C. Roger Pellett has written an entertaining history of the whaleback ships of the Great Lakes. The whaleback ships were the creation in the 1880s of the inventor, sea captain, and businessman Alexander McDougall (1845–1923). The ships, built and operated by the American Steel Barge Company, were flat bottomed with a round top, so they looked very much like a surfaced whale (or surfaced submarine). The first vessel was launched in 1888 and the last in 1898.

After an opening chapter on McDougall's life, Pellett tells the story of the roughly ten years of the American Steel Barge Company. His goal is to explain the brief success of the whaleback ships and their subsequent decline. For Pellett, this means an extensive investigation into the engineering features of the whalebacks as well as the business side. McDougall's goal was to create a cargo ship that could manage several problems of Great Lakes shipping. First, the ship had to be able to handle the locks and the shallow channels connecting the lakes, including the risk of grounding. Second, the ship had to be seaworthy for the sometimes rough waves of the lakes. Third, the ship had to carry substantial cargo, which could be loaded and unloaded quickly. Pellett explains in detail the engineering compromises McDougall made. For example, to prevent the barges from swaying back and forth uncontrollably, McDougall created a rounded bow that plowed into the water, which also gave the ships stability out in the lakes. It had the effect, however, of causing water to cascade across the deck, which meant that McDougall had to use small, tight cargo hatches that slowed down loading time.

There is a substantial amount of information about company operations and finance, including the early investors and the later role of John D. Rockefeller. There is fascinating material on the finance system, where Great Lakes shipping firms operated as partnerships, with shares sold in individual ships rather than in the whole company.

Pellett's efforts to discuss the business side are sometimes frustrating. The American Steel Barge Company both built and operated its ships and barges, and Pellett observes that most Great Lakes shipbuilding was not vertically integrated into operations. Pellett offers evidence that McDougall attempted to sell ships and barges to other operators, mostly unsuccessfully, but cannot resolve the question of whether McDougall planned to vertically integrate or went into operations following the failure to sell his design to other operators. Pellett notes that most of the shipbuilding yards built their own boilers and engines, but American Steel outsourced them to a number of firms, including one all the way from the United Kingdom. He offers a substantial amount of detail about which firms they were purchased from, and even the transport details of how they got to the shipyard, but offers no insight into why American Steel was the only shipyard to outsource.

Similarly, Pellett is critical of the company's integration of shipbuilding and ship operations. He argues that because the shipyard was producing ships and barges almost exclusively for the company's operations, the company had to use the ships regardless of their profitability. That would be a potential issue only if the shipyard had excess capacity relative to the operations, but Pellett notes that the barges had sufficient business that extra ships were hired to pull them (p. 63).

On the other hand, Pellett's discussions of the engineering issues are excellent. He makes extensive use of drawings and designs from the company archives at Bowling Green State University, as well as additional archival material at the Superior Public Museums in Wisconsin and the Minnesota Historical Society.

Pellett is a retired engineer and a volunteer at the Duluth-based museum ship SS Meteor, the last of the whalebacks, and it shows. This is very much an enthusiast's book, intended more for the general reader than for business historians. The author does a fine job of bringing the people in his story to life. He has chosen to assume that his readers are not familiar with the engineering and technical jargon of the shipping trade, and so there is a very useful glossary of terms in addition to excellent explanations in the text. A number of reproductions of early designs for the ships are also included, along with useful explanations.

There is much for a business historian to learn here, from the trade-offs facing ship owners to the details of how Great Lakes shipping operated generally. Pellett has made a good contribution to shipping history, and there is much here for a business historian to build on.