recreation that we might rise to ♪ [fireworks exploding] >> 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. like many americans, our staff is staying close to home due to 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 and understanding a little more the history of the great lakes. so we are on the pilothouse deck of the museum ship, the national museum of the great lakes largest artifact at 618 feet long. it was a commercial freighter from 1911 until it went into long-term lab in the early 1980's and the city of toledo 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 the shinango furnace company to support its business. at its time, it was the largest carrier, and it remained the largest carrier, meaning it could carry more bulk material than any other from 1911 to 1927, which was a very long time. 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. the pilothouse, often called the wheelhouse, is where the command decisions are 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 of the vessel, communicating with the engine room with respect to how fast they wanted the boat to go. or in what direction. kind of command central of operating a 20th-century great lakes boat carrier. here we have your standard wheel, which will steer the boat. the schoonmaker has two wheels. it has one, a wholly 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 as well. when radar is introduced in the great lakes here and here, radar is introduced after world war ii , and that vastly 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,

the system of communication between the pilothouse and the engine. she was 618 feet 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 literally, thousands upon thousands of tons of cargo, probably millions over the course of 70 years, of bulk cargo, like iron ore, coal, 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 when it is filled with cargo. it also has arched girder construction, which was developed in the first decade of the 20th century, which 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 -- trip. so this boat could carry just over 14,500 tons. by the time the schoonmaker was built in 1911, the cargo would be prime moved, primarily if it was iron ore, wood he removed with iron ore unloaders, which were mechanized arms attached to massive dock-site infrastructure that would reach down through the cargo holds of the vessel and, with these huge clamshell

buckets, 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 with iron ore unloaders could take seven to 10 hours to unload at dockside, which was a vast improvement over earlier systems of unloading, which would take a day and a half, two days sometimes, to unload. 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 -- or, because it was the main -- ore, because it was the main cargo. but there is also coal, which is still shipped on the great lakes. limestone, construction material

stone, today, salt his mind and the great lakes region and carried by boat from city to city for road salt. so 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 will place grain in the cargo hold of the boat and it will be ship often off the great lakes. 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.

the engine room is of course where the power that is created to move the boat through the water comes from. originally, the museum ship had any expansions team engine. by the 1950's, that technology had been supplanted by steam turbines. so the old engine was taken out, the new steam turbine system was placed in it, and all the equipment you see in the engine room today is based on steam turbine technology. except the engine room telegraph, which stay the same, which is now the other end of the communications system with the pilothouse, so when the captain wants the boat to go full ahead, he sends the signal via the communications system of the chad burn, 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 -- then, of course, turns the shaft of the propeller, which turns the propeller. so all of the things that go into the production of steam, the amount of heat, the amount of water in the boilers, the temperature the water is boiling out the amount of pressure that , creates is all controlled through mechanical systems here but are certainly more sophisticated than when the boat was built in 1911. behind us are the two major boilers of the schoonmaker. before its conversion to a steam turbine, you would've had men with shovels from the coal bins and 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 on the great lakes then 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, so it had not been used in seven to eight years. it was called a long-term layup. the company was waiting for some condition to change that might justify it being brought out again, but the city of toledo purchased it for a couple hundred thousand dollars, and begin the process of turning it into a museum ship. it's a great way to get people to think, i'm going to go on one of those things that i've seen or my father saw when he lived up here on the great lakes, to get them involved in history. then they go through the museum, and they are amazed about what happens over the last 300 years on the great lakes. so it is a great hook for us to get people appreciating in understanding a little bits more

the history of the great lakes. >> you can watch this and other programs on the history of communities across the country at c-span.org/citiestour. this is american history tv, only on c-span3. 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 going to do today is we're going to take an overview of chinese american history. and for that we'll