Harry Coulby (January 1, 1865 – January 18, 1929) was an American businessman known as the "Czar of the Great Lakes" for his expertise in managing the Great Lakes shipping fleet of Pickands Mather & Company and the Pittsburgh Steamship Company. After retiring, he served as the first mayor of the newly incorporated town of Wickliffe, Ohio. His former home, Coulallenby, now serves as the city hall of Wickliffe. He chose the design for Great Lakes ore carriers in 1905 that became the standard for the next 65 years, and was elected to the National Maritime Hall of Fame in 1984.
Early life Coulby was born January 1, 1865, in Claypole, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom, to Thomas and Jane ( Bugge) Coulby. He was the fourth of seven children, and the fourth of four sons. His father was a farmer, and Coulby worked on the farm. He was educated in the local private school, and was a voracious reader. During his youth, he read about the Great Lakes and became fascinated by them. Coulby left school at the age of 11, and in the summer of 1879 at the age of 14, left home to take up residence in the town of Newark-on-Trent.
He won a position (without pay) with the London, Midland and Scottish Railway learning telegraphy. He was an expert at Morse code within three months. The company formally hired him at 12 shillings a week, and sent him to work at a telegraph station in the village of Ilkeston in Derbyshire. A year later, he was transferred to the telegraphy station at Marple, Greater Manchester, and received a raise of four shillings. In 1883, Coulby applied for and won an $800-a-year position with the British Cable Company. After a 26-day voyage about the steamship SS Leonora, Coulby arrived in Santiago de Cuba in Cuba.
Two months after arriving in Cuba, Coulby contracted malaria. Because his salary was being used to defray the cost of his travel, he had to borrow $30 to pay for his treatment. The company did not respond when he sought reimbursement for his medical care. He also found himself clashing repeatedly with a senior telegrapher. In March 1884, Coulby stowed away on the steamer SS Cienfuegos, which was bound for New York City. Still suffering from the after-effects of malaria, he was nursed to health for free by the Sisters of Charity of New York.
After two weeks in the hospital, Coulby was well enough to be discharged. Determined to reach the Great Lakes but without any money, Coulby walked more than from New York City to Albany, New York, and then west along the Erie Canal to Buffalo, New York. He then followed lakeshore railroad tracks to Cleveland, Ohio. During his two-week journey, he did odd jobs for pay for food, housing, and pocket money.
Working for John Hay
Coulby initially applied for a job as a deckhand aboard the Onoko, the first iron-hulled lake freighter and one of the biggest ships on the Great Lakes. Lacking experience, he was rejected. Coulby instead received work pushing wheelbarrows for a construction company. He enrolled in night school, where he learned to use the typewriter and to take shorthand. In the fall, he won a job as a $40-a-month stenographer's job with the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway.
He married Amasa Stone, founder of the railroad, had two daughters, and John Hay, President Abraham Lincoln's former private secretary, had married one of them (Clara). Hay and John George Nicolay, another of Lincoln's private secretaries, had been working on a biography of Lincoln since 1874, but by 1884, Hay needed help in making further progress. Sources differ as to whether Coulby met Hay by chance in the railroad office, or whether Coulby answered a newspaper advertisement placed by Hay. But by the end of 1884, Coulby was working for Hay, transcribing notes, taking dictation, and checking facts against the extensive documents and correspondence Hay had amassed. The work left him with a lifelong admiration for Lincoln.
With work on the biography largely finished by 1886, Hay decided to move to Washington, D.C. Coulby did not want to leave Cleveland. Hay found him an $1,800-a-year government job as a stenographer, a position would have left Coulby financially secure for the rest of his life. But Coulby was ambitious and the job held no prospect for advancement, so he turned the offer down. Amasa Stone's other daughter, Flora, had married Samuel Livingston Mather II, heir to the Cleveland Iron Mining Company fortune and (in 1883) founder of the rapidly expanding mining concern Pickands Mather & Co. Hay recommended Coulby to Mather, who hired Coulby as a secretary for $50 a month on April 10, 1886.
Shipping career
Pickands Mather Pickands Mather was shipping iron ore from mines in Minnesota to steel mills all over the Great Lakes. Coulby's fascination with lakes led him to learn all he could about Great Lakes shipping: the type of boats, port facilities, weather, routes, cost, and more. As often as he could, he traveled on ships to learn their idiosyncrasies, problems, and labor issues. Coulby was quick to identify ways in which to cut costs, and ways to expand the company's business at minimal expense. He worked in several areas of the firm, but returned again and again to the Marine Department. He was made a partner in the firm in 1900.
Coulby helped plan and participated in the greatest expansion of a Great Lakes shipping fleet ever seen at that time. In 1889, Pickands Mather partner and iron mine owner Jay C. Morse, and others, organized the Minnesota Steamship Company to meet their joint shipping needs. Within three years, the firm had a fleet of nine steamers and five barges. In 1892, Pickands Mather purchased the Huron Barge Company, and the following year established a steamship coal fueling business. The firm organized the Interlake Company in 1894, and in 1895 purchased the American Steel Barge Company, which had constructed the largest whaleback shipping fleet on the Great Lakes. In 1897, John D. Rockefeller approached Pickands Mather with a request: Build him a fleet of 12 steamships to carry iron for his Consolidated Iron Mines, Oliver Iron Mining Company, and Minnesota Iron Company. Pickands Mather had an ownership interest in Minnesota Iron, and agreed to build the fleet. Coulby was assigned to oversee the construction of the ships, which were transferred to Rockefeller's nascent Bessemer Steamship Company.
When Pickands Mather lost the contract to manage the Minnesota Steamship fleet in 1901, Coulby formed the Mesaba Steamship Company to compete with it. Mesaba Steamship built the large freighters Amasa Stone in 1905 and Samuel Mather 1906, and two others. He also arranged to manage the fleets of the Acme Steamship Co., Peavey Steamship Co., and Provident Steamship Co. By 1903, Coulby had oversight of a fleet of 50 steamships (although only five were directly owned by Pickands Mather). He was also a member of the Dock Managers Association, the employer organization which engaged in collective bargaining with labor unions (such as longshoremen and other workers who loaded and unloaded ship).
In early 1903, Coulby assumed the duties of President and Treasurer of Great Lakes Towing Company in addition to his work as managing partner of the Marine Department at Pickands Mather. But on December 29, 1903, he resigned this position to become President and General Manager of the Pittsburgh Steamship Company, the Great Lakes shipping division of U.S. Steel. Under the terms of this agreement, Coulby remained manager of the Marine Department of Pickands Mather.
Pittsburgh Steamship As head of the largest Great Lakes steamship company in North America, Coulby was a study in contrasts. He wore tailored suits purchased in England and smoked fine cigars. Yet, he also loved to tell stories about his life on the farm and his early weeks in America, aggressively demanded to know how much money his subordinates were making, and liked to walk the wharves to learn about his ships, weather, and navigational hazards.
Coulby's tenure as president of the fleet was marked by two major accomplishments. First, he significantly upgraded the fleet to eliminate wooden-hulled ships, replacing them with much longer and larger steel-hulled vessels. He ordered the significant redesign of Great Lakes carriers as well, eliminating the curved deck of the whalebacks which allowed for greater access to the hold. This allowed for faster loading and unloading, and less time in port (the most costly part of shipping). He also ordered the crew cabins placed atop the deck at the stern, crew cabins placed atop the forecastle, and a pilothouse atop the forecastle cabins. This freed up space belowdecks for cargo. Coulby's redesign of the Great Lakes ore carrier, first implemented with the construction of the Elbert H. Gary in 1905, became the standard for the next 65 years. He then sold off most of the older, smaller vessels. Ship crews downsized significantly, and skilled sail crews were replaced by deskilled blue-collar workers (such as firemen, oilers, and deck watchmen). Ship captains, whose judgement about a sailor's skills often was critical, now performed far more limited roles and had little input about the makeup of the crew.
Second, Coulby significantly reorganized the fleet's management and pressured labor unions for wage and benefit cuts. He moved the company headquarters from Duluth, Minnesota, to Cleveland; appointed a new vice president to supervise operations in Duluth; promoted several mid-level managers; and ordered cuts in managerial pay (sometimes as much as 48 percent). With unionization growing among steamship workers, the Lake Carriers' Association (LCA) proved critical to Coulby in implementing his employment policies. He was elected the LCA Executive Committee on January 22, 1903, and came to dominate the group. Coulby's influence came from his having been manager of the Pickands Mather fleet and Great Lakes Towing (commonly known as the "Tug Trust"), as president of the largest shipping fleet on the lakes, his company's relationship to U.S. Steel (which shipped far more ore on the lakes than any other company), and his natural aggressiveness and tendency to see himself as a "benevolent despot". Coulby immediately reorganized the LCA. The group had attempted to form a company union, the Lake Carriers' Beneficial Federation, in 1901, but this effort had failed to stem unionization.