Detroit and Cleveland Navigation Company

In the meantime, Greater Detroit and her fleetmates saw an increase in passenger revenues, with the ships being reasonably full as Americans rationed gasoline for the war effort and therefore chose to travel between cites on the D&C liners, among other lines operating then.

The two ships survived and returned to their ports, but this incident, along with the dramatic resurgence of the automobile and truck traffic trades, finished the company.

The company was formally dissolved in 1951, shortly after their old harbor terminals were condemned by the city of Detroit because of old age, and by 1959, most of the line's remaining ships had been scrapped.

One vessel built in 1883, the 203-foot (62 m) long, 807 ton City of Mackinac (renamed State of New York in 1893 by the Cleveland and Buffalo Line) was sold back to D&C in 1909.

When the City of Detroit III was dismantled in 1956, Frank Schmidt bought the wooden fittings from the Gothic Room aboard the steamer and had the material shipped to suburban Cleveland.

After his death, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum on Belle Isle in the Detroit River acquired the woodwork and a part of the large and elegant room was preserved there as a reminder of the D&C Line's past glory days.

It was a people mover and a catalyst for the development of numerous towns and ports at a time when better automobile and trucking routes, along with larger bridges, were yet to be built and established.