By James Heinz
A few years ago I took a tour of a Great Lakes freighter docked in Sturgeon Bay, Wis. The docent conducting the tour was a retired member of the engineering department aboard that ship. The docent asked the tour group if anyone had ever been on board this ship before. I raised my hand. The docent asked me when I had been aboard the ship. I replied:
“Well, I was never actually on this ship before. But I was once underneath it.”
In a previous story I talked about my adventures in Great Lakes diving https://wmhs.org/the-bends-ended-his-diving-adventures-but-not-the-tales-he-tells/ On one of my dives on the wreck of the JOHN B. COWLE off Whitefish Point in Lake Superior, I contracted hyperbaric injury, also known as decompression sickness, also known as “the bends.”
Photo at top of page: EDWARD L. RYERSON entering Rock Cut Lookout 4, September 1980,
courtesy of Bob Campbell
As I swam around the wreck of the COWLE at 185 feet, I felt a presence. No, it was not the ghosts of the COWLE. It was a vibration, a sound you felt as much as heard. And it was getting stronger. And stronger. It was not painful, but I felt it all the way to my bones. You could feel the power of whatever was making the sound that you felt. It sounded, and felt, like the World War II submarine movies, where the sub crew hears the propellers of the enemy ship above them
Which is what it turned out to be.
As I surfaced into bright sunshine from the murky depths of the lake, I remember looking across the Lake at a large lake freighter maybe a mile away, apparently heading directly towards the dive boat. “Don’t worry,” said the boat captain, “he sees us and is checking down.”
(Note: in the Great Lakes, ships are called boats and they do not slow down, they check down. Keep that in mind so that Great Lakes sailors will not mistake you for the landlubber that you are.)
And there, a mile way, on that brilliant clear day, was the EDWARD L. RYERSON. Nicknamed “Fast Eddie”, she is widely considered the best looking ship on the Great Lakes, and for a time she was known as “The Queen of the Lakes”.
EDWARD L. RYERSON launching, January 21, 1960
She was launched in 1960 at the Manitowoc Shipbuilding yard on the Manitowoc River. It was promptly discovered that she was too big to pass down the river to the lake, and parts of the river had to be dredged and the shores of the river had to be dug out so that she could escape.
She is 730 feet long, 75 feet wide, and was built to the maximum length of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Her four holds have a depth of 39 feet and were specially constructed to allow better access to, and reduce damage from, the Hulett unloaders used at that time. ( https://wmhs.org/once-there-were-many-now-there-are-none-the-device-that-revolutionized-great-lakes-shipping/ ) She was named after the chairman of Inland Steel, and cost $8 million.
She is powered by two 9,000 hp General Electric steam turbines that drove her five blade, 20 foot wide propeller at a maximum speed of 19 mph. It was that 20 foot prop that caused my teeth fillings to vibrate on the bottom of Lake Michigan.
RYERSON’s maiden voyage, August 6, 1960
Although many ships are considered “firsts”, the RYERSON had several “lasts” to her credit. She was the last steam powered lake freighter built, she was the last lake freighter built without a self unloading boom, and she was the last freighter built at Manitowoc.
Her life has been pretty much drama free, except on April 7, 1994, when she was five miles off Milwaukee, she lost propulsion due to boiler problems due to old fuel, and had to be towed into Milwaukee by tugboats.
Although she set both tonnage and speed records, she was built to haul iron ore for the steel industry, just before the American steel industry began to decline. As a result, she has spent 25 years of her 65 year life tied to the dock in a series of layups. When she was brought back into service in 2005 her owners had to re-hire retirees to help get her ready. RYERSON has been continuously laid up at Duluth MN since 2009.
There is an exhibit on the RYERSON at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc and WMHS member Chris Winters once served aboard her as a crew member.
Photo Credit: Great Lakes Marine Collection of the Milwaukee Public Library and Wisconsin Marine Historical Society
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James Heinz is the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s acquisitions director. He became interested in maritime history as a kid watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures on TV. He was a Great Lakes wreck diver until three episodes of the bends forced him to retire from diving. He was a University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee police officer for thirty years. He regularly flies either a Cessna 152 or 172.
