You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Great Lakes’ category.
The * here denotes these are freshwater ships, plying their trade along what must be the longest peaceful international water boundary in the world, a fact I think deserves to be more widely known and celebrated. Here are installments 1–3.
Radcliffe R. Latimer has appeared here a year ago. For a complete history of the 1978 launched vessel on her third name after a transformative trip to China, click here.
Algoma Mariner is entirely built in China, delivered in 2011. Initially, the forebody was intended for Algoport, a vessel I’d photographed the the Seaway in July 2008, but (to allude to a story told by links here) Algoport sank on its way to China. For more detail of this vessel, let me redirect you again to boatnerd.
The United Way logo here piqued my curiosity, and here’s the answer from corporate Algoma.
Buffalo is US-built and US-registered, a product of Sturgeon Bay WI and launched in 1978.
Bigger isn’t always better, and that’s the genesis of Manitowoc, built to negotiate the rivers around the Great Lakes, waterways where commerce and manufacture still lives inside cities often dismissed as having succumbed to “rust belt” disease. She was launched in 1973 in Lorain OH.
Frontenac is a Canadian built launched in 1968
the the classic “house forward” design.
Coe Leni is the only “salty” in this batch.
Her previous name–Marselisborg–is still visible.
Sam Laud is another Sturgeon Bay WI product, launched in 1974.
Algoma Olympic–named for Canada’s hosting of the games in 1976–was launched that same year.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who hopes you’re forming an impression of the dynamic economic engine along the international border with our friendly neighbors to our north.
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Happy fall equinox. This seems as good a time as any to honor Poseidon with a photo parade of more fish tugs, to really challenge a segue. . .
as is grouping Lady Kate with fishing tugs. It appears she was built as passenger vessel G. A. Buckling II back in 1952, and is wearing her fourth name now, but
she certainly has the lines of a fish tug despite possibly never having worked as such. I’m sure someone will weigh in on this.
Doris M is a fish tug built in Erie in 1947, and given the flags,
she appears to still work.
Real Glory is a real deal: a Lake Erie fishing boat that sells the catch right from the pier, according to this news article.
If I lived nearby, here’s where I’d get my fish dinner.
Environaut (1950) is a 48′ science platform for Gannon University.
Big Bertha is a 1945 Stadium Boat Works fish tug, built as Gloria Mae.
I love how shore power plugs in here.
Thanks to this site, I can confirm that ASI Clipper, which I’ve wondered about before, began its life as a 1938 Port Colborne-built fish tug. Here’s a photo from that earlier incarnation.
And finally, we end here, it’s Eleanor D, a 1946 Stadium Boat Works fish tug about to be eclipsed by Stephen B. Roman. Here’s a closer-up photo of Eleanor D I took almost a decade ago. Like me, Stephen B Roman has been roaming a lot.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who is honored to have been interviewed on WBAI’s Talk Back–New York, We and Thee show. To hear the interview, click here and start listening at about the 1 hour 38 minute mark on the Sept 20 show.
And if you haven’t seen this yet on PBS, stream Erie: The Canal that Made America here.
And finally, click here for the “fishing tugs” tugster archive.
Port Weller is the north terminus of the Welland Canal, and as such, sees either a pilot boarding or debarking, which was the case here. Mrs C has an equally attractive fleet mate at Port Colbourne, the southern terminus. The vessel in the background left will appear in an upcoming post.
Some 80 miles to the east Kimberly Anne (1965) was docked in Rochester’s Charlotte port.
Walking along the beach there, I saw this historical sign of tug Oneida and schooner H. M. Ballou, at different times both owned by a George W. Ruggles.
Fifty or so miles to the NE we enter the Oswego River to find the busiest (IMHO) unit on the lakes: in the past few years I’ve seen Wilf Seymour and Alouette Spirit at least 6 times between Lake Huron and Quebec City. Here’s more info on Alouette’s aluminum operations, at one time and possibly now the largest aluminum producer in the Americas.
Click here for more info on Novelis, the client here in Oswego.
Anyone tell me the weight of one of these ingots?
Moving from contemporary to retrospective, the Phoenix dock was hosting schooner Lois McClure and tug Churchill as we passed.
For more close-ups, check out tug44’s take.
Click here for a complete history of the replica schooner Lois McClure.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who hopes you all enjoy the last day of summer 2017 today.
I’m back near the sixth boro now and have photos for at least through early October, at which time I leave on another gallivant.
So here’s step one in catching up. Up the meandering Cuyahoga, here are Iowa (1915) and Oklahoma (1913); these boats were built to work and last.
The vintage GL tugs may just be replaced for the next century by this design: Cleveland, launched less than six months ago . . . 2017.
Click here for a recent article on Cleveland.
Cleveland in this series was doing assist for 610′ x 78′ sand barge Ashtabula powered by 142′ tug Defiance.
Here’s Elizabeth Anna in the Lake Erie port on Erie PA.
Elizabeth Anna (ex-Bear) last appeared on this blog here.
In the entrance to the old Buffalo River, here’s Daniel Joncaire II, a NYPA tug
launched in late 2015 by Great Lakes Shipyard in Cleveland. NYPA uses the tug for ice boom installations near its hydropower units on the Niagara River. I’m curious now about Niagara Queen II and William H. Latham.
I’ve always had misgivings about my series title “freshwater tugs” and here’s a good illustration why: Calusa Coast–here with Kirby barge Delaware–was until a few years ago a regular in the saltwater and brackish , in and out of the sixth boro. Here she is in the Niagara River headed for Black Rock.
Beyond her stern here is the combination Buffalo Intake Crib Lighthouse.
And to close out today’s post, it’s Sarah Andrie, another tug that’s made the transition from saltwater to fresh . . . the former Caribe Service.
She’s making her way here upstream into Lake Erie from the Welland Canal.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Take the Milwaukee Breakwater Light looking east at dawn, or
same light in late afternoon looking west, and you have two very different photos.
Do something similar with Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Lighthouse and Pierhead Light looking west in the morning and
then back east the same time as you pass it. Add a link with a winter shot and a laker . . .
Let’s add a third light and do the same . . . this time with Big Red.
The photo above was taken mid afternoon, whereas the one below, I took at sunrise
as the fisherman was trying for chinook.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
As measured by the longest main span, the Mackinac Bridge is about 19th in the world today, but the number of spans leading out to that honest one are numerous, so it traverses a lot of water, quite minimized in this foreshortened shot across part of Mackinaw City.
This unit will be rolling across for over 10 minutes.
I’m not sure what work Champion is accompanying here.
Fresh paint makes the Mighty Mac especially beautiful these days,
and that work
is ongoing, as can be seen on the northern tower.
I can imagine concentration is a must for this work,
tuning out whatever traffic happens on the road as well as
like Mesabi Miner, a thousand-footer shrunk by the Mac, happening beneath the road.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
At first, I’d been concerned these folks in green kayakers were holding the wall for stability.
Then later I saw this and realized that the Chicago River has so much current that
one guide’s role in a “muster” is to paddle up current to keep the raft from heading for the Mississippi.
And this styling?
It only made sense when I saw them again in the Straits….
I believe this is a Ranger 21 . . .
nice, but maybe having an exhilarating day.
And recreational fishing, there’s a lot of it in
the lake and its bays
all day long.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Quick post here: This is the best I could do with Prentiss Brown Bradshaw McKee and her barge, Challenger, formerly the vintage St. Marys Challenger. Click here for the story of the conversion.
They departed after us and passed far to starboard.
Here headed for Ste Sainte Marie, it’s Avenger IV, another classic.
The barge is PML 9000, and I’ve no idea of the cargo, regular or otherwise.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
well . . . it’s a lobster boat, so what else might they be doing?
It does have the lines albeit a tad modified, and of course
I can find a fake news site that has text and REAL PICTURES!! of lobsters invading the shore of Lake Michigan here.
But seriously, it seems Ugly Anne was built in Maine, where it worked lobstering from 1975 until the mid-90s, when it was brought to the Mackinac Straits.
I wonder how those Great Lakes lobster taste.
I don’t usually think of the Great Lakes as schooner territory, but that’s a misperception: before rail and roads, these moved cargo around the northern midwest.
SV Denis Sullivan has been down bound as far as Quebec City this summer for the tall ships’ render-vous. Has Sullivan ever seen saltier water beyond Quebec City?
Just as she approached, she started dropping sail, starting with the headsails
and moving astern. Here a crew flakes the foresail as it is lowered.
A little math with an assumption that Sullivan–a replica, I know– could carry 400 tons of ore sound like a way to get in trouble:
anyhow, if my assumption were correct, it would take 170 schooners to carry the same amount of ore as Paul R. Tregurtha, right?
Here, using signage from the Chicago Maritime Museum, is a little context.
“lumbershovers”?? A a ferry might hire peopleshovers?
Photos by Will Van Dorp.
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