we are on board the schoonmaker. when she was launched in 1911, she was called the queen of the lakes. she was the largest ship on the great lakes at the time. we will take you around and show you just how much cargo this great ship could carry. we like to think of it as two football fields of education and entertainment. it is a great hook for us to get people appreciating and understanding more of the great lakes. we are on the pilothouse deck. this is the national museum of the great lakes. the schoonmaker was a

commercial freighter from when it was built in 1911 to the 1980's. it became a museum when the city of toledo purchased it in 1987. her main purpose was to deliver iron ore from lake superior down to lake erie to places like ohio where it was unloaded and put in railroad cars and taken to pittsburgh for a company to support its business. at its time, it was the largest carrier. it could carry more bulk material than any other from 1911 to 1927. which was a very long time when every year a new boat came out that was a little bit longer. because this boat was built so wide, it could carry more cargo for 16 years than any other boat constructed between that time. we are now in the pilothouse. often called the wheelhouse. it

is where command's decisions were made to operate a commercial vessel. a captain, a first mate would be in here. as well as some other junior officers who would assist the captain with navigation, steering, communication with respect to how fast they wanted the boat to go. here we have your standard wheel , which will steer the boat. the schoonmaker has two wheels. a compass. basic navigation required. as technology improved, sometimes the old technology was kept. so

not only will you have a simple compass but a gyro repeating compass. radar is introduced after world war ii. that improves the ability of the boat to see what is coming in its direction. as well as the most iconic piece of equipment which everybody seems to recognize from the movie titanic, the engine telegraph, which is the system of communication between the pilothouse and the engine room. she was 1618 feet -- 618 feelt long and 62 feet wide which was just perfect to fit through the locks up it saw st. mary. we are now in the cargo hold number two. this is where thousands upon thousands of tons of cargo, probably millions over the course of 70 years, of bulk cargo like iron ore or coal or limestone would have been transported across the great lakes. the schoonmaker has

ballast tanks on either side of its cargo hold to help in the navigation of the boat by being able to sit low in the water or raise up in the water. it has arched girder construction, which was developed in the first decade of the 20th century. this allowed more and more cargo to be placed in the cargo hold. to make the boats more efficient. there are three cargo holds roughly holding about 4800 tons of cargo per trip. by the time the schoonmaker was built in 1911, the cargo would be removed with unloaders. they were mechanized arms that were attached to massive dockside

infrastructure which would reach down through the cargo holds of the vessel. with these huge clamshell buckets they would scoop up to tons to three tons of cargo each time. take them out of the cargo hold and deposit them in railroad cars waiting at dockside. a boat like this could take 7=-10 hours to unload, which was a vast improvement over earlier systems of unloading which could take up to two days. boats on the great lakes are always looking for as many cargoes as they can possibly carry. they generally have a principally cargo. for

many years, all freighters try to carry iron ore, which is the main cargo. but there is also coal, which is still shipped on the great lakes. limestone. construction material stone. salt. they carry a variety of products. there are still boats on the great lakes that carry grain. grain silos on riverside's across the great lakes place grain in the cargo hold of a boat and it will be shipped off the great lakes to the st. lawrence seaway. if you took a photograph of a lake like toledo or cleveland or milwaukee in 1911, the port would look chaotic. there would be hundreds of vessels operating out of that port on any given day. it would be different because they would be a wide variety of styles of vessels. in 1911, you still had

hundreds of sailing vessels. versus a boat like the schoonmaker, which was operated with steam. we are now in the engine room. this is where the power that is created to move the boat through the water comes from. originally, the schoonmaker had an expansion steam engine. but that technology became supplanted by steam turbines. the old engine was taken out and the new steam turbine system was placed in it. all of this equipment is based on steam turbine technology. except for the engine room telegraph, which stayed the

same. judge gregory: it is now the other end of the communication system with the pilothouse. when the captain -- one -- wants the boat to go full ahead, he sends a signal back to the engine room. they acknowledge it and put it into full ahead steam power. the major control system here for this steam turbine allows the chief engineer to ensure there is enough steam to turn the turbine, which then in course turns the shaft of the propeller, which turns the propeller. all of the things that go into the production of steam, the amount of heat and water and boilers. the amount of pressure that creates, is all controlled through a mechanical systems here that are more sophisticated than when the boat was built in 1911. behind us are the two major boilers on the schoonmaker. before its

conversion to a steam turbine, you would've had men with shovels from the cold men's taking coal and heating the water to create steam. the ultimate end of the commercial career for the schoonmaker was more about demand for steel and industrial products like coal and limestone and salt than it was for the condition of the boat. in the late 1980's, the city of toledo developed an idea to bring an attraction to the downtown area. the boat was here and it had not been used in eight years. the company is waiting for some condition to change that might justify it being brought out again. the city of toledo purchased it for a couple hundred thousand dollars and began the process of turning it into a museum. it is a great way to get people to think, i will get to go on one

of those ships that i saw our my father saw when he lived up here on the great lakes. to get them involved in history. they come to the museum and they are amazed about what happens over the last 300 years on the great lakes. it is a great hook for us to get people appreciating the history. cities staff recently trevor to toledo, ohio to learn about its rich history to learn more, visit c-span.org/cities tour. watching american history >> on september 21, 1976, a car road,xploded at embassy

washington, d.c., just over a mile from the white house. next on american history tv, historian alan mcpherson on his book "ghosts of sheridan circle: how a washington assassination brought pinochet's terror state to justice." gives anrson illustrated talk in washington, but first, we visit sheridan circle with the author to see where the crime took place and the memorial therefore the two victims. -- the memorial there for the two victims. >> so, we are literally at the scene of the crime. this is a memorial that was put here by the institute for policy studies to memorialize the assassination of orlando letelier