Canal Motor Ship Project B

As William Lafferty pointed out in the previous post in this series here, Robert Barnes Fiertz was not a tanker.  I’ll have several more posts on Fiertz and her sisters including the one we now call Day-Peckinpaugh, but here we focus on a vessel launched two years later (in 1923) that builds on the same design and constraints of the Barge Canal.  Appropriately called Twin Ports, operating for the Minnesota-Atlantic Transit Company, the vessel below was designed to carry refrigerated goods.  My guess would be Great Lakes fish.  Somone better versed in developments in refrigeration might explain what means were used to keep the cargo cold.

I’m thinking she’s arriving at lock E-9. This could be the maiden voyage, which would mean Duluth to New York via Superior, Huron, and Erie.  She’d then enter the Barge Canal at Tonawanda, exit at Waterford, and travel the Hudson.  

Note people in closeups of the same photo above and below.  Seeing the two men in the lower righthand corner of the photo in relatively formal attire begs questions about the development of “work clothes.”  Similarly, the middle person on the bow . .  . is he supercargo or ship’s officer?

I’m surprised by the number of crew on deck here.   Also, in the days before hand-held VHF radios, how did crew and bridge communicate?

Here the Erie Canal bulker, as she is classified here,  transits a different lock. Her dimensions were 251′ x 42′ and built by Great Lakes Engineering Works in Ashtabula OH.

Closeups show again the large number of folks on deck. Also, in all the photos above, notice the disassembled ventilators flat of the deck. In other photos here, masts, davits, awnings, and other deck equipment lie flat on deck.

Here’s forward,

and midships.

And here she departs the lock.

All photos used with permission of the Canal Society of New York.  I’m not sure who the photographer was, but these were taken before 1931, when she was sold to General Motorship Corporation and renamed Clevelander. Subsequently, she was sold to National Motorship Corp (1934),  to Island dock Company (1946), and to Cleveland Tankers Inc (1947) for conversion to a tanker.  That conversion was never made and she was sold to Moran Towing and Transportation for work off the Lakes but that never happened.  In 1954 she was sold to A. Newman & Co. and scrapped in Port Colborne ON.