CB 2019 J

Gott passed just south of Detroit, so let’s pick up the journey there.

On their way to Tall Ships Erie, Niagara above and Denis Sullivan below down bound under bare poles.

At a steel plant, Herbert C. Jackson offloads coal.

CSL Baie Comeau heads down bound.

Bushey tug transplanted to fresh waters, it’s Cheyenne reinventing herself.

Passing us near midtown, it’s the many-times reinvented  Lee A. Tregurtha,

sailing into a storm.

We’d not even gotten into Lake St Clair when the storm caught up with us . . . and this dinner boat heading south.

All photos by Will Van dorp.

Loading Lee A.

I could barely make her out, since we were several miles off a shore I was paying attention to for its own sake.  Some closeups taken last year appear at the end of the post, showing Lee A. Tregurtha as she’s put together now, so different from her first lives in the Atlantic and Pacific which could have seen her torpedoed and coral- or something-encrusted in the deeps.

Some major quarrying takes place there, north of Alpena MI,

rendering a +800′ ship almost invisible.

I know I’m exaggerating, but this enterprise leads me to imagine that Lake Huron might be enlarged here until there becomes an Upper Peninsula and a Lower one with a long coastline between Huron Beach and Petoskey,  creating the island of Cheboygan in between and a cable-stayed crossing at Indian River.

Yes, I digress,

but some thousand years from now . . ..

who knows . .

 

So here’s how the fore section of  Lee A. looks today.  She was launched in 1942 as SS Samoset, then six months later acquired by the USN as USS Chiwawa.

Here’s the distinctive stern.

The midsection arrived from Germany in 1960 towed by the tug Zeeland.

For all the details, here’s a tip of the hat to George Wharton and located on boatnerd.

All photos 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.