Schooner Passage

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, schooner trade was a well-developed system of maritime transport for commodities such as grain, lumber, and iron. The schooner trade was as critical to the development of the Great Lakes region as covered wagons were to the Far West and paddle wheel steamers were to the South. Schooners sailed the Great Lakes in large numbers and played a formative role in the shaping of pioneer life throughout the region. The schooners that traveled the Lake Michigan basin succeeded in bringing a range of shoreline communities and four separate states into one coherent region. Although schooners successfully competed with steam vessels for more than a half-century, wooden sailing ships could not match the scale of the giant steel bulk carriers that began to emerge from shipyards in the twentieth century. The Mary A. Gregory -- one of the last schooners left in 1926 -- was torched, sunk, and buried in Lake Michigan. Schooner Passage is a history of these magnificent sailing vessels and their role in maritime trade along L

Theodore J. Karamanski is an associate professor of history at Loyola University-Chicago.