In this highly accessible history of ships and shipping on the Great Lakes, upper elementary readers are taken on a rip-roaring journey through the waterways of the upper Midwest. Great Ships on the Great Lakes explores the history of the region’s rivers, lakes, and inland seas—and the people and ships who navigated them. Read along as the first peoples paddle tributaries in birch bark canoes. Follow as European voyageurs pilot rivers and lakes to get beaver pelts back to the eastern market. Watch as settlers build towns and eventually cities on the shores of the Great Lakes. Listen to the stories of sailors, lighthouse keepers, and shipping agents whose livelihoods depended on the dangerous waters of Lake Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Give an ear to their stories of unexpected tragedy and miraculous rescue, and heed their tales of risk and reward on the low seas. Great Ships also tells the story of sea battles and gunships, of the first vessels to travel beyond the Niagara, and of the treacherous storms and cold weather that caused thousands of ships to sink in the Great Lakes. Watch as underwater archaeologists solve the mysteries of Great Lakes shipwrecks today. And learn how the shift from sail to steam forever changed the history of shipping, as schooners made way for steamships and bulk freighters, and sailing became a recreation, not a hazardous way of life. Designed for the upper elementary classroom with emphasis on Michigan and Wisconsin, Great Ships on the Great Lakes includes a timeline of events, on-page vocabulary, and a list of resources and places to visit. Over 20 maps highlight the region’s maritime history. The accompanying Teacher’s Guide includes 18 classroom activities, arranged by chapter, including lessons on exploring shipwrecks and learning how glaciers moved across the landscape.

Is working on ships, sailing or tugging through the sea-like waters of the Great Lakes something you’ve imagined yourself doing? Whether it’s your dream job or an area of interest, it is no easy task and takes a full crew to power the 1000-footers, steamers, tugs, Seaway and river class vessels. Lapinski gets close and personal with ship-life, from the captain to the cook, from the inner workings of the engine department to the intricacies of navigation, from the work it takes to load and unload large masses of material. A huge variety of ships, a huge variety of jobs, and an even bigger cross section of people, all have helped make the lives of Americans a little easier by bringing in or out the goods through the Great Lakes.

Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakes is the most thorough and factual study of the Great Lakes shipping industry written this century. Author Mark L. Thompson tells the fascinating story of the world's most efficient bulk transportation system, describing the Great Lakes freighters, the cargoes of the great ships, and the men and women who have served as crew. He documents the dramatic changes that have taken place in the industry and looks at the critical role that Great Lakes shipping plays in the economic well-being of the U.S. and Canada, despite the fact that the size of the fleet and the amount of cargo carried have declined dramatically in recent years.

This is the story of the missing "ghost ships" of the Great Lakes, the big freighter and ore carriers of yesterday and today that disappeared, never to be seen again.

From the day that French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle launched the Griffin in 1679 to the 1975 sinking of the celebrated Edmund Fitzgerald, thousands of commercial ships have sailed on the vast and perilous waters of the Great Lakes. In a harbinger of things to come, on the return leg of its first trip in late summer 1679, the Griffin disappeared and has never been seen again. In the centuries since then, the records show that an alarming number of shipwrecks have occurred on the Great Lakes. If vessels that wrecked but were later repaired and returned to service are included, the number certainly swells into the thousands. Most did not mysteriously vanish like the Griffin. Instead, they suffered the occupational hazards of every lake boat: collisions, groundings, strands, fires, boiler explosions, and capsizes. Many of these disasters took the lives of crews and passengers. The fearsome wrath of the storms that brew over the Great Lakes has challenged and defeated some of the staunchest vessels constructed in the shipyards of port cities along the U.S. and Canadian lakeshores. Here Richard Gebhart tells the tales of some of these ships and their captains and crews, from their launches to their sad demises—or sometimes, their celebrated retirements. This volume is a must-read for anyone intrigued by the maritime history of the Great Lakes.

Since the beginning of commerce on the Great Lakes there has been a desire to build larger and more efficient ships. Beginning in the nineteenth century shipbuilders began to increase the size of their creations as new materials and construction techniques became available. This process of innovation would continue throughout the twentieth century as improvements to the shipping channels on the Great Lakes opened up new possibilities in ship design. These efforts culminated in 1972 with the commissioning of the first thousand-foot vessel to sail on the inland seas, the STEWART J. CORT. This ship set a new benchmark in the hauling of raw materials and would be followed by twelve more ships of her class which collectively revolutionized the US flagged shipping industry on the Great Lakes. These ships represent such a significant step forward in the evolution of the Great Lakes freighter that even today, nearly forty years after they began to enter service, they remain unsurpassed in size and carrying capacity. The story of this class of ships includes the earliest of the thousand-footers, the STEWART J. CORT and the PRESQUE ISLE, two unique vessels built incorporating highly innovative features many of which were not carried on in subsequent designs. This tale also includes vessels such as the JAMES R. BARKER and the BELLE RIVER which became patterns for the ships that followed them. In this volume, each of the thirteen thousand-foot ships is described to relate each of their unique operational histories along with the purposes for which they were built. Included are numerous never before published photographs, portraying these ships in both their previous and current operations.