SS Henry Cort
Great Lakes whaleback freighter

SS Henry Cort was a 320-foot (98 m) long whaleback freighter. It sank four times during its career; finally running aground at Muskegon, Michigan in November, 1934. The ship broke apart over the winter and was scrapped in 1935.
History
Construction
The Henry Cort was built by the American Steel Barge Company. Her first frames were laid down on January 4, 1892 and, on June 25, 1892, she was launched as hull number #125. She had an overall length of 335 feet (102 m), and she was 320 feet (98 m) between her perpendiculars, she had a beam of 42 feet (13 m) and her cargo hold was 25 feet (7.6 m) deep. She had a gross register tonnage of 2234.49 tons and she had a net register tonnage of 1571.65 tons. She was powered by a 1,400 horsepower triple expansion engine which was fueled by two coal-fired Scotch marine boilers.
Designed by Captain Alexander McDougall to carry bulk cargoes like iron ore or grain economically around the Great Lakes. Whalebacks had a rather unique design.
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This entry incorporates text from “SS Henry Cort” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.