Out with the coal, in with the diesel
By James Heinz
In 1948, Milwaukee took delivery of its seventh fireboat, the DELUGE. Her design was inspired by the Chicago Fire Department’s fireboat FRED A. BUSSE. She was designed by A. M. Deering, the same Chicago naval architect that designed the BUSSE, and built at the Defoe Ship Building company of Bay City, Michigan. She had a steel hull and WMHS records show that she was 141 gross tons, 96.7 feet long, 23 feet wide, and drew 6.5 feet of water. She was built with 15 feet of head clearance so that she would be able to pass under many city bridges. The DELUGE had 14 hose connections and four turret nozzles, two in the bow, one in the stern, and one on a rotating tower that could be elevated 24 feet above the ship to send water into 2nd floor windows. She cost $350,000 and was stationed at the Water Street station.
The September 1, 1949 issue of Fire Engineering describes some of her features: “Four 375 H.P. Nordberg diesels operating at 600 R.P.M. drive Allis Chalmers pumps through speed increasers which step the speed up to 1,600 R.P.M. In responding to a fire, two of the diesels are declutched from the pumps with Falk Corporation clutch mechanisms and operate two four-bladed driving propellers.” Each pump could move 3,000 gallons of water for a total of 12,000 gallons per minute.
The cost of the DELUGE was offset by her lower maintenance costs. Her diesel engines did not need to be constantly fed coal to keep steam up. In addition, the city disposed of the other three fireboats. WMHS files show that MFD 29 was sold for scrap on June 28, 1948, and scrapped at the site of the former Froemming Bros. shipyard at First and Beecher. TORRENT was sold on November 30, 1949, and scrapped at the Municipal Dock on Jones Island in the spring of 1950. MFD 15 was placed in reserve in 1949 and sold in 1952.
Although DELUGE could fit under some city bridges, she could not fit under all of them. WMHS files show that bridge related delays on the north end of the Milwaukee River in 1958 and 1962, and the anticipation that the future construction of the Park East freeway bridge would render the upper reaches of the rive unnavigable, led the city to purchase it’s eighth fireboat, one that would put the “boat” in “fireboat”. American Fireboats states that once again Milwaukee drew its fireboat idea from Chicago. In 1963 the city purchased an aluminum hulled Red Roamer water jet propelled boat from the Roamer Steel Boat division of Chris Craft Corp., of Holland, Michigan. It cost $52,500.
She weighed 3.2 tons, was 27 feet long, 10 feet wide, and drew two feet of water. She had two turret nozzles, mounted in the bow and stern, and was kept at the Water Street station. She was not used during the winter. Her water jet intake was frequently clogged by the same pollution in the Milwaukee River that had affected her predecessors, and she was converted to conventional propeller drive. She was designated Engine 42, then ROAMER, and then Fireboat 2.
The number of fires that the two boats responded to continued to decrease. Many sources say that the last major fire that the DELUGE fought was the Metropolitan Block fire in 1975. In October 1978, the DELUGE broke MFD 23/JANSSEN’s 75 year record for distance of water pumped by pumping water through 4,500 feet of hose.
Both fireboats were removed from service in October 1984. Like old soldiers, old fireboats never die, they just fade away. ROAMER was kept on a trailer inside firehouse 14 at 6074 South 13th Street for many years and then just disappeared. As for the DELUGE, she was sold to Chicago interests and WMHS files show that she was periodically spotted at various locations in the South Chicago/Calumet Harbor waterways area, always looking worse than she did from the previous sighting. A 1997 sighting described her as “in pretty rough shape”, and she went out of Coast Guard documentation in 2000.
The Milwaukee Fire Department still felt the need for some type of fireboat, and the city responded by buying some type of fireboat that was not exactly a boat. Instead, it was a truck. Wikipedia describes it as: “LARC-V (Lighter, Amphibious Resupply, Cargo, 5 ton), is an aluminum-hulled amphibious cargo vehicle capable of transporting 5 tons. The LARC-V was fielded in 1963 and were used extensively by the U.S. Army for over the beach supply during the Vietnam War. It was developed in the United States during the 1950s, and is used in a variety of auxiliary roles to this day.” And one of those auxiliary roles was as Milwaukee’s ninth fireboat. The LARC was a further development of the famous World War II amphibious trucks known as DUKWs that tourists still ride in Wisconsin Dells.
Milwaukee’s Historic Fireboats tells us that drawing inspiration from the Miami Fire Department, a 1967 vintage military surplus LARC went into service as Engine Company #3. It weighed 16 tons and was 25 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 11 feet high with a 4 foot draft. It was powered by a 300 hp V-8 diesel engine and had two 1000 gpm monitor nozzles in the bow and one 2000 gpm nozzle on top of the pilothouse, all controlled from the pilothouse. It had four huge wheels, which the book notes aided it’s stability in the water. The book shows the LARC in the Milwaukee River spraying water on a 1988 four alarm fire.
WMHS files say it was referred to as Fireboat 1 and “the Stamm-Mobile” after Chief William Stamm and was christened by his wife. The files say it cost $350,000, the same price as the DELUGE, although it is not clear if that is how much it cost the military or the city. It was dedicated on October 21. 1984. At the christening ceremony the incoming and outgoing fireboats saluted one another by spraying jets of water in the air.
One problem with military surplus equipment is that the military does not surplus equipment until the military has gotten most of its useful life out of it. And so it proved with Engine #3. To keep it in service, parts had to be taken from construction equipment. American Fireboats says “Some felt that the city was lucky to have gotten nine years of service from it” when it was taken out of service in December 1993. The firefighter’s union had argued for years that it was unsafe, claiming it had required 600 hours of repairs.
It was replaced by Milwaukee’s tenth fireboat, called PHOENIX, which was a Boston Whaler Vigilant that could pump 1,000 gpm. The web site Continuous Wave states that this model of Boston Whaler was only built in 1992 and 1993 by the commercial division of Boston Whaler. It describes the boat as 32 feet long, and 11 feet 10 inches wide with a pilot house with 6 feet 8 inches of head room.
You may wonder why the Milwaukee Fire Department keeps buying fireboats when there are few or no riverside fires for them to fight. That is because fireboats have always done things beside fight fires. As noted earlier, they spent winters breaking ice on the rivers to keep the waterways open, to prevent ice dams from forming and to enable commercial traffic like fishing boats. The DELUGE was a particularly effective ice breaker and whenever the Port of Milwaukee had ice thick enough to interfere with its operations, the Port would call the DELUGE.
But the other major task of fireboats is to retrieve things and beings that have fallen into the river, whether alive or dead, chiefly automobiles, human beings, and in the days of the stockyards, apparently telepathic cows who dived into the river in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid their ultimate fate. And so, the latest fireboats exist to support the Department’s Dive Rescue Team which continues the tradition of retrieving from the river that which should not be in the river.
All good things must come to an end, and this is true of the saga of the Milwaukee fireboats. We conclude this history of the boats that kept Milwaukee safe with the boat that currently keeps Milwaukee safe. According to Milwaukee’s Historic Fireboats, in mid-2007, Milwaukee obtained its 11th fireboat, at first called Fireboat 1. In 2009, Harley Museum director Stacey Watson christened her TRIDENT. The TRIDENT has two 1750 gpm pumps. She can discharge those gallons through five monitor nozzles, two in the bow, one on the pilot house roof, and two on the stern, as well as 2 discharge outlets.
According to the Milwaukee Fire Department website, “The Trident is a model of technology with twin 570 hp Cummins diesel engines supplying power to jet propelled drives capable of pushing the 39 foot Metalcraft Marine Boat over 35 knots. It has the capability of flowing 3400 gpm for fighting nearshore or offshore fires, can transport up to three critically injured victims with advanced life support care, and can perform offshore search and rescue with state of the art radar, forward-looking infrared cameras, radio direction finder, and sonar searches beneath the water’s surface.” In the summer she is docked at Discovery World.
Other than the TRIDENT, you might think that all traces of these historic fireboats has disappeared. And you would be wrong. There are many traces of them left that you can view.
So ends Chapter 4 of: THE BOATS THAT KEPT MILWAUKEE SAFE
- Once there were over 250 of them
- The beginning
- What’s its name again?
- Out with the coal, in with the diesel
- Gone but still around
Photo at top of page:
DELUGE on her first trip when new, July 15 1949.
Other Photos:
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.
