Levi Johnson was Cleveland’s first professional boat builder, whose Pilot, built in 1814, was the first craft of any magnitude to enter the Cuyahoga. The Pilot was of sixty ton burden and a good many head of oxen were required to drag it from the Johnson Shipyard on Huron Street to the river. Johnson was not only the father of Cleveland’s white-winged mercantile navy but was the father of its steamships as well. In 1824 he built the steamer Enterprise and with great difficulty and much patience pushed it through the bar at the river’s mouth. Levi Johnson’s men were working on the court house September 10, 1812 when the report of cannon signalled the Battle of Lake Erie. In a short time the population of Cleveland was on the bank of the lake at the foot of West 6th and West 9th Streets. Suddenly Johnson, on the Court House roof, shouted, “Three cheers for Perry! If his fleet wins, the lake will be free from the British.” For three long hours the battle continued. Then came a time when there was only the sound of heavy cannon—the small reports had ceased. “Perry had the big guns!” exclaimed Johnson, “The battle is won by the Americans!” The turning point in the second war with Great Britain came with Perry’s famous words, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” The Walk-in-th-Water was the first steamboat to journey west of the Niagara River. It was built in 1818, was 135 feet long, and had the startling speed of eight miles per hour. Steam first replaced sails on the lakes in 1817. Up to this time there was not much advance since the boats of the Phoenicians. The sail boats were far more beautiful and impressive than their successors. According to Ruskin “the mind of man never conceived, and the heart of man never contrived a work of man more exquisite in beauty than the wonderful creation of oak and hemp —a ship.” The Ohio Canal, which opened in 1827, at one time was considered quite a traffic institution, to the consternation of the mules that fur- nished the power. The canal boats brought coal to the little village of Cleveland, and for years constituted the greatest influence upon the ad- vance of this struggling city. | Alfred Kelley should be given the credit for starting Cleveland on its way to future greatness when its population was less than 900, by making possible the Ohio Canal,