The Film: Interview Transcripts: David Frew

David Frew, Ph.D., maritime author and executive director,
Erie County Historical Society and Museums, on
navigating the Great Lakes

When you would think about traveling on the Great Lakes and you would imagine going from Erie to Detroit, I guess you would get out a map of the lake and draw a pencil line and figure that you’d just go that way.  But, in fact, the schooners that were plying the Great Lakes previous to the Civil War were very lousy boats.  They could barely get upwind; they even had a hard time going downwind.  The only point of sail that was efficient and easy for those old schooners, badly built by people that really didn’t have a lot of gifts with marine architecture, was at 90 degrees to the wind.  So, heading west in a schooner was just a miserable slog, because the Lake’s current and wind comes down the axis of the lake essentially from Detroit toward Buffalo.  So, if you’d leave Erie on a schooner, you’d find yourself showing up on the Canadian side, somewhere around the base of Long Point, and when you left there, you’d find yourself showing up somewhere around Ashtabula.  So, instead of having yourself a 160-mile ride to Detroit, it would turn out to be a 300-mile zigzag ride back and forth. And the slaves that left this side of the world to try to get to the Canadian-held free lands, would have been taking those terrible, terrible rides.

There were no charts and no navigational equipment, no GPS or Loran to help you to know exactly how to get to a port.  It was quite difficult.

The first issue with having a small business is to try to extend your operating season.  If you were running an amusement park like Cedar Point or Waldameer, and if you could tack a week or two on either end of the season, you’d have a chance of doubling your profits, and that was the way it was with entrepreneurs with ships.  They would go in the water early in the spring, hoping that they wouldn’t encounter a storm, which, of course, they would, and stay out there until the ice formed, hoping to make a last profitable run.  So, naturally, there were terrific storms, and you couldn’t just flip on your marine radio and hear them coming either.  There were no weather channels, so you went out there and you took your chances. And this is a very, very scary, very, very stormy lake, especially in the spring and the fall. 

canals and towpaths

conflict on the bayfront

finding safe harbor