My great grandfather was an ore boat captain on the Lakes in the 1880s and 90s. I remember my g-grandmother telling us stories of his trips. She died in 1956 at 96 when I was 10. I remember her house in Lakewood OH. It was yellow brick and two floors with a finished attic and a finished basement. It was full of massive furniture and ships-in-bottles and all sorts of neat stuff. There was a widow walk on the roof.
I once heard (from a non-scholar, but the source was credible) about how many ships had sunk in the Great Lakes during the period when most (or all, if long enough ago) vessels were wood, and a little quick unassisted math yielded a figure of a ship going done every six days for 150 years. It’s amazing, and of course, I may have been waaaaay off, or the speaker was.