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Sneak PeekHere are two featured excerpts from Soul of a Port: The Sweetness and Tragedy of Old Memories
City planners at that time sought a way to move all of that coal and
transit out of the downtown inner harbor and away from street traffic, and
they turned to Jones Island for the solution. At the time, Jones Island was
a makeshift fishing village inhabited by the Kaszubes (pronounced kahshoobs),
a western Slavic people who had emigrated from a Baltic island off
the coast of Poland.
Man Overboard?
He must have eaten a lot of it, because he started working for the Clipper's
steward department in 1941 when he was just seventeen. He washed dishes
and served food and eventually moved into the deck department. To become
captain, as he put it, he came up the "hawse pipe," meaning that he climbed
up the ship's rank without attending a traditional maritime academy. "The
owners of the ship, Max and Mark Mckee, never cut any corners." says
Priefer. "They served great food, breakfast, lunch and dinner."
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City leaders were confronted with a serious problem. The unending stream
of coal ships up and down the Milwaukee River meant that the drawbridges
on major thoroughfares like Wisconsin Avenue were constantly being raised,
disrupting street traffic. "It was a disaster," says Reinelt.
This next story was told by eighty-six-year-old Captain Robert Priefer, the
last captain of the passenger steamship Milwaukee Clipper. Captain Priefer's
father was the supplier of the provisions for the ship. He was the man who
would go to the slaughterhouse on Fond du Lac Avenue and 27th Street in
Milwaukee and select the very best cuts for prime rib, which was a specialty
served on the Clipper. The prime rib was unsurpassed by any prime rib served
in the city. It was not surprising to find out that when asked, Captain Priefer
said that his favorite food on the Clipper was the prime rib.
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