Western Superior Tugboats

Let’s start with the grande dame . . . Edna G, on the land side of the loading dock in Two Harbors MN.  Guess her year of build?

Two Harbors is about 30 miles NE of Duluth.

Click here for more info.

Nancy J, at the same ore dock, dates from 1964, but I know little else.

Bayfield, now a gnome in a planter, was built as ST2023 by Roamer, Holland MI in 1953 and was turned over to the USACE in 1962.  I don’t know how long it has adorned the planter.

I wonder who did the fancy weld . . .

Huron–ex-Daniel McAllister–is seven years newer than Ellen McAllister, a sixth boro staple.  Huron‘s been here only since early 2017. 

And I have to end the photos here, with these two unidentified GL-tugs, although I’m guessing might or not not be Arkansas, Kentucky, and/or North Carolina.   I only figured out later how to get closer . . . after I’d left town.  This is what Grouper used to look like.

And if you can spare a half hour, here’s a youtube of another tug, previously of Twin Ports, and older sibling of Urger . . . Sea Bird, which like Urger had at one point been a fish tug, a topic for another day.   Here’s a three-minute youtube which shows GL tugs arriving in port.  If you listen to the intercom in the background, you’ll note that Duluth–like Port Huron–has someone announce each vessel as it traverses the Ship Canal.  I call that valuing the port.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

People Movers 7

Here are the previous posts.

The 1980 Innisfree works the Chicago River, but it has New England roots.

The rest of the boats in this post work in the waters around Mackinac Island.  Anna May is Wisconsin-built, 1947.

Felicity is a Shepler’s Ferry boats.  For a history of the business, click here.

Straits of Mackinac II is a 1969 Blount product. The Arnold family has been in the ferry business here since 1878.

LaSalle dates from 1983.

Huron is Erie PA built, 1955, and the oldest vessel working for the Arnold fleet.

Joliet dates from 1993.   For many more Michigan ferries, click here.

And to close out today, we’re back at Innisfree, maybe named for the W. B. Yeats poem.   Here Innisfree passes the footprint-gone-wild for the now-dead Spire project.

 

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.

Go West 12

We had a long transit from Detroit to Mackinac, so here are a lot of photos, starting with Federal Kumano and Ambassador Bridge in the distance;

passing steel operations,

 

 

and the mailboat Westcott.

Near central Detroit a pilot boards Federal Kumano from Huron Maid.

Entering Lake St. Clair, we pass Philip R. Clarke, 

followed by Lubie in China township,

Radcliffe R. Latimer, 

Great Lakes Maritime Center,

lightship Huron,

and as we headed unbound into Lake Huron, we passed Arthur M. Anderson . . . the last vessel in contact with the Fitzgerald before she was taken by Superior.

This was sunrise nearing the end of this leg, and in the night and distractions, I missed Alpena.

This post closes with Buffalo, as she leaves the Mackinac Bridge behind her.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.