Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1892 — An Ice-Breaking Ferry Boat. [ARTICLE]

An Ice-Breaking Ferry Boat.

The ice which forms in the Straits of Mackinac in the intensely cold winter of that latitude is so thick that navigation by ordinary vessels would be out of the question. But the transfer boat by which the passenger cars of the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railroad are ferried across at that point is not an ordinary vessel by several shades of difference. It is of huge size and prodigious strength, ‘ and carries twenty-four steam engines for its various needs. Its bow hangs obliquely out so that it climbs on the ice and then pounds and crushes It, thft water being sucked from beneath by propeller blades to make the. operation more effectual, ft is often a cold day in the Straits, but the transfer boats never get left