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| FP Martinez posted [It was white when it was built. This shows years of coal soot.] "When the original railings, ornate bridgetender buildings, and gracefully curved pony trusses are taken into account it is quite easy to argue that the Franklin Street Bridge is among the most beautiful of Chicago's bridges." [Historic Bridges] Historic Chicago posted Chicago - Merchandise Mart (1951) |
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| Glen Miller posted May 9, 1951 – The 620-foot Cliffs Victory, missing its rudder and guided by two tug boats, front and back, makes its way slowly through the Chicago River and out into Lake Michigan. It is the longest ship ever to move through the inland waterway from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes, and it takes two hours for the great ship to move from Harrison Street to the lake. The closest squeeze comes at the Van Buren Street bridge where “some of the black paint scraped from her plates.” [Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1951] Onlookers along the main stem of the river gape as in several places the big ship passes with her stern just clearing an upraised bridge as her bow is abreast of the next one over a block away. Since the lock at the mouth of the river is 20 feet shorter than the Cliffs Victory, special arrangements have to be made. She is run up until she nearly touches the east gate of the lock, and ropes are run from the ship’s winches to mooring posts along the lock. The the gate is opened, and water from the lake, nearly 18 inches higher than the river pours in, pushing the ship back. “Then with two tugs straining furiously,” reports the Tribune, “and the winches pulling in the mooring lines, the ship began to move against the current. Fifteen minutes later the stern cleared the west gate and it was closed, stemming the flood into the river.” From Chicago the ship is moved to South Chicago where she was re-fitted for ore duty on the Great Lakes. In 1987, she was sold for scrap. Michael Bose: The lengths quoted for both this ship and the 1953 article on the Marine Angel were taken from the Tribune article about each vessel written by staff reporters who didn't know anything about ships, they just quoted what they were told. The actual measurements of both ships that made the same transit through the Mississippi, Illinois, DesPlaines and Chicago Rivers are data contained in the ships' registration and for the Marine Angel (renamed McKees Sons) they are also in the ship's archive held at Bowling Green State University. One of my Grandfathers was the skipper of the Marine Angel during WWII before it was lengthened. Additionally, the McKees Sons still exists! The Cliffs Victory did have the record for the longest ship to make the inland waterway trip as of 1951, but it wasn't 620 feet. It was 619 feet in length. That one foot becomes important in 1953. The Marine Angel made the same trip and was reported by the Tribune as 634 feet. That was really wrong. But it did take the record, because it's actual length is 620' 4". That Cliffs Victory was later further lengthened in 1957 to 700 ft. making it the longest Great Lakes freighter until the next Spring when the Edmund Fitzgerald went into service. Glen Miller posted again with the same comment John Fiala shared |
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Looking SW
Photo taken by Royce and Bobette Haley in November 2015 via Bridge Hunter
[Note the building construction that they also caught.] |
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| Steve Farr, Jul 2017 |
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| 1920 Annual Report of the Chicago Public Works Department via ChicagoLoopBridges |
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| MWRD posted on Jan 6, 2023 A view downstream showing the south span of a bridge at Franklin Street over the Chicago River on August 21, 1919. |
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| MWRD posted A downstream view of the Franklin Street bridge over the Chicago River on July 17, 1923. [I avoid terms like "downstream" on the Chicago River because I can't decide if I should use the original flow or the current flow. It appears that MWRD uses the original flow.] |
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| William Lafferty commented on the above post Another great Chicago maritime image. The small vessel on the left, American Eagle, was built by "Doc" Heath at Saugatuck, Michigan, in 1903 for Phil Kegel, well-known Chicago fisherman and excursion boat operator, still its owner when this photograph was taken. American Eagle primarily ran round trips between Lincoln Park and Municipal Pier. Sold to William Zieck of Chicago in 1925, it was abandoned on the North Branch in 1931. Beyond the bridge can be seen the steamer Petoskey, one of the longest running passenger steamers in Chicago history, launched 20 April 1888 at Manitowoc by Burger & Burger. From 1901 to 1927 it ran for the Chicago & South Haven Steamship Company between those two cities. While sitting at Sturgeon Bay awaiting to be cut down to a barge, it burned a total loss at the yard of the Sturgeon Bay Shipbuilding & Drydock Company along with two other vessels in a major conflagration, 3 December 1935. Here is the Petoskey being rebuilt at Sturgeon Bay in the summer of 1927: |
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