LL Mackinac to Escanaba

Let’s start with a 1000-footer, MV Burns Harbor.  For all the particulars, click here. 

I’m amazed that someone would approach to that point in a kayak.

 

 

Fishing anyone?

After we’d crossed over in Lake Michigan, 

we passed James R. Barker.  For her particulars, click here. 

 

Both Burns and Barker are among the largest.

Twelve hours later, we entered Escanaba MI, and the Basic yard, or at least used to be that. 

Biscayne Bay awaited the dry dock.

And Nickelena stood by for its next job.

Siscowet is named for an indigenous trout, but that’s all I know. 

Greenstone is intriguing.

I don’t know the story here, but there is only some resemblance to a Point-class USCGC.  Maybe I’m missing something else entirely.

All photos, any errors, WVD, who could do a whole other post about Escanaba.

St. Clair River Steel Traffic

Pride . . . I wish I’d seen more of her.

Harbour Feature would look right at home in the sixth boro . . . .  Now that’s a place I’ve not been in a while.

James R. Barker . . .heading at us here like a dreadnought . . .

 

 

At this distance, the power plant at East China, MI shrinks the laker.

 

As we get closer, however, she clearly is quite large.

Indiana Harbor is one of the 1000-footers.

x

Annie M Dean is a noisy Windsor boat.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Road Fotos 39

How fortunate to catch Paul R. Tregurtha on her first upbound trip through the Soo!   She’s the last product of the shipyards in Lorain OH, which was the first stop on this gallivant.

Just ahead of Tregurtha was James R. Barker, another product of Lorain, here waiting to enter the locks.

An impulse stop in Sault Ste Marie ON was the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre, a great stop.

To get from Manitoulin Island to the Bruce Peninsula, we boarded “the big canoe,” aka Chi-Cheemaun, a replacement for SS Norgoma, featured here a few days ago.  Chi-Cheemaun is a product of Collinwood ON shipyards, about which I’ll comment later.

Tobermory has erected a plaque to Le Griffon, the will-0-wisp of the Great Lakes, the first full-sized sailing ship built on the Lakes above Niagara.  She disappeared on the return from her first voyage, one of the many vessels lost on the Lakes without a trace.

Is it true that Dawn Light, docked here in Tobermory, was built in 1891?    !!  Here’s the suggestion and history.

Georgian Bay . . .  and here’s a cairn built in honor of those past.

Just east of Georgian Bay in Gordon Lightfoot country, there are lots of apple orchards.  Are there any Lightfoot songs referring to them or to farming there?

 

Here is part of the area that used to be Collingwood Shipyards, now living and shopping space.  At least they painted a mural of a laker on the supermarket wall.

Itinerary and all photos by Will Van Dorp, who offers this poem in respect for this day..

Random Ships *6

Off in the distance, I believe those lights are Greys Reef and Skillagalee . . . and the

ship is another 1000-footer named for an Indiana port.  Maybe it’s the time of day, but I think I see the iron ore dust on the white paint.

Getting back to my invented  TTT unit (twenty-ton trailer), she has the capacity of 3942.5 trucks off the road.

Algoway (1972) is another appropriate -sized laker, serving ports otherwise possibly inaccessible, and replacing 1200 trucks.

Here she passes through the Round Island Channel, eastbound.

Notice the hatch in the hull below the stack?

An engineer taking some fresh air?

American Spirit . . .  another 1000-footer . .. has a capacity equal to 3120 TTT.  Imagine having all those trucks on the highways between the mines and the steel mills 500+ to the south!

Anyone know how many tons of cargo these boats lug in a season?

Philip R. Clarke, 1265 TTTs.

I do love the paint scheme of USS Great Lakes fleet.

James R. Barker, 3165 TTT.

She’s been running for 41 years on the lakes.

 

And as James R. Barker disappears in the direction of the Soo and Lake Superior, Hon. James L. Oberstar (1550 TTT) heads for the steel mills.

Here’s a list of the 1000-footers on the Great Lakes

American Century

American Integrity

American Spirit

Burns Harbor

Edgar B. Speer

Edwin H. Gott

Indiana Harbor

James R. Barker

Mesabi Miner

Paul R. Tregurtha

Presque Isle ITB

Stewart J. Cort

Walter J, McCarthy Jr.

For an alphabetical listing of these Great Lakes-locked vessels, check out Dick Lund’s page.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.

 

 

 

 

 

Random Ships *1

* here means  . . . in freshwater.  Actually there’ve been 50 posts under this title, but this is different.  And note the color of the water, brown in the case of Isolda below because it’s steaming out of the muddy, clay-suspended Maumee.

In the blue waters of the St. Clair River with Sarnia on the far side, it’s Lee A. Tregurtha.

Headed unbound not far from the same location, it’s Victoriaborg.

Down in an ocean port along the Indiana coast and shot from a speeding Amtrak, it’s James R. Barker.

Over in East China–East China Michigan, that is–it’s Lubie making her way to the ocean, well over a week away.

Upbound out of Detroit, it’s Hon James L. Oberstar, 

a downbound Algonova,

and to close it out today .  . Philip R. Clarke.

 

Clarke (Ohio) was launched 1951; Algonova (Turkey) in 2007; Oberstar (Ohio) , 1958; Lubie (China) 2011; Victoriaborg (Netherlands), 2001; Lee A. Tregutha (Maryland), 1942, as USS Chiwawa–and you need to click here to see her initial configuration!!; and finally Isolda (Japan) in 1999.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.