Cleveland and Sandusky, 1943: The Boats Only Had Eight Months
The film of this episode premieres December 29, 2026 on YouTube. The documents, the transcript and the sources are below now.
In May 1943 Jack Delano photographed the Pennsylvania Railroad's two lake fronts in Kodachrome — the iron-ore docks at Cleveland and the coal docks at Sandusky, sixty miles apart, on the same trip. Read in the order the material moves, his pictures are not two towns.
Transcript
A machine with no name
R001 Pennsylvania R.R. ore docks, a "Hulett" ore unloader in operation, Cleveland, Ohio
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Nobody driving past could have told you what this machine did. It only worked eight months of the year.
D01 Pennsylvania R.R. ore docks, a "Hulett" ore unloader in operation, Cleveland, Ohio (detail)
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
There is a man in it. That cab rides down through a hatch, into the hold of a ship.
R002 Pennsylvania R.R. ore docks, a "Hulett" unloader in operation, Cleveland, Ohio
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
It is called a Hulett unloader. Cleveland, May of 1943.
D02 Pennsylvania R.R. ore docks, a "Hulett" unloader in operation, Cleveland, Ohio (detail)
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Nearly all the iron the United States used that year came ashore on machines like this one, and the weather decided when.
Ten tons at a bite
R003 Pennsylvania R.R. ore docks, unloading ore from a lake freighter by "Hulett" unloaders, Cleveland, Ohio
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Jack Delano photographed them for the Office of War Information. The dark shape under the machine is a lake freighter, tied up at the Pennsylvania Railroad's ore docks.
R004 Pennsylvania R.R. ore docks, unloading iron ore from a lake freighter by means of "Hulett" unloaders, Cleveland, Ohio
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The arm swings out across the hull. What hangs off the bottom of it is a clamshell bucket, and it takes about ten tons at a bite.
R008 Pennsylvania R.R. iron ore docks, unloading ore from a lake freighter by means of "Hulett" ore unloaders
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Down again, into the cargo hold. Nobody standing on the dock can see in there, which is why the operator goes down with it.
R006 After the ore is weighed in the "Hewlett" i.e. "Hulett" machine it is dropped in the waiting hopper cars below; Pennsylvania R.R. iron ore docks, Cleveland, Ohio
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Delano's caption: after the ore is weighed in the Hulett machine, it is dropped in the waiting hopper cars below.
R007 Unloading a lake freighter at the Pennsylvania Railroad iron ore docks by means of Hulett unloaders, Cleveland, Ohio. In the foreground, empty cars are waiting to pass under the unloaders to pick up their loads
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The cars are already standing under the dock. Empty, in a line, waiting their turn.
R010 Pennsylvania R.R. ore docks, unloading ore from a lake freighter by means of "Hulett" unloaders, Cleveland, Ohio
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Four machines working one boat. The hatches run the whole length of the deck, and they open all at once.
R012 Pennsylvania R.R. ore docks, unloading ore from a lake freighter by means of "Hulett" unloaders, Cleveland, Ohio
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
This one is the E. A. S. Clarke, of the Interlake Steamship Company.
R011 Pennsylvania R.R. Railroad ore docks, unloading iron ore from a lake freighter by means of "Hulett" unloaders, Cleveland, Ohio
Jack Delano · Cleveland, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And this is what it looked like from the land side, over somebody's hedge.
Where all of it came from
North meant one district. The Bureau of Mines: the Lake Superior district in 1943 supplied eighty-five percent of the nation's output.
And within it, one range. The Mesabi supplied seventy-six percent of the district total, and sixty-five percent of the United States total.
Which made the boats the entire supply. Virtually all the ore consumed in western Pennsylvania furnaces, the Bureau wrote, came from the Lake Superior district.
There had been a second source, overseas, and it had just closed. Imports of iron ore in 1942 decreased tremendously from 1941, owing to the crucial shipping problem.
Because of enemy submarine activity, shipments from Chile, which had long been the largest supplier of foreign ore, were suspended in 1942.
The other direction
R014 Loading a freighter with coal at one of the three coal docks owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, Sandusky, Ohio
Jack Delano · Sandusky, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Sixty miles west of the ore docks, at Sandusky, the same railroad kept three coal docks. These ones loaded.
R015 Loading a lake freighter with coal for shipment to other lake ports, Sandusky, Ohio
Jack Delano · Sandusky, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Coal, brought north by train out of the Appalachian fields, and poured into the same kind of boat. Delano wrote down where it was going. For shipment to other lake ports.
R017 Loading coal into a lake freighter at the Pennsylvania Railroad docks, Sandusky, Ohio
Jack Delano · Sandusky, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
So the ore came down and the coal went up, on the same water, in the same season, and neither boat ran empty.
R018 Loading coal into a lake freighter at the Pennsylvania Railroad docks, Sandusky, Ohio
Jack Delano · Sandusky, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The coal was for the head of the lakes. For the iron ranges, and for every town north of them that had a winter to get through.
The Bureau counted that traffic too. Lake shipments of coal to American docks on Lake Superior were nearly fifteen percent greater in 1943 than in the preceding year.
And it counted what got drawn back down. Across 1943, stocks on the upper Lake docks declined one million, three hundred and sixty-three thousand tons.
April 28
R021 Ore being unloaded from the lake steamer Algosoo of Sault Ste. Marie at Pennsylvania R.R. ore docks, Sandusky, Ohio
Jack Delano · Sandusky, Ohio · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
This one is the lake steamer Algosoo, out of Soo Saint Marie. That is the name of the place every boat in this story had to pass through.
The locks at Soo Saint Marie are where Lake Superior lets down into everything below it. And the Bureau's summary of the whole year opens on them.
Shipments were hampered by an unusually late opening, April twenty-eighth, of the Great Lakes shipping season.
The first ore carrier passed southward through the locks at Soo Saint Marie on April twenty-eighth, 1943 — about a month later than in 1942.
Then it got worse. Shipments during the first few weeks of the season were retarded by heavy fogs and rain. Collisions sunk two ore carriers, and several others were damaged.
A fifth lock was being finished at the Soo that summer. The new MacArthur lock was completed and opened to commerce on the eleventh of July.
It was the largest of the five. Eight hundred and seventy-nine feet long, eighty-one wide, thirty-one deep. Ten weeks after the season should have started.
Ninety-five million tons
Before any of that happened, somebody in Washington had written down a number. At the beginning of the Lake shipping season, the War Production Board announced a goal.
Ninety-five million gross tons to be shipped down the Lakes, in addition to two million tons all-rail.
And then crossed it out. With the difficulties encountered in moving ore on the Lakes during the year, the required goal was gradually reduced to eighty-six million, five hundred thousand tons.
They did not make that one either. The Lake Superior Iron Ore Association reported the season's total.
Eighty-three million, nine hundred and forty-six thousand, eight hundred and twenty-seven tons.
There was no more fleet to throw at it, and the Bureau counted that too.
At the end of the season the United States ore fleet comprised three hundred and nineteen vessels, with a trip capacity of two million, nine hundred and eighty-four thousand tons.
And there were not enough men. Added to the troubles of the iron-mining industry in 1943 was a severe manpower shortage.
Especially in the northeastern district, where it held production down virtually to the pre-war level.
The pile
R022 Iron ore piles and blast furnaces, Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation mill in Etna, Pennsylvania
Alfred T. Palmer · Etna, Pennsylvania · November 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Eleven million tons short of the plan, because of fog. Alfred Palmer's caption on this photograph starts with six words, and they are the whole argument. Iron ore piles and blast furnaces.
R023 Blast furnaces and iron ore at the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation mills, Etna, Pennsylvania
Alfred T. Palmer · Etna, Pennsylvania · November 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Which is why a steel mill does not look like a factory. Etna, Pennsylvania, on the Allegheny above Pittsburgh, November of 1941.
D11 Blast furnaces and iron ore at the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation mills, Etna, Pennsylvania (detail)
Alfred T. Palmer · Etna, Pennsylvania · November 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
It looks like a mountain with a factory behind it. That black slope is iron ore, and it has to last the winter.
So the furnaces did not run on boats. They ran on that pile, and the Bureau measured it on the last day of the year.
Forty-five million, six hundred and fifty-eight thousand short tons, on the last day of 1942. Made possible, it wrote, by a favorable shipping season.
Iron into steel
R025 A scene in a steel mill, Republic Steel Mill, Youngstown, Ohio. Molten iron is blown in an Eastern Bessemer converter to change it to steel for war essentials
Alfred T. Palmer · Youngstown, Ohio · November 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Republic Steel, Youngstown, Ohio. Molten iron is blown in an Eastern Bessemer converter to change it to steel.
R026 Slag run-off from open hearth furnace, Republic Steel Corp., Youngstown, Ohio
Alfred T. Palmer · Youngstown, Ohio · November 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Slag run-off from an open hearth furnace. It is drawn off just before the steel goes into the ladles.
R027 Ladle of molten iron is poured into an open hearth furnace for conversion into steel, Allegheny Ludlum Steele Corp., Brackenridge, Pa. Note the safety latch on the crane hook
Alfred T. Palmer · Brackenridge, Pennsylvania · 1941? · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Further up the Allegheny, at Brackenridge, a ladle of molten iron going into an open hearth.
R028 Back into production go these carloads of scrap metal, Allegheny Ludlum Steele Corp., Brackenridge, Pa. The melting of alloy steels for defense work requires that steel mill scrapyards such as this be constantly filled. The overhead magnet deposits the scrap in a loader which carries it to the open-hearth furnace. About 50 per cent scrap steel is used in open-hearth production
Alfred T. Palmer · Brackenridge, Pennsylvania · 1941? · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Not all of it came off a boat. Back into production go these carloads of scrap metal. About fifty percent scrap steel is used in open-hearth production.
R029 Bessemer converter (iron into steel), Allegheny Ludlum Steele Corp., Brackenridge, Pa.
Alfred T. Palmer · Brackenridge, Pennsylvania · 1941? · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A Bessemer converter at Brackenridge, at the moment the sparks come over the lip.
R030 White-hot steel pours like water from a 35-ton electric furnace, Allegheny Ludlum Steele Corp., Brackenridge, Pa. The finest quality steels and alloys are produced in these furnaces, which allow much greater control of temperature than other conversion furnaces. The proportion of electric furnace steel is rising steadily, even though this process is the most expensive. "The furnace is tilted for the pouring." The flying sparks indicate the fluidity of the steel
Alfred T. Palmer · Brackenridge, Pennsylvania · 1941? · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And the most expensive process in the building. White-hot steel pours like water from a thirty-five ton electric furnace.
R031 Drill press operator, Allegheny Ludlum Steele Corp., Brackenridge, Pa.
Alfred T. Palmer · Brackenridge, Pennsylvania · 1941? · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A drill press operator at Allegheny Ludlum. The Library has no name for him. It has no name for anybody in the seventy-two frames this film was cut from.
What all of it came to, in the Bureau's flat sentence. Steel-industry production figures continued upward in 1942.
Steel ingots and castings totalled eighty-six million short tons, an all-time high. Usable iron-ore output was a hundred and eighteen million. Both all-time records.
The coke ovens
R032 Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, Detroit, Mich. Coal tower atop coal ovens
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · November 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Detroit, November of 1942. The Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, photographed by Arthur Siegel.
R034 Coal feeders on tip of coke ovens, Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, Detroit, Mich.
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · November 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
This is the other half of what came off the boats. Those are the feeders on top of the coke ovens, and what they are feeding in is coal.
R035 Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, Detroit, Mich. Coal pusher apparatus with coal storage
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · November 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
That machinery is the pusher. Coal goes in, air does not, and what comes out is coke.
R033 Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, Detroit, Mich. Coal tower atop coke ovens
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · November 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A door comes off, and this is what is behind it.
R036 Coke being pushed into a quenching car, Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, Detroit, Mich.
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · November 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Then the whole charge is pushed out sideways, still burning, into a car that runs it under water.
R038 Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, Detroit, Mich. General view showing tank which stores gas from the coke oven. Square building and extension in middle ground is where coal is fed to a feeder belt and then transferred to a storage place on top of the coke oven. The coal is then dropped into three inverted bottle-like containers and from there fed directly into the coke ovens
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · November 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And a tank that stores the gas the ovens gave off, because none of it was allowed to be wasted.
What the heat became
R039 Casting a billet from an electric furnace, Chase Brass and Copper Co., Euclid, Ohio. Modern electric furnaces have helped considerably in speeding the production of brass and other copper alloys for national defense. Here the molten metal is poured or cast from the tilted furnace into a mold to form a billet. The billet later is worked into rods, tubes, wires or special shapes for a variety of uses
Alfred T. Palmer · Euclid, Ohio · February 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Chase Brass and Copper, at Euclid, Ohio. Casting a billet from an electric furnace.
R040 A battery of 1,000 and 2,000 pound furnaces roaring threats to the Axis. These are rotary, oil-fired melting furnaces at Aluminum Industries Inc. Destination of the finished aluminum products is kept secret
Alfred T. Palmer · Ohio · February 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Palmer wrote his captions to be reprinted, and it shows. A battery of one thousand and two thousand pound furnaces roaring threats to the Axis.
R041 Smoke stacks
Alfred T. Palmer · Ohio · 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Smoke stacks. That is the entire caption on this one.
R042 Busy stacks give evidence of all-out war production effort at a plant of Owens-Corning Fiberglass Corporation, Akron, Ohio
Alfred T. Palmer · Akron, Ohio · February 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Busy stacks give evidence of all-out war production effort. Owens-Corning Fiberglas, at Akron.
R043 Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation, Toledo, Ohio. Side view of a glass furnace melting the carefully compounded batch required for the production of Fiberglas thermal insulation being installed in the hulls of naval vessels now under construction
Alfred T. Palmer · Toledo, Ohio · February 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
At Toledo, the same company melting glass. The insulation it made was going into the hulls of naval vessels then under construction.
R044 Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp., Toledo, Ohio. Intense heat is needed to melt the inorganic ingredients of the batch from which Fiberglas insulation wool is manufactured. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, this gas-fired furnace maintains the temperature required in the process
Alfred T. Palmer · Toledo, Ohio · February 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, this gas-fired furnace maintains the temperature required in the process.
R047 Women war workers
Alfred T. Palmer · Ohio · 1942? · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And two women at a table, filed under a caption of three words. Women war workers.
The tires
R048 This sheet of synthetic rubber coming off the rolling mill at the plant is now ready for drying, B.F. Goodrich Co., Akron, Ohio. Synthetic rubber made by the "ameripol" process is derived from butadiene (a petroleum derivative). In this rolling mill the crumbs of rubber are squeezed dry of excess water and pressed together into the blanket shown here
Alfred T. Palmer · Akron, Ohio · 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Akron also made the one thing the lakes could not deliver. This sheet of synthetic rubber is coming off the rolling mill at B. F. Goodrich.
R049 Manufacture of self-sealing gas tanks, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., Akron, Ohio
Alfred T. Palmer · Akron, Ohio · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Manufacture of self-sealing gas tanks, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, December of 1941.
R050 Electronics technician, Goodyear Aircraft Corp., Akron, Ohio
Alfred T. Palmer · Akron, Ohio · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
An electronics technician at Goodyear Aircraft, the same month.
R051 Formerly an aircraft dock, this huge building -- thought to be the largest in the world with no interior supports -- is now the scene of many busy shops turning out aircraft sub-assembly parts, Goodyear Aircraft Corp., Akron, Ohio. Either new housing close to the plant or vastly improved public transportation will eventually have to be supplied, for the tires on the cars of the workers, and perhaps even the cars themselves, will in many instances give in before the end of the present emergency
Alfred T. Palmer · Akron, Ohio · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And the building they worked in. Formerly an aircraft dock, and thought to be the largest in the world with no interior supports.
D14 Formerly an aircraft dock, this huge building -- thought to be the largest in the world with no interior supports -- is now the scene of many busy shops turning out aircraft sub-assembly parts, Goodyear Aircraft Corp., Akron, Ohio. Either new housing close to the plant or vastly improved public transportation will eventually have to be supplied, for the tires on the cars of the workers, and perhaps even the cars themselves, will in many instances give in before the end of the present emergency (detail)
Alfred T. Palmer · Akron, Ohio · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Palmer's caption then looks at what is parked in front of it. Either new housing close to the plant, or vastly improved public transportation, will eventually have to be supplied —
D15 Formerly an aircraft dock, this huge building -- thought to be the largest in the world with no interior supports -- is now the scene of many busy shops turning out aircraft sub-assembly parts, Goodyear Aircraft Corp., Akron, Ohio. Either new housing close to the plant or vastly improved public transportation will eventually have to be supplied, for the tires on the cars of the workers, and perhaps even the cars themselves, will in many instances give in before the end of the present emergency (detail)
Alfred T. Palmer · Akron, Ohio · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
for the tires on the cars of the workers, and perhaps even the cars themselves, will in many instances give in before the end of the present emergency.
R052 Installing one of the 4 motors on the transport plane at Willow Run
Howard R. Hollem · Willow Run, Michigan · between 1941 and 1945 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
He wrote it in the weeks after Pearl Harbor, in the town that made the tires. Willow Run, Michigan. Installing one of the four motors on a transport plane.
R053 Inspecting of landing wheel of the transport planes at Willow Run
Howard R. Hollem · Willow Run, Michigan · between 1941 and 1945 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And inspecting a landing wheel. Which is to say, a tire.
Detroit at five thirty
R054 Looking west from the Maccabees Building
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · July 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Detroit, July of 1942. Arthur Siegel went up on the roof of the Maccabees Building and looked west.
R055 Looking south from the Maccabees Building with the Detroit skyline in the distance, Detroit, Mich.
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · July 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Then south, toward the skyline.
R056 Looking north on Woodward Ave., from the Maccabees Building with the Fisher Building at the far left, and the Wardell Hotel at the middle right, Detroit, Mich.
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · July 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Then north, up Woodward Avenue.
R057 Traffic at 5:30 on Second Avenue, Detroit, Mich.
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · July 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Then straight down. His caption gives the time. Traffic at five thirty on Second Avenue.
R058 Looking down on a parking lot from the rear of the Fisher Building, Detroit, Mich.
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · July 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And a parking lot behind the Fisher Building — seven months after a photographer in Akron predicted that these cars would wear out before the war did.
R059 Flag, Detroit, Mich.
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · July 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Flag, Detroit, Michigan. Four words, and he went back down the stairs.
December
The season ended the way it always did. In both 1942 and 1943, the Bureau wrote, the last shipments of ore were made early in December.
R060 Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Coporation, stock pile of coal and iron ore, Detroit, Mich.
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · November 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Siegel photographed this a few weeks before that. Coal on one side, iron ore on the other, and nothing coming in until April.
D16 Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Coporation, stock pile of coal and iron ore, Detroit, Mich. (detail)
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · November 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Every furnace in this film ate off a pile like this one all winter, and the boats existed to build it back before the ice.
D17 Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Coporation, stock pile of coal and iron ore, Detroit, Mich. (detail)
Arthur S. Siegel · Detroit, Michigan · November 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Nothing in the file names one of the people who built it. If your family worked these docks, or the boats between them, their names are the part of this record that only you have.
Sources
- Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information colour file, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. Federal works, public domain. Free to download at full resolution: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/ — search the LC-USF35 and LC-USW36 call numbers in each on-screen credit.
- Jack Delano, Cleveland and Sandusky, Ohio, May 1943 — 21 frames. The Pennsylvania Railroad's iron-ore docks at Cleveland and its coal docks at Sandusky, photographed on the same trip.
- Alfred T. Palmer, Etna and Brackenridge, Pennsylvania; Youngstown, Akron, Toledo and Euclid, Ohio, November 1941 – February 1942 — 26 frames.
- Arthur S. Siegel, Detroit, Michigan, July and November 1942 — 11 frames: the Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, and six rooftop views made from the Maccabees and Fisher Buildings.
- Howard R. Hollem, Willow Run, Michigan, between 1941 and 1945 — 2 frames. The Library's date on these is a range and the credit on screen says so.
- The colours are the ones the photographers exposed. These are Kodachrome transparencies and slides from 1941–43. Nothing here is AI-colorized, so this episode carries no altered-content disclosure. The plates are cropped inside the 4×5 mount and the credit is burned on after the crop; nothing else is retouched.
- Minerals Yearbook 1942 — https://archive.org/details/pub_usgov-minerals-yearbook_1942 - p. 569 · steel ingots and castings 86,031,931 short tons, an all-time high; pig iron 59,077,593 tons; usable iron-ore output 118,189,336 tons — "both all-time records." - p. 581 · "Blast furnaces in Ohio consumed magnetite from New York in addition to ore from the Lake Superior district." · "Virtually all the ore consumed in western Pennsylvania furnaces came from the Lake Superior district." - p. 581 · stocks of iron ore at consuming plants 45,658,562 short tons on 31 December 1942, against 40,509,863 a year earlier — "This large increase was made possible by a favorable shipping season, which enabled shipments to exceed demand." - p. 582 · "Because of enemy submarine activity, shipments from Chile, which had long been the largest supplier of foreign ore, were suspended in 1942."
- Minerals Yearbook 1943 — https://archive.org/details/pub_usgov-minerals-yearbook_1943 - p. 552 · "an unusually late opening (April 28) of the Great Lakes shipping season, unfavorable shipping weather during the season, and several Lake shipping accidents" · War Production Board goal of 95,000,000 gross tons down the Lakes plus 2,000,000 all-rail · "the required goal was gradually reduced to 86,500,000 tons" · a "severe manpower shortage, especially in the northeastern district" · the MacArthur lock at Sault Ste. Marie opened to commerce 11 July 1943, 879 × 81 × 31 feet, the largest of the five. - p. 570 · Lake Superior supplied 85 percent of the nation's output (87 in 1942), Mesabi 65 percent of the US total · Lake Superior Iron Ore Association reported 83,946,827 tons shipped down the Great Lakes from US ports in 1943, "a decrease of 8 percent from 1942" · first ore carrier southward through the Soo locks 28 April 1943, "about a month later than in 1942" · "Collisions sunk two ore carriers, and several others were damaged" · at season's end the US ore fleet was 319 vessels, trip capacity 2,984,490 tons at 20 feet draft, plus 28 Canadian vessels · "In both 1942 and 1943 the last shipments of ore were made early in December." - p. 833 · across 1943 "stocks on the upper Lake docks declined 1,363,620 net tons", the days' supply of coal falling from 51 to 30. - p. 1044 · "Lake shipments of coal to American docks on Lake Superior were nearly 15 percent greater in 1943 than in the preceding year."
- No Hulett operator is named. A man is plainly visible in the cab on the machine's leg in one frame (LC 2017878207, scenes 1 and 2), and Delano's caption does not mention him. Nobody in any of the 72 frames this film was cut from is named — not the operator, not the drill-press man at Brackenridge, not the two women at the yellow table. The episode says so instead of inventing intimacy.
- The Library's caption on one frame does not describe it. LC 2017878788 is captioned "Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, Detroit, Mich. Coal tower atop coke ovens" — which is a near-repeat of the caption on LC 2017878783, and does not describe the picture, an oven interior seen through an opened door. That frame is used (scene 53) and its caption is not quoted.
- The 1943 Detroit unrest is not in these photographs and is not in this film. Siegel's rooftop views are July 1942, eleven months earlier, and show a skyline, a flag, traffic and a parking lot. Detroit's wartime housing and in-migration crisis is real and is a different episode.
- Willow Run's two frames are transport planes, and the captions say so. No bomber-plant claim is made, and the date on both is the Library's own range, "between 1941 and 1945."
- "Great Lakes Steel Corporation" is a company, not the lakes. The Hanna furnaces were its Detroit works.
- Twelve of the 72 frames are unspent and why is written down in `research/great-lakes-arc/picks.py` — near-duplicates, and three frames (a grocery store at Mt. Orab, a country school near Portsmouth, a kitchen at Birmingham) that are honest pictures of Ohio and Michigan but are not evidence about steel.