now may we go from this place and time to find rest and recreation that we might rise to serve our lord again tomorrow. god bless and keep you. thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2021] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> american history tv on c-span3. funding comes from these television companies and more. >> broadband is a force for empowerment. that is why charter has invested billions building infrastructure, empowering opportunity in communities big and small. charter is connecting us. >> charter communications along with these television companies supports american history tv as a public service. >> the c-span cities tour travels the country exploring the american story. since 2011, we have been to more

than 200 communities across the nation. our staff is staying close to home because of the coronavirus. next, a look at one of our cities tour visits. >> from a museum perspective, 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 an understanding a little more the history of the great lakes. we are on the pilothouse deck of the colonel james m. schoonmaker ship, the national museum of the great lakes. the schoonmaker was a commercial freighter when it was built in 1911 until it went into long-term layup in the 1980's. it became a museum ship when the city purchased it from the owner around 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 furnace company, which owned a fleet of boats, in order to support its steelmaking business. at the 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, communicating with the engine room with respect to how fast they wanted the boat to go. for what direction. kind of command central. here we have your standard wheel, which will steer the boat. the schoonmaker has two wheels. it has one separate emergency system on board. 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 618 feelt long and 62 feet wide which was just perfect to fit through the locks up it -- up at st. marie, in order to maximize the amount of cargo from lake superior down to the lower legs. 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 holds 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. -- the cargo would be removed, primarily if it was iron ore, with hewlett iron ore 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 a day and a half, two days sometimes. boats on the great lakes are always looking for as many cargoes as they can possibly carry. they generally have a principal cargo. for many years, all freighters tried to carry iron ore, which was the main cargo. but there is also coal, which is still shipped on the great lakes. stone aggregate used in the creation of steel. limestone. construction material stone.

today, salt is mined in the great lakes region and carried by boat from city to city for road salt. they carry a variety of products. there are still boats on the great lakes that carry grain. grain silos on riversides 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. in many ways, if you took a photograph of a port 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. schooners delivering cargo on the great lakes under sale

versus a boat like the schoonmaker, which was operated with steam. we are now in the engine room. the engine room is of course where the power that is created to move the boat through the water comes from. originally, the colonel james m. schoonmaker museum ship had an expansion steam engine. by the 1950's, 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. it is now the other end of the communication system with the pilothouse. when the captain once 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 -- the amount of heat, the amount of water in the boilers, the temperature, 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 coal bins, taken 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 laid up in toledo. it had not been used in about seven or eight years. the company was 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.

the history of communities across the country at c-span.org cities tour. this is american history tv only on c-span 3 not generating another. yeah. yeah next american history tv visits san francisco's chinatown to learn the history of the chinese in america. good afternoon. good afternoon. good afternoon. welcome to the chinese historical society of america. my name is charlie chin. i'm officially listed here as artist and residents, but i do double duty as a historian for a very simple reason as most of you know artists don't make any money whatsoever. but historians are underpaid so it's actually a step up. well we are