Cleveland's Forgotten Hulett Unloaders

Cleveland's Forgotten Hulett Unloaders

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dismantled and rusting away quietly while buried in overgrowth on cleveland's whiskey island are the world's two remaining hewlett unloaders these humongous machines revolutionize the handling of iron ore by reducing labor costs and unloading times of lake boats author william d ellis described the hewlett as the ugliest ungainliness machine ever made and compared their movements to dinosaurs eating though just like dinosaurs hewletts are now extinct let's rediscover the history behind these fascinating machines iron ore which was a lifeblood of hewlett's was first discovered in the united states by surveyor william a burt on michigan's upper peninsula in 1844 it began being mined and used to produce pig iron which is the raw material used to produce steel soon other vast deposits of iron ore were discovered in the lake superior region as the manufacturing use of iron ore increased outside of this region it began being shipped to ports on the lower great lakes in 1852 the process of shipping ore was slow and expensive originally it was transported from the mines to docks by teams of mules over plank roads later the mules pulled cars that held about four tons each on strap rails at the docks the oar was then put into barrels and loaded onto the decks of wooden steamships at sault ste marie michigan the barrels were portaged around the rapids and reloaded back onto ships with the opening of the sault st marie soo locks in 1855 ships didn't have to unload iron ore before reaching its destination anymore though the complexity of unloading boats at its destination still posed a problem wooden steamships plying the great lakes at the time were not designed for carrying bulk cargo shippers instead preferred wooden schooners because they could carry far more iron ore inside their holds instead of barrels the only downsides were they relied on the wind to power their sails and the process of unloading 300 tons of ore from their holds took four days it was accomplished entirely by hand labor using shovels and wheelbarrows in the 1850s and 1860s first it was shoveled from the inside of the cargo hold onto a staging or platform from there it was unshoveled to the deck of the boat and shoveled again into wheelbarrows and wheeled on gameplanks to the dock this method quickly became outdated as the influx of iron ore being shipped increased instead laborers now shoveled oar from the ship's hold into metal tubs when filled the tubs were hoisted onto the ship's deck by use of a pulley system operated by horses which were replaced by a steam engine in 1867 the tubs were then emptied into wheelbarrows and wheeled off over boardwalks supported by wooden trestles to be dumped at the dock or in railroad cars in 1869 eli peck came up with a solution to replace the venerable schooners he designed the rj hackett a wooden lake freighter built in cleveland that combined both the designs of schooners and propeller driven steam ships the hacker's design became widely adopted by other shipbuilders and is recognized as the first boat to sport the now classic great lakes freighter look that is the pilot house located near the bow of the ship the engines near the stern and its cargo holds running mid-ship by 1880 the amount of iron ore mined from the lake superior region had exploded from 1449 tons in 1855 to 1 908 745 tons as a result of this influx steam railroad lines were built from the mines to the docks the loaded cars were emptied on elevated ore shoots that fed freighters by gravity while the early methods of loading ore had been replaced unloading was still utilizing the same practice that had been adopted in 1867 thus they were unable to keep up with the demand in 1880 cleveland engineer alexander e brown developed and patented an ore unloading rig known as the brown hoist his first example was constructed at the cleveland dock of the new york pennsylvania and ohio railroad later on acquired by the erie railroad it consisted of two towers one being at the end of a dock and the other at the rear of the ore stockpile yard supporting a cableway suspended from this cableway was a steam-powered rope trolley that went to the freighter's holds and carried hand-filled tubs of ore back to the dock brown further improved the pond's design with his electric brown hoist bridge tramway utilizing a cantilever instead of a wire cable way for the trolley he later refined his design with the brown electric fast plant which took the ore directly from the boat and dumped it into cars or into a temporary storage pile due to the short travel of the buckets the machines were much faster at unloading ore other companies created similar designs to his fast plants like the hoover and mason traveling electric clamshell hoist as a result the cost of unloading a ton of ore reduced from 30 to 50 cents to about 18 cents the brown hoist designs were so successful that other companies from around the united states and the world began ordering them this included the cleveland and pittsburgh railroad which was leased to the pennsylvania railroad they operated extensive docks on cleveland's whiskey island a strip of land west of the cuyahoga river sheared off from the mainland by the old riverbed near the erie railroad's dock the cleveland and pittsburgh's docks had four brown hoist cantilevers installed at their dock number one in 1889 followed by an additional two the next year at dock number two in 1891 a brown hoist fast plant was built on dock number three that could unload six thousand tons of ore a day into railroad cars later on eleven more fast plants were built along with six hoover and mason electric unloaders with five ton clam shell buckets and 31 brown hoists with one and a half ton clam shell buckets this allowed the cleveland and pittsburgh stock to handle a capacity of 2.2 million tons of ore per season and accommodate vessels up to 607 feet still with the ever increasing amount of iron ore being mined and shipped per year and lake freighters increasing in size and length the brown hoists weren't enough on april 5th 1898 george h hewlett and john mcmiller secured their patent for an improved loading and unloading apparatus according to their patent application the object is to provide means for reaching under the decks of vessels and unloading cargo rapidly and cheaply it consists in a suitable framework for the support of the mechanism a leg supported thereby and depending they're from and a scoop or bucket connected with the lower end of the leg and capable of being turned completely around relative to its support george hewlett who was a native of kanye ohio was described by people who knew him as eccentric he started his career running a general store in unionville until moving to cleveland in 1881 when he went into the produce and commission business eventually he made a career change to the design and manufacture of materials handling equipment and patented over two dozen designs between 1887 and 1906. his latest loading and unloading apparatus known as the hewlett was designed to operate hydraulically although other means such as steam or electricity could be employed as well as water hewlett later refined and perfected his machine in his name alone in subsequent patents in 1899 george hewlett with the support of andrew carnegie began constructing the first hewlett at the pittsburgh and cognac dock companies dock number four at conneaut ohio the original prototype was powered by steam and had a 10-ton bucket capable of unloading 275 tons per hour it was built by george hewlett's employer the cleveland-based wellman seaver engineering company on george's signal the operator in the cab of the hewlett's leg moved this bucket down into the hold of a boat to grab a bite of iron ore the leg came back up and dumped it into a railroad car in about a minute although his test showed that some changes and improvements were necessary andrew carnegie and charles schwab who were in attendance were sold on it they promptly ordered four more to be installed for the company in 1900 and 1901 in total approximately 75 were built at ports around the great lakes in the united states and canada most of them were in operation on lake erie and there was even one in new york city used for unloading garbage hewletts were so efficient that the cost of unloading iron ore per ton dropped from 18 to 6 cents they could unload a single vessel depending on its size within 5 to 10 hours thus allowing them to make more trips carrying ore per season even the new freighters being constructed were designed in a manner that could better accommodate the hewlett's reaching into their cargo holds on the downside however the many men who previously shoveled ore into the brown hoist buckets lost their jobs to the hewlett's in 1908 the pennsylvania railroad decided to abandon their existing whiskey island dock operations in favor of building a new modern one at a different place this would eliminate the need for lake freighters to navigate the many twists and curves of the cuyahoga river and old river channel to access the previous stock the new site was chosen north of the lakeshore and michigan southern railroad mainline connected to whiskey island on approximately 40 acres of lakefront land pennsylvania railroad had reclaimed between 1910 and 1912 construction of the new cleveland and pittsburgh dock began by first using slag and other waste material as fill to build up the site when it was completed the dock was the largest ore handling plant on the great lakes it consisted of four electrically powered second generation hewletts with 17 ton buckets a traveling stocking and re-handling bridge with a 15 ton capacity bucket a 1 million ton capacity or storage yard a machine shop office and electric powerhouse circling the entire dock was an extensive layout of tracks used for the receiving classification and storage of ore hoppers pennsylvania railroad reached the dock from their tracks on whiskey island through a double track tunnel built under the lakeshore and michigan southern mainline quickly after entering service cleveland's hewlett's would break countless records on the number of ore unloaded over the years on july 2nd 1915 11 083 tons of ore were unloaded from the steamer james a farrell and 3 hours and 35 minutes the freighter had only been tied to the dock for 3 hours and 40 minutes their all-time seasonal record for unloading ore was 8.7 million tons in 1942 the operation of hewlett's required a crew of about 80 men they typically worked eight to 12 hour shifts six days a week during the eight to nine months shipping season after the lower lake dispatcher receives word from the upper lake dispatcher that an ore shipment is on its way the dock and railroad crews are hard at work preparing for the freighter long before it arrives first empty ore hoppers are made into trains at the classification yard and then moved to the receiving yard at the west end of the dock six electric baldwin westinghouse shunter locomotives moved 10 to 12 empty cars at a time into place beneath the hewlett's when the freighter arrives the shunters operated on a separate 42 and a half inch gauge rail line in between the four standard gauge unloading tracks in the middle of the 42 and a half inch gauge track was a third rail used to pick up electricity to power the shunters on either side of the locomotives were side pusher arms that were operated by compressed air they were engaged to the end sills of the rail cars when moving the oar hoppers in their proper positions for loading them once in place the process of unloading the vessel now begins each of the four hewlets required a crew of three people to operate it the first position we'll look at is the hewlett operator he sat in a cab above the leg of the bucket and controlled the movements of the walking beam and bucket as well as the lateral movement of the entire machine along the face of the dock after a scoop of oar is brought out from the freighter's hold he empties it into dual receiving hoppers supported on the main framework of the hewlett from there it is transferred into a larry conveyor car through disc type gates the larry man who's seated in a cab inside the scale larry beneath the hewlett records the weight and moves the larry horizontally until it is in position above an empty hopper he discharges the aura into it and repeats this process until the cars are full the shunters move these loaded cars from underneath the hewletts to the east end of the dock where they are handed off to steam locomotives later replaced by diesels to build the trains if the ore being unloaded is not destined to be shipped by rail immediately the larry man instead moves his car along the cantilever at the rear of the hewlett and deposits the ore into the storage yard an oiler who is stationed on the hewlett oils the many moving parts during this whole process once most of the ore is removed from the freighter the hewlett is utilized as a crane to hoist and lower a bulldozer into the cargo holds to scrape the remaining ore it cannot reach originally this part was accomplished by men with shovels and later on payloaders replaced the bulldozers however five men still assisted the bulldozers and payloaders with shovels unfortunately for the hewlett's technological developments in the business of processing shipping and offloading iron ore began slowly making them obsolete lake freighters in 1966 began being constructed as cell phone loaders equipped with their own boom and conveyor systems by the early 1990s self-unloaders had become the industry standard of the 66 us-owned freighters operating on the great lakes in 1992 only five lacked such equipment requiring the hewlett's on december 18 1992 the canadian steamship lines freighter named lemoine became the last boat to be unloaded by cleveland's hewlett's pennsylvania railroad which had merged with the new york central railroad in 1968 to form the bankrupt penn central was taken over by conrail in 1976.

even before the hewlett's unloaded their last freighter in 1992 conrail had announced intentions to demolish the hewlett's because they wanted more space at their cleveland and pittsburgh dock countless preservationists and groups mobilized to save the hewlett's and a group called the committee to save cleveland's hewlett's was formed conrail however was not receptive and threatened to suspend a bridge maintenance program planned for 20 bridges within cleveland if an agreement with the city was not reached to demolish the hewlett's by the end of 1993 then cleveland mayor michael r white called out conrail for trying to leverage bridge repairs for the hewlett's demolition and threatened to sue them if they went through with these plants on june 14 1993 cleveland city council granted landmark status for the hewlett's to later dismantling in addition the hewletts were listed on the national register of historic places in 1997 and designated as a historic mechanical engineering landmark by the american society of mechanical engineers on august 2nd 1998. conrail eventually backed down and in may 1996 they instead sold the cleveland and pittsburgh dock to the cleveland cuyahoga county port authority for 6 million dollars now known as the cleveland bulk terminal the port authority initiated a master plan in 1998 to study long-term modifications to its operations and infrastructure at the dock this included the ore storage capacity at the face of the dock being increased and dredging the front of the dock allowing two freighters to dock and discharge materials simultaneously the plan made no mention of the future of the hewlett's though a separate report published in november 1998 concluded the hewlett's and other infrastructure associated with them would have to be demolished as they would interfere with two freighters from docking and discharging simultaneously long story short after many hearings and a lawsuit two of the four hewlett's were demolished and scrapped in 2000. the remaining two were dismantled and are being stored at the cleveland bulk terminal now the issue that has been lingering for the past 22 years is finding a place to relocate the hewlett's and how they should be displayed the committee to save cleveland's hewlett's wants to fully reconstruct either one or both at dock 32 by the william g mather steamship museum canal way partners instead only wants to display a leg and a bucket along with one of the shunt engines there are a few places around ohio that have preserved artifacts related to the hewlett's if you are interested in visiting them one third of a leg and bucket from one of ashtabula's hewletts was saved and is on display at the ashtabula maritime and surface transportation museum while not currently preserved one third of a leg and bucket from one of kania's hewletts was also saved but just like cleveland's hewlett's the piece is buried in the weeds near koniak dock pennsylvania railroad number three one of the baldwin westinghouse shunter locomotives from the cleveland and pittsburgh dock is currently in preservation and on display at the youngstown steel heritage center [Music] [Applause] you

2022-02-12 10:51

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