[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8946-8947]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



        CLEVELAND STEAMSHIP WILLIAM G. MATHER'S 75TH ANNIVERSARY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, today, May 23, the steamship William 
G. Mather marks the 75th anniversary of its launching. The Harbor 
Heritage Society, the Mather's nonprofit parent organization, is 
hosting a rededication ceremony that began today at 2 p.m. The 
rededication will take place aboard the Mather which is moored at the 
Cleveland East 9th street pier.
  The Mather has had a presence on Cleveland's waterfront for nearly 75 
years, first as a working Great Lakes freighter and, since 1991, as a 
floating maritime museum. One of the only four Great Lakes freighter 
museum ships in existence, the Mather exemplifies northeast Ohio's 
proud heritage as a major maritime industrial shipping center.
  A former flagship of the Cleveland-Cliffs fleet, the 618 foot William 
G. Mather was state-of-the-art technology in Great Lakes freighters 
when launched in 1925. The Mather is named for longtime Cleveland-
Cliffs president and leading Cleveland businessman and philanthropist, 
William Gwinn Mather. During its 55 years of service, the Mather made 
hundreds of trips, transporting iron ore from the upper lakes to 
Cleveland's waiting steel mills. For this reason, the Mather was 
nicknamed the ship that built Cleveland.
  The William G. Mather had a long and distinguished Merchant Marine 
career. To supply the Allied need for steel, the Mather led a convoy of 
13 freighters in early 1941 through the ice-choked upper Great Lakes to 
Duluth, Minnesota, setting a record for the first arrival in a northern 
post. It was one of the first commercial Great Lakes vessels to be 
equipped with radar in 1946. The Mather has been designated a national 
historic landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for 
the following Great Lakes industrial firsts:

[[Page 8947]]

  First single marine boiler system built by Babcock & Wilcox in 1954, 
its computerlike automated boiler system built by Bailey Meter Company 
in 1964, and the dual propeller bow thrusters built by the American 
Shipbuilding company in 1964.
  The Mather retired in 1980. In 1987, Cleveland-Cliffs donated the 
Mather to be restored and preserved as a maritime museum and 
educational facility. After an extensive 3-year restoration, the 
Steamship William G. Mather Museum arrived at its permanent lakefront 
berth in downtown Cleveland's North Coast Harbor Park. Since its May 
1991 opening, hundreds of thousands of visitors and many area school 
children have come aboard and toured the historic Mather. To date, the 
greater Cleveland community has invested more than $2.5 million and 
250,000 volunteer hours in ``the ship that built Cleveland.''

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