R. J. Hackett (steamer)
R. J. Hackett under steam c. 1900, showing the second deck installed in 1881.
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History | |
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Name | R. J. Hackett |
Operator | Northwest Transportation Company; Vulcan Transportation Company |
Builder | Peck & Masters |
Launched | November 16, 1869 |
Fate | Sank November 12, 1905 |
General characteristics | |
Type | Great Lakes freighter |
Tonnage | 749 gross as built; 1,129 after 1881 |
Length | 208 feet 1 inch (63.42 m) |
Beam | 32 feet 5 inches (9.88 m) |
Depth | 12 feet 6 inches (3.81 m) |
Installed power | 380 horsepower (280 kW) |
Propulsion | Triple-expansion steam engine |
Notes | American #21934 |
R. J. Hackett (steamer) Shipwreck Site | |
Location | Whaleback Shoal in Green Bay, 9.5 miles southeast of the Cedar River in Menominee County, Michigan. |
Coordinates | 45°21′28″N 87°10′55″W / 45.35778°N 87.18194°W |
Area | 1.4 acres (0.57 ha) |
Built | 1869 |
Built by | Peck & Masters |
Architect | Elihu Peck |
NRHP reference No. | 92000464[1] |
Added to NRHP | May 21, 1992 |
R. J. Hackett (official number 21934)
The Hackett is recognized as the first
Shipbuilder Elihu M. Peck
Elihu Monroe Peck (1822 – May 8, 1896) was a pioneer in shipbuilding and passenger and freight hauling.[4] He was born in Butternuts, New York[4] in 1822.[3]
When Peck was 16, he began working in the profession of ship's carpenter.
Early in his career, in 1845 Peck married Susan Ettling Rogers of Bedford, Ohio. The couple had two children, both of whom died young.[4]
In 1847, Peck at 25 started his own shipyard in Cleveland. He built one new ship (the schooner Jenny Lind), but focused on the repair of older ships.[5] The schooner Jenny Lind expressed some of his innovative thinking: it had a blunt bow and almost square cross-section, unlike the more conventional sleek, raked schooners of the day.[3] This design resulted in more cargo space, giving the ship an advantage over competing schooners.[3]
Peck later captained his own ship, the Fountain City, in transporting iron ore.[6]
In 1855, Peck formed a partnership with Irvine U. Masters, beginning the firm of Peck & Masters.[3] Their new firm focused on building new vessels.[5] When Masters died a decade later in 1866,[4] Peck kept the full name of the firm, as they had built a solid reputation.[3]
Peck also had business interests in Cleveland beyond shipbuilding. He served as president of People's Gas Light Company of Cleveland and a director of the Savings Loan Association.[5] In 1855 he served as a delegate to his county Republican convention; in 1867 he ran for public office and was elected a waterworks commissioner.[7]
Peck had a reputation as a brusque but fair man, with a streak of unconventionality.[3] When work was slow, he kept his builders employed by building ships on speculation;[3] these speculative builds were always eventually sold.[3]
Building the R. J. Hackett
By 1869, Peck & Masters was a highly regarded firm and had built more than 50 ships, including the 1867 package freighter Nebraska. At 280 feet (85 meters) in length and almost 1,500 gross register tons, it was the largest ship on the Great Lakes at the time. Most of the ships built by Peck & Masters were of a relatively conventional design.
In 1869 Peck decided to push his design toward unconventional for a new vessel. For this project, he took on an investing partner, Captain Robert J. Hackett of Detroit. They designed and built the R. J. Hackett on speculation, launching the ship on November 16, 1869 in Cleveland. The Hackett, like the Jenny Lind, had a boxy hull, increasing cargo capacity.[3]
When Peck and Hackett could not find a buyer for the new ship, they organized the Northwest Transportation Company, along with Hackett's brother and Harvey Brown, an agent for the
Description
The R. J. Hackett was a wooden-hulled propeller ship,
The
Significance of the Hackett
The design of the R. J. Hackett was innovative. With its boxy hull, hatch-lined deck, and placement of the deckhouses, the ship was ideally suited for moving cargo through inland waterways.[3] The fore and aft deckhouses gave the Hackett a single immense hold that could be easily accessed and filled with cargo.[10] The boxy hull maximized cargo volume, and the hatch spacing lined the ship up perfectly with the ore dock chutes in Marquette, Michigan and elsewhere.[6][10] Since the center section was free of rigging, loading the ship was much easier than with previous designs.[6] The forward pilothouse gave the captain better vision and enabled quicker reaction to dangers in the water.[6] The Hackett's design combined the best aspects of steam and sailing ships into a new class of vessel.[10]
The R. J. Hackett was capable of running 12 miles per hour (19 km/h), faster than a comparable sail-powered cargo ship. Moreover, because of her design, the ship could carry a prodigious amount of cargo.
The success of the R. J. Hackett immediately spawned imitators,
Later history
In 1870, Peck added an operational innovation by experimenting with using the freighter for towing. He used the R. J. Hackett to tow the schooner Forest City (of a similar design to the Hackett but without engines[3]); both ships were laden with ore.[4] This proved the utility of towing transport ships through the lakes, effectively doubling the cargo capacity of the single ship[4] without sacrificing maneuverability. In 1871, the Forest City was outfitted with engines to run independently[3] (and was assigned its own tow consort). After that the Hackett towed the schooner Harvey H. Brown.
Elihu Peck gradually withdrew from shipbuilding, and dissolved his shipbuilding business in about 1872, before some of these changes.[7] Within a few years, he moved from Cleveland to Detroit to concentrate on the Northwest Transportation Company and its freighters.[4][7] Northwest eventually owned one of the largest transport fleets on the Great Lakes.[4] Peck remained president of Northwest until his death on May 8, 1896.[4]
In the early 1870s, the R. J. Hackett was valued at $48,000. In 1881, the ship had another mast and a second deck installed, raising its height by 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m).
In 1892, Northwest Transportation sold the Hackett to the Vulcan Transportation Company of Detroit.[8] In the spring of 1905, Vulcan in turn sold the ship to Captain H. C. McCallum.[12]
Wreck
In November 1905, the Hackett was on its way from Cleveland to Marinette, Wisconsin carrying a load of coal. On the morning of November 12,[13] a fire started in the Hackett's crew quarters.[9] The fire soon spread to the oil in the engine room.[9][14]
Captain McCallum ran the ship aground on Whaleback Reef off Washington Island in
The wreck has slipped slightly off the reef; today it sits in 10–14 feet (3.0–4.3 m) of water. The wreck consists of large sections of hull along with the steeple engine, shaft, propeller and boiler,[9] cargo coal, and miscellaneous artifacts.[14] The wreck site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[1]
References
- ^ a b c "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
- ^ "R. J. Hackett (Propeller)". Maritime History of the Great Lakes. Retrieved February 29, 2012.
- ^ ISBN 0-8143-2393-6
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cyclopedia of Michigan, Historical and Biographical, Western Publishing and Engraving Company, 1900, pp. 153–154
- ^ ISBN 1-4191-1340-2
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7864-3326-1
- ^ a b c "PECK, ELIHU M." The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Retrieved February 29, 2012.
- ^ a b c d "R. J. Hackett". Great Lakes Vessel History. Retrieved February 29, 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f g Jon Paul Van Harpen. "The First Bulk Freighter on the Great Lakes". Jon Paul's Maritime Diaries. Retrieved February 29, 2012.
- ^ ISBN 0-8143-3226-9
- ^ "R. J. Hackett". Cleveland Herald. May 18, 1881.
- ^ "Steamer Hackett Burns in Green Bay". Buffalo Evening News. November 13, 1905.
- ^ ISBN 0-7385-4014-5
- ^ a b c "R. J. HACKETT Shipwreck Site". Michigan State Housing Development Authority: Historic Sites Online. Retrieved March 13, 2011.