Alexander McDougall was an American inventor and ship-builder.
Background
Alexander McDougall was the eldest child of Dougald and Ellen (McDougall) McDougall. He was born in Port Ellen on the Island of Islay, just off the southwest coast of Scotland. His father was a carpenter and storekeeper in very poor circumstances, and as his family increased it became necessary for him to seek employment elsewhere. Accordingly, when Alexander was seven years old, his parents moved to Glasgow and two years later, in 1854, the family emigrated to Canada. They settled at Nottawa, a Scotch community near Collingwood at the southern end of Georgian Bay, Ont.
Education
The boy continued his common-school education in Nottawa, begun in Scotland; but within a few months, upon the death of his father in a grist-mill accident, he went to work as a farm hand. After several years he became a blacksmith's apprentice but at the age of sixteen ran away to ship as deck hand on a Lake vessel bound for Chicago, Illinois.
Career
For twenty-one years he sailed the Great Lakes. He became a second mate at the age of eighteen and at twenty-five was made captain of the Thomas A. Scott, one of the finest ships then on the Lakes. Until 1871 he made his home in Nottawa, but in that year established his mother and sisters in Duluth, Minn. He continued a resident of this city until his death. When he was twenty-six years old he helped to build for the Anchor Line the three passenger ships, China, Japan, and India, which were for years the "queens" of the Great Lakes. This experience spurred him on to develop his radical design for a freight ship which came to be known as the whaleback. He patented the basic design in 1881. In that year he gave up navigation and took charge of stevedoring for ship owners at a number of lake ports, meanwhile endeavoring to interest capital in his whaleback steamship. His efforts resulted after seven years in the organization of the American Steel Barge Company (1888), and in the construction of the first whaleback, in the company yard at Duluth.
Seven vessels were launched from this yard and forty from that at Superior, Wis. , established in 1891. These ships were used principally for transporting iron ores, grain, and coal. Although within a generation they became obsolete, they revolutionized the architecture of Great-Lakes freighters. In 1892 McDougall built the first steel-ship yard in the Pacific Northwest and founded the city of Everett, Wash. Five years later he sold his interest in the American Steel Barge Company, and in 1899 organized the Collingwood Shipbuilding Company at Collingwood, Ont. Later he acquired control of the Kingston Shipbuilding Company at Kingston, Ont. In 1899, also, he organized the St. Louis Steel Barge Company of St. Louis, Mo. , which built three vessels suitable for the navigation of the lower Mississippi River. While managing these several widely scattered enterprises, he patented, between 1888 and 1900, forty inventions pertaining chiefly to ship construction and equipment, ore and grain loading apparatus, and dredging machinery.
During the last few years of his life (1920 - 22) he was plaintiff in one of the largest suits for damages ever filed in the federal courts--a claim against the Oliver Iron Mining Company, a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation, for $40, 000, 000 for alleged infringement of his ore-washing patents (Case No. 6061). The court gave an opinion in favor of the defendant, which was later affirmed by the United States circuit court of appeals, eighth circuit. During the World War, as president of the McDougall-Duluth Ship Building Company, he directed the work of constructing a large fleet of freighters and steamers for both Lake and ocean service, and just prior to his death he had completed and opened the McDougall Terminal at Duluth. Even toward the end of his career he continued his inventive work. With his son he invented a sea-going canal boat in 1914; he also devised a variety of mining machinery, apparatus for destroying submarines, improved ship's equipment, and a peat fuel machine which was patented a few months before his death.
Achievements
Connections
McDougall married Emmeline Ross of Toronto, Canada, in January 1878, and at the time of his death in Duluth was survived by a son and a daughter.