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SS Henry Cort

Great Lakes whaleback freighter

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ48804138 ↗
Source-derived summary

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.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “SS Henry Cort” is great Lakes whaleback freighter. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Henry, Cort and Great, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1934, 1935, 1892, 1571—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Henry, Cort and Great is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “great Lakes whaleback freighter” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q48804138. Authority coordinates are 43.227, -86.346. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1934, 1935, 1892 and 1571.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

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.