Barges - Wisconsin & Michigan Railway

The Wisconsin and Michigan Railway operated two barges between Peshtigo Harbor, WI and South Chicago. The barges were powered by a tug built for that purpose.

Time Line

1900. November 17. Two car ferry barges were lost on Lake Erie by the tug Fischer. They were built at Toledo by the Craig Shipbuilding Co. in 1896. Each had a length of 306 feet, 47 foot beam and 12 foot hold, and track room for twenty-four cars. They cost the W&M in the neighborhood of $60,000, which is now the estimate of the combined logs on the vessels and their cargoes. Just how much pulpwood they had on is a matter of conjecture, but owing to their size, it could not have been less than 1,600 cords, or 800 cords each. All carrying was done on deck.

The barges were merely large flat scows. The W&M had a fleet of four built - two by James Davidson of West Bay City and two by the Craig company - for the transportation of freight in cars between Peshtigo Harbor and South Chicago. The first pair came out in 1895 and the second a year later. The venture, which promised success at the outset, proved a dismal failure after a fair trial, and the railway company then made the best disposition of the barges that it could.

For a single season, one of them, towed by the tug Fischer, carried iron products and materials for the production of iron between escanaba and Milwaukee and SOuth CHicago under charter to the Illinois Steel Co. Two others engagedc in ore and coal-carrying between Escanaba and Ohio and Lake Michigan ports towed by the tug J. C. Ames, and a fourth remained on the original route, towed by the tug E. G. Crosby. [DFP-1900-1117]