Schooner Sailing

During the war of 1812 shipyards across the Great Lakes region were established to build ships specifically for the Great Lakes because at that point there was no navigable waterway for ships to enter from the Atlantic coast It was because of the acceleration in ship building that the first communities were able to spring up along the shores of the lakes at a rate unparalleled anywhere else in the world at the time. The settlers were brought by the ships that had ceased their roles in combat, and the ships and crews had taken up a new role as passenger and cargo ships. It was through the need for safe harbors that settlements like Suttons Bay were established.

After the war of 1812, settlers’ confidence grew to come to the shores of the lower lakes. Railroads were not an option for people to move their livelihoods into the ‘new lands’ because none had been laid, and even as railroads were commissioned and built, commerce and travel by ship remained the more feasible option. It was because of the schooner’s wartime design advantages in maneuverability and shallow draught that these types of ships became the norm on the Great Lakes, and by those same advantages they were perfect for shuttling the surge of settlers. This ignited the brief period of what was to be called the ‘Schooner Days’, before the advent of the steam driven ship turned these mighty sailing ships into mastless barges. Even after steam power was installed in ships, it did not immediately replace the use of sail. The operation costs of sailing vessels was much lower, and their relatively large cargo capacities in relation to the operation costs made them extremely efficient. Because of this low cost, this resulted in huge numbers of craft ranging from the small mackinaw boat to small schooners playing the role that modern day small-scale trucking companies play.

The first trips on these schooners were very rough for settlers. The schooners’ accommodations for passengers were first nothing more than makeshift quarters atop the rock-pile ballast in the ships’ bilges, upon which cooking fires were often built, and the decks were often packed with cattle and cargo. It wasn’t uncommon for the ships to be storm bound in an isolated harbor for days on end, with fresh food often running out and the passengers forming parties to go ashore to forage, hunt for game, and to sometimes trade with farmers. Luckily, there was never a shortage of fresh water! As settlement accelerated, the accommodations were tidied up, but the passages were often uncomfortable, and sometimes ended before they reached their port, adding another foundered ship to the long list of ships taken by the unpredictable lakes. The passengers and crews often made it safely to shore, but they often were required to walk along the shore to the closest settlement, and then wait for months to resume their journeys.

It made good sense for settlers to establish their communities close to shore where goods and products could be received or shipped out, so the vast majority of these settlements were made at natural harbors where the schooners could safely carry out part of their work in sheltered waters, and if need be, could serve as a haven for a schooner that needed to wait out a storm. It was this bond between harbor towns and schooner-men that drove the determination to persist in their ways of life. The schooners and crews needed the harbors, hospitality and shipwrights, and the harbors’ inhabitants needed the schooners.

Some of the natural harbors were not more than small lakes near the shore of the ‘big lake’ (as the great lakes are often referred to ubiquitously), with nothing more than a shallow outlet flowing out into the big lake. These channels were often laboriously dredged multiple times a year by shovel. And before this work was undertaken to open channels people often waded to and from shore from an anchored schooner. The first family of six to settle in what became Ludington came to shore in a rowboat, and the cattle were pushed over the schooner’s side and herded to shore.

The original settlement that became Traverse City is extremely exposed in a north blow. The reason for this location of settlement was not for its safety from storms but because it is where the mouth of the Boardman River spills into the Grand Traverse Bay. The river was a highway for lumber, and the lumber that was cut and floated down to the sawmill rebuilt by the Perry - Hannah Co. was loaded into the holds of schooners.

The schooners were also heavily employed in transporting limestone and grain. Chicago’s official seal reflects this latter element of it’s rise as an industrial hub. The seal contains a Native American, representing the city’s earliest inhabitants; a sheaf of wheat, representing the prairie’s bounty; a fully-rigged sailing ship; and a baby rising from a seashell.

The schooners saw a surge of work with the building of Chicago, and after the Chicago Fire in 1871, which destroyed 17,500 buildings and 73 miles of street (but did not destroy the Perry-Hannah lumberyard) the company centered in the Grand Traverse region took on the job of supplying massive quantities of pine lumber for the rebuilding of Chicago. This industrial boom was short lived as the old growth forests were clear-cut.

The efficiency of the schooners was overtaken by larger steam boats, and schooners found a brief niche in transporting fence posts, telephone poles, and cordwood (which powered the steam boats’ boilers). During this time, larger three and four-masted schooners were built, and still competed with the steam ships for the same reasons of efficiency by which the earlier and smaller schooners had advantage, but it was not long after this turning point from sail to steam that the schooners were dismasted and used as barges, towed by the steam ships.