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a modest kind of sailing vessel that provided vital links among small towns on Lake Michigan into the 20th century. Scow schooners were small, adaptable, hard-working vessels, owned and sailed by common men supporting local economies. Featuring flat bottoms and square bows and sterns, they were easier and cheaper to build than traditional, more curvaceous schooners. Often worked by Scandinavian sailors, these vessels supported a “lakeshoring” trade that provided an entry point for many immigrants into Great Lakes maritime commerce, not only as sailors, but as vessel owners and masters.
Work-a-day scow schooners received little attention or documentation in their day. They set no records for fastest passages or most tonnage carried, nor did wealthy, powerful men compete with them for sport. Yet the lakeshoring commerce they drove constituted the economic lifeblood of small Lake Michigan communities offering only small, shallow harbors in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.
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Historic Image of Tennie and Laura. Courtesy Historical Collections of the Great Lakes, Bowling Green State University. |
The scow schooner Tennie and Laura was built in 1876 at Manitowoc, Wis., by Gunder Jorgensen. Enrolled at the Port of Milwaukee on 14 July 1876, the Tennie and Laura had one deck, two masts, and measured 73 feet in length, 19 feet in beam, and 5.6 feet in depth. Her first owners, in equal shares, were Otto A. Bjorkgnist and Ole Osmondson of Port Washington, Wis. The owners’ home city was registered as the vessel’s hailing port and Captain Osmondson as master. Captains Bjorkgnist and Osmondson would have a nine-year partnership with the Tennie and Laura, occasionally trading roles and ownership.
For the rest of her twenty-seven-year career, the Tennie and Laura would often change owners and home ports. On April 5, 1885, the first partnership ended when Captain Osmondson bought out Captain Bjorkgnist’s share of the Tennie and Laura, reselling her the following day in equal shares to Lars Hansen and Rasmus Hansen of Manitowoc. The Hansens returned the Tennie and Laura to Manitowoc, and Lars Hansen became master.
Born at Fleekefjord, Norway, in 1850, Rasmus Hansen was typical of many Norwegians sailing the Great Lakes in the nineteenth century. He began sailing the oceans at the age of twelve. Ocean sailing was low-paid, difficult work, often taking sailors away from home for two years at a time. Rasmus sailed the oceans for eight years and achieved the position of mate on a full rigged ship by age twenty, but the low wages and long years away from home left little prospect for a happy life. In 1871, Rasmus emigrated to Chicago and became a lake sailor, enjoying the higher wages, better food, and more frequent home visits than saltwater sailors experienced. However, Rasmus did not care for life in Chicago, and after one year he moved north to Manitowoc, where he would earn the rank of captain.
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