# Did Chicago Once Have a Brick Battleship? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 22, 2010, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-chicago-once-have-a-brick-battleship/537002 "2010-04-22T16:53:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davekhps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@davekhps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davekhps)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2010, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-chicago-once-have-a-brick-battleship/537002/1 "2010-04-22T16:53:26Z")
Column [here](http://chicago.straightdope.com/sdc20100422.php). Cecil mentions the Rush-Bagot Treaty demilitarizing the Great Lakes. As an aside, while there haven’t been permanent naval forces on the Great Lakes, there has been plenty of naval _construction_ on the Great Lakes. Here’s [a long list](http://duckduckgo.com/c/Ships_built_in_Wisconsin) of U.S. naval vessels and submarines built in Wisconsin, for example. The lack of the St. Lawrence Seaway didn’t prevent ships from getting to the ocean-- for example, _Gato_-class submarines built by the [Mantiwoc Shipbuilding Company](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitowoc_Shipbuilding_Company) sailed down Lake Michigan to Chicago, traveled down the Chicago River, the Sanitary & Ship Canal, the Illinois River, the Mississippi then finally the Gulf and the oceans. This tradition continues-- [Marinette Marine north of Green Bay constructs the new _Freedom_ class of Littoral Combat Ships used by the U.S. Navy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_class_littoral_combat_ship). However, those ships transited out via the Seaway, and weren’t armed for trials on the Great Lakes. (Although I’m sure they could have been, had those Canucks gotten sneaky!). ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-chicago-once-have-a-brick-battleship/537002/2 "2010-04-24T04:41:27Z")
A USN frigate called at the port of Cleveland a few years ago… no steps were taken to disarm it, as far as I know (although I didn’t go aboard). ---
**Author:** ![Ed\_Zotti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/fbc32d/32.png) [@Ed\_Zotti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ed_Zotti)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-chicago-once-have-a-brick-battleship/537002/3 "2010-04-24T13:28:04Z")
> [@davekhps](#): > > The lack of the St. Lawrence Seaway didn’t prevent ships from getting to the ocean-- for example, _Gato_-class submarines built by the [Mantiwoc Shipbuilding Company](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitowoc_Shipbuilding_Company) sailed down Lake Michigan to Chicago, traveled down the Chicago River, the Sanitary & Ship Canal, the Illinois River, the Mississippi then finally the Gulf and the oceans. It’s been possible for lake vessels to get to the ocean since the opening of the Erie Canal, but initially only small ones. The passage of larger vessels was made possible by the opening of the Sanitary and Ship Canal in the early twentieth century. According to [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Sanitary_and_Ship_Canal), the depth of the S&S Canal is 24 feet. The draft of the real battleship _Illinois_ was [23.5 feet](http://mars.ark.com/~camorris/gwfleet/fleetpics/usil.html), so if all the stars were aligned I suppose a lake/ocean transit might have been possible at some point prior to the Seaway opening in 1959. However, the depth of the canal today is said to be [21 feet](http://pages.ripco.net/~jwn/ss.html), and that of the Illinois Waterway downstream much less, so I’m skeptical that such a passage would have been a practical possibility. ---
**Author:** ![Jivecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dec6dc/32.png) [@Jivecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jivecat)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-chicago-once-have-a-brick-battleship/537002/4 "2010-06-14T21:07:06Z")
The **extra** fun part about Wikipedia is that now the article includes Uncle Cecil’s comment about the Seaway as an **additional** reason why the ship was a replica, rather than remove the unsupported and spurious assertion about Rush-Bagot. ---
**Author:** ![Ed\_Zotti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/fbc32d/32.png) [@Ed\_Zotti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ed_Zotti)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2010, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-chicago-once-have-a-brick-battleship/537002/5 "2010-06-15T16:47:40Z")
Ah, the brave new world of Wikipedia. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2021, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-chicago-once-have-a-brick-battleship/537002/6 "2021-09-07T19:46:36Z")
Bumped. There’s an article about the “brick battleship” USS _Illinois_ in the Feb. 2021 issue of _Naval History_ magazine; see p. 58. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2023, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-chicago-once-have-a-brick-battleship/537002/7 "2023-08-04T15:31:41Z")
Bumped again. And see: [Chicago's very own battleship [incl column by Cecil]](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chicagos-very-own-battleship-incl-column-by-cecil/532657) There’s an article about the wooden “battleship” USS _Recruit,_ built in NYC’s Union Square in May 1917, in the June 2022 issue of _Naval History_ magazine; see p. 8. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2023, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-chicago-once-have-a-brick-battleship/537002/8 "2023-08-04T19:38:18Z")
A brick battleship? Is there a concise description of the head on it? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2023, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-chicago-once-have-a-brick-battleship/537002/9 "2023-08-04T20:23:46Z")
> [@davekhps](#): > > The lack of the St. Lawrence Seaway didn’t prevent ships from getting to the ocean-- for example, _Gato_-class submarines built by the [Mantiwoc Shipbuilding Company](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitowoc_Shipbuilding_Company) sailed down Lake Michigan to Chicago, traveled down the Chicago River, the Sanitary & Ship Canal, the Illinois River, the Mississippi then finally the Gulf and the oceans. There were locks on the St. Lawrence to allow ships to pass through well before the Seaway was built. I’ve just written a book about the submarine S-49, which passed up the St. Lawrence to be exhibited in Chicago in 1933, and passed back down in 1938. There had been two other subs that went from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes before 1933. One of them, a German sub, the **UC-97** is still there, at the bottom of Lake Michigan.