Canal Motor Ships D3

You’d imagine there would be a groundswell of interest in saving and cleaning up such an iconic Barge Canal veteran as this.  I’d love to see a correctly colorized photo of this weeks-old cargo ship at the beginning of its first transit through the waterway that dictated its dimensions.

It’s time to close out part D with this post, or at least until there’s more news about ILI 101 now referred to as Day Peckinpaugh.  Note the date on this photo.  In her first years, there would be tweaks, like replacing her first Skandia Pacific Oil engines that plagued her first transit so much that she needed to hobble to New York City with assistance of tugboat Lorraine, a story for another post.  However, here, I imagine the crew felt like celebrities as the wealthy dockside managers and investors in their fancy clothes admired this incarnation of the future of Barge Canal cargo movement, a promising investment in its success.

I have no date here, but here ILI 101 appears to be approaching the Flight, near the eastern terminus of the Canal. 

The vessel carried the name Richard J. Barnes, as you see here in Phoenix NY, before it was renamed again, Day Peckinpaugh in 1959.

Two sister vessels–102 and 103— were launched a month after 101,  in June 1921.  102 became Andrew M. Barnes, shown below in Phoenix NY some time in 1947. She and the other motorships must still have turned heads, sent people for their Kodaks, prints of which must be stored in historical societies all along the canal.  Surely an joint effort could be made to search for them. A few years later, she was scrapped somewhere in the sixth boro.   Part D1 of this series showed other photos of this vessel from 1921.

ILI 103 had a longer and certainly more diverse history.  Below she’s westbound approaching lock E-14 as Robert Barnes Fiertz.  What’s clear is that she was sold to interests off the Great Lakes and Barge Canal in 1962 and at some point was cut down to a barge.  She was not, however, as this site suggests, scrapped in 1973, although she ceased to be a cargo carrier then, if not before.

As you can tell from the familiar lines in the photo below, 103 ended her life as a faux Confederate “blockage runner” restaurant called Scarlett O’Hara (of course)  in Charleston SC at foot of Charlotte Street, from 1973 until 1979.  Click on the photo to read the story and see the source.  I’d love to have more photos of her in this configuration, especially as seen from the water.  I made some inquiries last summer and fall but never got a response from the good folks in Charleston archive keeping.

ILI 104 was launched in July 1921, the same month as ILI 105, featured in this recent post.  

Here departing eastward at lock E-7, ILI 104, renamed Alden Barnes Fiertz followed a similar pattern to 103,

leaving at least the Barge Canal behind after 1950 when Canadian Coastwise Carriers converted her into a tanker (!), after a total rebuild that lengthened, widened, raised, and deepened her. Renamed Coastal Carrier, as shown in this photo from an unknown source other than FB and taken between 1950 and 1968, when she was renamed Bay Transport.  She is believed scrapped in Hamilton ON in 1977.

To close out this series, here’s a photo I took of the hold of 101 known as Day Peckinpaugh as configured for hauling cement and then cleaned up as spacious exhibit gallery.  To the right, you see a single poster.

I took these photos above and below along the Hudson River in Manhattan is September 2009.  If you look closely on the starboard bow, you can see remnants of the lettering spelling out Richard J. Barnes.

All but the last three photos are used with permission from the Canal Society of New York, for whose publication Bottoming Out I wrote a different draft of this post.

Other motor ships followed on the Barge Canal, but these five designed and produced in Duluth, the brainchild of Alexander McDougall led the way.