Yesterday in a comment left on the blog, my old Masson School classmate Mike Kozlowski mentioned that his father worked at American Ship Building. So this article from the May 18, 1963 Journal of sixty years ago today might be of interest to him.
It's a pretty well-written history of American Ship Building, featured as part of the "Perspective" series of articles presented by the newspaper. It covers the beginnings of the company in 1899 and proceeds through the decades, identifying the company's accomplishments as well as notable ships.
A nice sidebar by Ralph E. Neumeyer looks specifically at the history shipbuilding on the banks of the Black River in Lorain. It notes, "A rough count would show about 300 wooden steam and sailing vessels built prior to the American Shipbuilding Co. arrival in 1899, and a similar number of ships of all types in the next 60 years.
A U. S. Great Lakes registry chart reveals that at the time of the 1963 article, 85 vessels of the Great Lakes ore fleet were built in the Lorain Yards
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I devoted several blog posts to the Roger Blough.
