Here is a picture of a freighter, the Roger Blough, that is in the news since it went aground late last Friday. This picture shows some typical features of a lake freighter. You can see the flat hatches over the various holds. The white arm is the self-unloader. This basically has a pair of belts that gets lowered into the hold and will fill the hold from a source on shore or empty the hold to the shore depending on the direction the belts are operated.
There are 5 holds with 21 hatches on the Roger Blough, each hold is probably around 30' deep. The beam is 105' so lets assume 90' to account for the double hull and that each hold is about 1/7 the 858' length and you can build a housing project in the 90'x120'x30' holds containing 30 2-bed apartments in each, and still have room for food storage and trade goods in the remaining ones.
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