The Great Lakes were America's first superhighway before railroad lines
and roads arrived in the late nineteenth century. This book tells the
story of the ships and boats on which the United States, barely decades
old, moved to the country's middle and beyond, established a robust
industrial base, and became a world power, despite enduring a bloody
Civil War. The "five sisters," as the Great Lakes came to be called,
would connect America's far-reaching regions in the century ahead,
carrying streams of Irish, German, and Scandinavian settlers to new
lives, as the young nation expanded west. Initially, schooner fleets
delivered passengers and goods to settlements along the lakes, including
Chicago, Milwaukee, and Green Bay, and returned east with grain, lumber,
and iron ore. Steam-driven vessels, including the lavish "palace"
passenger steamers, followed, along with those specially designed to
carry coal, grain, and iron ore. The era also produced a flourishing
shipbuilding industry and saw recreational boating advance. In text and
photographs, this book tells the story of a bygone era, of mariners and
Mackinaw Boats, schooners and steamboats, all helping to advance the
young nation westward.
