition to accurately depicting the ships, McGreevy has a remarkable ability to capture the unique appearance of the lakes that they sailed on. Unfortunately, however, this visually stunning book is flawed by several annoying historical and editorial errors.
The book begins with a preface describing the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. Connecting the Great Lakes with New York City and its harbor, the canal revolutionized the economy of the struggling Great Lakes region. Although Jepson states that the canal “initially connected four Great Lakes (Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior) to the Hudson River” in fact, the entrance to Lake Superior was blocked by the rapids at Sault Saint Marie. These were only bypassed by the Soo locks in the 1850s. He goes on to describe the wave of immigrants traveling over the canal to settle “the future states of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin.” Ohio and Illinois were already states; Ohio in 1803 and Illinois in 1816.
The first of the book’s two major parts describes the lakes’ wooden working vessels; schooners, passenger steamers, steam barges, and bulk freighters. Chapter 1 deals with the thousands of schooners that sailed on the lakes during the nineteenth century or were towed behind steamships well into the twentieth. These included some unusual types; scow schooners, canal schooners, and the very small Mosquito Fleet that served the small communities around the lakes.
A sidebar introduces the reader to William Bates, the Manitowoc, Wisconsin designer and shipbuilder who produced some very fast shoal draft centerboard schooners in the 1850s. These beautifully modeled vessels did not “borrow elements from the Baltimore Clippers” as claimed by the author. Instead, Bates was well aware of the thinking of the east coast clipper ship designers through his partnership with John W. Griffiths in the U.S. Nautical Magazine. The Wisconsin Maritime Museum has produced drawings for several of Bates’s schooners using his original mould loft offsets and scantling tables. They would make interesting models.
With three chapters on steamships, the author’s narrative continues. The first primitive side paddlewheel steamers began to sail on the lakes shortly after the War of 1812. They grew in size and lavish decoration until their era ended with the onset of a depression in the late 1850s. Propellers (propeller-driven passenger steamers) were a later and parallel development. The first was launched in 1841. Unfortunately, the author devotes very little space to these economically important vessels as compared to the more romantic paddle-wheel “palace steamers.” Steam barges appeared shortly after the Civil War and were intended to both carry cargo and tow a string of barges. The early “rabbits” with both engines and pilot houses aft evolved into the “lumber hookers” with the classic Great Lakes profile of pilot house forward and engine aft. The chapter closes with a description of wooden bulk freighters; larger versions of the lumber hookers. Ultimately reaching a length of almost three hundred feet, they challenged designers’ ability to reinforce their huge wooden structures. They are the direct ancestors of the steel hulled vessels that dominated Great Lakes shipping until construction of the thousand-foot ships built in the 1970s and 1980s. Unfortunately, someone has switched the illustration captions for the photograph of the R. J. Hackett and the drawing of the Tampa.
Part 2 of the book includes chapters on a pleasure boat company, a Great Lakes character accused od Piracy, a noted Great Lakes historian and the author’s Great Lakes shipping ancestors. While of less interest to model builders, they add a human touch to the story. Better suiting the author’s journalism background, they are the best written chapters in the book.
Great Lakes ships are built for one purpose; to economically haul cargo from one point to another. They usually do this quietly without drama. Great Lakes maritime history that appeals to the general reader can, therefore, be hard to write, resulting in an overabundance of sensational shipwreck stories. With this book, the author has threaded the needle by writing a book to appeal to the general reader while introducing ship model builders willing to stray from the beaten path to some interesting ship modeling subjects. Criticisms notwithstanding, I recommend this book.
