Lake freighters, or lakers, are bulk carrier vessels that operate on the Great Lakes of North America. These vessels are traditionally called boats, although classified as ships.
North Coast Harbor is a district in downtown Cleveland, Ohio on the shore of Lake Erie. The district serves as the home of the Great Lakes Science Center, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, FirstEnergy Stadium, the Steamship William G. Mather Maritime Museum, USS Cod, Burke Lakefront Airport, Voinovich Bicentennial Park, and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority. It is served by the West 3rd and North Coast stations on RTA's light rail Waterfront Line.
Col. James M. Schoonmaker, formerly Willis B. Boyer, is a lake freighter that served as a commercial vessel on the Great Lakes for much of the 20th century. Named for Medal of Honor recipient James Martinus Schoonmaker, it is currently a museum ship in Toledo, Ohio.
SS William A. Irvin is a lake freighter, named for William A. Irvin, that sailed as a bulk freighter on the Great Lakes as part US Steel's lake fleet. She was flagship of the company fleet from her launch in the depths of the Great Depression in 1938 until 1975 and then was a general workhorse of the fleet until her retirement in 1978.
SS Milwaukee Clipper, also known as SS Clipper, and formerly as SS Juniata, is a retired passenger ship and automobile ferry that sailed under two configurations and traveled on all of the Great Lakes except Lake Ontario. The vessel is now docked in Muskegon, Michigan.
William Gwinn Mather was an American industrialist.
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 SS Samuel Mather was the first of seven U.S. merchant ships to bear that name. The wooden Mather sank in 1891 after she was rammed by the steel freighter Brazil in heavy fog in Whitefish Bay 8 miles (13 km) from Point Iroquois, ending the Mather's 4-year career. Her intact wreck is a rare of example of wooden freighters that plied the Great Lakes and she is a popular scuba diving site. Although there was no loss of life when the Mather sank, her wreck claimed the lives of three scuba divers more than 100 years after she sank. Artifacts from her wreck were illegally removed in the 1980s by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society. The artifacts are now the property of the State of Michigan and are on display as a loan to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. The wreck of the Mather is protected as part of an underwater museum in the Whitefish Point Underwater Preserve.
The SS St. Marys Challenger is a freight-carrying vessel operating on the North American Great Lakes built in 1906. Originally an ore boat, she spent most of her career as a cement carrier when much larger ore boats became common. After a 107-year-long working career as a self-propelled boat, she was converted into a barge and paired with the tug Prentiss Brown as an articulated tug-barge. Before conversion, she was the oldest operating self-propelled lake freighter on the Great Lakes, as well as being one of the last freight-carrying vessels on the Great Lakes to be powered by steam engines.
Harry Coulby was a British American businessman known as the "Czar of the Great Lakes" for his expertise in managing the Great Lakes shipping fleet of Pickands Mather & Company. and the Pittsburgh Steamship Company. After retiring, he served as the first mayor of the newly incorporated town of Wickliffe, Ohio. His former home, Coulallenby, now serves as the city hall of Wickliffe. He chose the design for Great Lakes ore carriers in 1905 that became the standard for the next 65 years, and was elected to the National Maritime Hall of Fame in 1984.
The Pickands Mather Group is an American company which provides shipping of coal and other bulk commodities, and the purchase, sale, and marketing of bulk coal. Founded in 1883 as Pickands Mather & Company, it once had the second largest shipping fleet on the Great Lakes in the 1910s and 1920s. The company was purchased by the Diamond Shamrock Corporation in 1968, which in turn sold it to the Moore-McCormack Resources in 1973. Moore-McCormack sold Pickands Mather's mining interests to Cleveland-Cliffs in 1986. Moore-McCormack then spun off the Interlake Steamship Company to James Barker and Paul R. Tregurtha in 1987. Pickands Mather was sold to a management group in 1992, and continues to operate as a private company.
The Interlake Steamship Company is an American freight ship company that operates a fleet on the Great Lakes in North America. It is now part of Interlake Maritime Services.
Augustus B. Wolvin was a 560 ft (170 m) long Great Lakes freighter that had a 63-year career on the Great Lakes. Augustus B. Wolvin was a product of the American Shipbuilding Company of Cleveland, Ohio. She was built for the Acme Steamship Company of Duluth, Minnesota.
The SS William G. Mather was a 533-foot (162 m) long Great Lakes freighter that was built in 1905, by the Great Lakes Engineering Works (GLEW) of Ecorse, Michigan, for the Grand Island Steamship Company. Her keel was laid on May 18, 1905. She was launched on September 23, 1905, as hull #9. The ship was named after William G. Mather, the Cleveland-Cliffs executive. She was powered by a 2,000-horsepower (1,500 kW) triple expansion steam engine which was attached to a single fixed-pitch propeller. She was fueled by two coal-fired Scotch marine boilers.
The Henry A. Hawgood was an American steel-hulled, propeller-driven lake freighter that was built by the American Ship Building Company of Cleveland, Ohio for service on the Great Lakes of North America and Canada. She was used to haul bulk cargoes such as iron ore, coal and grain.
SS Willis L. King was a 600-foot-long (180 m), steel-hulled, propeller-driven American Great Lakes freighter built in 1911 by the Great Lakes Engineering Works of Ecorse, Michigan. She was scrapped in 1984 in Ashtabula, Ohio. Willis L. King is best known for her collision with the steamer Superior City on August 20, 1920, in Whitefish Bay.
SS John Mitchell was a steel-hulled, American lake freighter in service between 1907 and 1911. She was built in 1906 by the Great Lakes Engineering Works in St. Clair, Michigan, for the Cornell Steamship Company of Chicago, Illinois, which was managed by C.W. Elphicke. She entered service in 1907, and had a sister ship named William B. Davock. Throughout her career, John Mitchell carried iron ore and coal. On October 4, 1908, she ran aground at Indiana Harbor, Indiana, while loaded with iron ore.
SS Sir William Siemens was a steel-hulled American lake freighter in service between 1896 and 1944. Built in 1896 by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, Ohio, for John D. Rockefeller's Bessemer Steamship Company, she was the third of three 432-foot-long (131.7 m) lake freighters, each of which shared the unofficial title of "Queen of the Lakes" due to their record-breaking length.
United States 
Cleveland, Ohio 
