A steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. Steamboats sometimes use the prefix designation SS, S.S. or S/S or PS, however these designations are most often used for steamships.
The Steamship William G. Mather(Official Number 224850) is a retired Great Lakes bulk freighter now restored as a museum ship in Cleveland, Ohio, one of four in the Great Lakes region. She transported cargo such as ore, coal, stone, and grain to ports throughout the Great Lakes, and was nicknamed "The Ship That Built Cleveland" because Cleveland's steel mills were a frequent destination.
The Pacific Mail Steamship Company was founded April 18, 1848, as a joint stock company under the laws of the State of New York by a group of New York City merchants, William H. Aspinwall, Edwin Bartlett, Henry Chauncey, Mr. Alsop, G.G. Howland and S.S. Howland. These merchants had acquired the right to transport mail under contract from the United States Government from the Isthmus of Panama to California awarded in 1847 to one Arnold Harris.
SS Arthur M. Anderson is a cargo ship of the laker type. It is famous for being the last ship to be in contact with SS Edmund Fitzgerald before Fitzgerald sank on 10 November 1975. Anderson was also the first rescue ship on the scene in a vain search for Fitzgerald survivors. The vessel's namesake, Arthur Marvin Anderson, was director of U.S. Steel at the time.
SS Milwaukee was a train ferry that served on Lake Michigan. It was launched in 1902 and sank with all hands off Milwaukee on October 22, 1929. Fifty-two men were lost with the vessel.
SS Badger is a passenger and vehicle ferry in the United States that has been in service on Lake Michigan since 1953. Currently, the ship shuttles between Ludington, Michigan, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin, a distance of 62 miles (100 km) as the crow flies. connecting U.S. Highway 10 (US 10) between those two cities. It is the last coal-fired passenger vessel operating on the Great Lakes, and was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 20, 2016.
The first USS Theodore Roosevelt (ID-1478) was a United States Navy troop transport in commission from 1918 to 1919.
The Great Lakes Engineering Works (GLEW) was a leading shipbuilding company with a shipyard in Ecorse, Michigan, that operated between 1902 and 1960. Within three years of its formation, it was building fifty percent of the tonnage of all ships in the Great Lakes. During World War II, GLEW was commissioned by Pittsburgh Steamship Company and the U.S. Maritime Commission to build twenty-one ore freighters. Its innovations included the first self-unloader freighter, SS Wyandotte. GLEW is best known for its construction of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.
The history of commercial passenger shipping on the Great Lakes is long but uneven. It reached its zenith between the mid-19th century and the 1950s. As early as 1844, palace steamers carried passengers and cargo around the Great Lakes. By 1900, fleets of relatively luxurious passenger steamers plied the waters of the lower lakes, especially the major industrial centres of Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toronto.
USS City of South Haven (ID-2527) was a transport ship for the United States Navy at the close of World War I. Before the war, she was a passenger steamship that sailed as SS City of South Haven on the Great Lakes. In post-war civilian service she operated as SS City of Miami between Florida and Cuba before returning to the Great Lakes as SS E.G. Crosby. She was scrapped in 1942 following a fire.
SS Empire Kestrel was a 2,674 GRT, 5,050 DWT cargo ship built by Great Lakes Engineering Works of Ecorse, Michigan. Completed in 1919 as SS Lake Ellithorpe for the United States Shipping Board (USSB), she was sold to the New England, New York & Texas Steamship Corporation of New York in 1927, then to the Newtex Steamship Corporation of New York City in 1928. In 1932, she was renamed Texas Trader. In 1940 she was sold to the Ministry of War Transport. Reflagged as a British ship and renamed Empire Kestrel, she was managed by William Reardon Smith & Sons Co.
The SS Spartan is a railroad car ferry on Lake Michigan owned by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) from 1952 through 1979. It alternated routes from Ludington, Michigan, to Milwaukee, Kewaunee, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
Fort Victoria was a 7,784 GRT cruise ship which was built in 1912 as Willochra. During the First World War she was requisitioned for use as a troopship. In 1920 she was sold and renamed Fort Victoria, serving until lost in a collision in 1929.
The American Ship Building Company was the dominant shipbuilder on the Great Lakes before the Second World War. It started as Cleveland Shipbuilding in Cleveland, Ohio in 1888 and opened the yard in Lorain, Ohio in 1898. It changed its name to the American Ship Building Company in 1900, when it acquired Superior Shipbuilding, in Superior, Wisconsin; Toledo Shipbuilding, in Toledo, Ohio; and West Bay Shipbuilding, in West Bay City, Michigan. With the coming of World War I, the company also acquired Buffalo Dry Dock, in Buffalo, New York; Chicago Shipbuilding, in Chicago, Illinois; and Detroit Shipbuilding, in Wyandotte, Michigan. American Shipbuilding ranked 81st among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.
Charles Frederick Conrad was the founder of the Lake Michigan Carferry Service. He is also known as an industrialist who made environmental test chambers for the aircraft and aerospace industries.
The SS Pere Marquette was the world's first steel train ferry. It sailed on Lake Michigan and provided service between the ports of Ludington, Michigan, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin, for the Pere Marquette Railway from 1897 to 1930.
William L. Mercereau was an American design engineer manager of train ferries for the Pere Marquette Railway. He supervised their railroad-over-water system of train ferries as the largest carferry system in the world at the time.
Robert Logan was a Scottish naval architect. He designed the first steel train ferry. This was followed by several more steel train ferries that ultimately developed into the world's largest carferry fleet.
The SS John Sherman was a United States sidewheeler ship of the 1870s used for ferry service across Lake Michigan. She went between the states of Michigan and Wisconsin. The ship was the first of the commercial ferries used by the Pere Marquette Railroad for transporting freight and passengers. She preceded additional ferries that ultimately became a fleet of ferries for the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad. It led to the development of the largest train ferry service in the world.
