U.S.S. WOLVERINE (the second on the name) was built by the Detroit Dry Dock Co. in 1913 as SEEANDBEE for the Cleveland and Buffalo Transit Company; she was intended to operate overnight service between those cities.
The year before, the Detroit and Cleveland Navigation Company had brought out CITY OF DETROIT III, the largest paddle steamer in the world. The C&B line, a relative upstart, apparently couldn't stand the temptation to outdo the older and richer company. Not only was SEEANDBEE longer by about thirty feet, but she had four stacks in line, in imitation of the big Atlantic liners of the time.
Hubris is always punished. The vessel was too large for the intended service and the company could never afford a consort, so the big ship ran opposite older vessels considerably smaller than she was.
The route between the two cities is closely paralleled by the road on the south shore of Lake Erie, and so the service was among the earliest to be affected by automobile travel. When the Great Depression hit, SEEANDBEE spent most of her time in cruise service. The Cleveland-Buffalo route was abandoned in the thirties and the other smaller ships scrapped.
Meantime, in 1924, the D&C Line had once again taken the "biggest" title with a pair of 518' paddle steamers which the company built out of cash on hand. With berths for over 1200 passengers and 12,000 horsepower, these two ships were admitted at the time to likely be the final word in paddle steamer size. Only GREAT EASTERN, not strictly a paddle steamer since she had both paddle and screw propulsion, was larger.
A photo of one of those ships, GREATER BUFFALO, was posted a short time ago in connection with a discussion of bow rudders.
SEEANDBEE was taken by the Navy in 1942 and her superstructure removed. A flight deck was built over the top of her main deck, but she had no storage deck or elevators, so the only way to get a plane off the flight deck was to take off with it. I have one or two drawings of the conversion somewhere. Modelers would have no trouble with the hull and main deck, as the plans of SEEANDBEE survive.
A few months later, the government also took GREATER BUFFALO for the same purpose. She became U.S.S. SABLE.
After the war, the lake passengers services were in such decline that rebuilding the two ship as passenger steamers was not worth the expense. Both were scrapped.
George H.W. Bush trained as a Navy pilot on one of these paddle carriers, but it seems no one knows which one.
Another U.S.S. WOLVERINE well worth paddleduck's attention is the iron gunboat of 1844, originally names U.S.S. MICHIGAN. Sometimes said to have been the first iron ship in any navy, she was certainly the first in the US Navy. She was a sidewheeler about 165' in length with a clipper bow and bowsprit and the ability to carry sail as well as move under steam. She survived over a century and her bow in in a park in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she was first assembled and launched.
I'll post photos within a couple of days of these vessels.
Bill Worden
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