In the continuing project of posting a sampling of the variety of vessels calling in the sixth boro, here’s a variation on the RORO profile. Click here to see the many previous RORO posts. Several minutes before I took this photo, I saw it and couldn’t quite understand what I was seeing.
It’s about the location of the bridge, much farther toward the stern than typical. It might be a more comfortable ride, but view forward is decreased, I imagine. Maybe this is the immediate future of the design.
I wish I’d gotten a bow-on shot. She is not large–460′ loa, but she’s on the run Grey Shark used to do, at least this voyage.
Here she is juxtaposed with Meredith
It is a new profile, built in Japan in 2010.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who has a nagging sense of seeing this RORO recently but unable to find any previous photos. Maybe it was one of those few times I was near the water but sans camera. It happens.
I don’t know who to attribute this photo to, but it is said to show a laker crossing Lake Superior with a deckled of automobiles, mid-1930s. I wonder when automobiles were last transported on the Great Lakes in this fashion . . . Anyone?
tugster: a waterblog 
3 comments
Comments feed for this article
February 18, 2019 at 1:18 pm
William Lafferty
Lakers occasionally took deck cargoes of autos from Detroit on return trips to Lake Superior for ore or grain. The T. J. McCarthy Steamship Company of Detroit provided the last dedicated laker service, using at its height three lakers converted exclusively for auto haulage. It ceased operating in 1963 when the railroads with specialized rolling stock for auto carriage and low rates took away its traffic. A competitor, the Nicholson Transit Company of Corse, Michigan, operated two boats at the end, liquidating in 1960. The last dedicated auto carrier on the Great Lakes was the converted LST Highway 16, placed in service in 1948 by the Wisconsin & Michigan Steamship Company that also operated the Milwaukee Clipper, carrying new autos between Milwaukee and Muskegon. Auto assembly plants proliferated throughout the nation as did lower railroad rates and the interstate highway system, and the Highway 16 last ran in 1973. Today it is a museum at Muskegon, restored to its original state as LST 393.
February 18, 2019 at 3:15 pm
sleepboot
The Steamer “MATAFA” of the Nicholson Lines was the last pure car carrier on the lLakes and went in 1965 to Hamburg, Germany to be scrapped.
Regards,
Jan
February 19, 2019 at 11:59 am
ws
RoRo Boheme, Forward Bridge pulling into GCT..
Boheme, GT 67264, twice as long as Constanza