CB6

MRC is located on the east side of the entrance to the Welland Canal.  This was a part of the trip I was eager to see. I recall seeing English River for as long as I’ve taken photos on the Lakes.  Paul H. Townsend I first saw here.

Townsend dates from 1945, and

English River  . . . from 1961. Here’s a post I did on her 10 years ago.

 

Marcoux Princess of Acadia arrived here on a towline from the Maritimes.  Click here for photos of her on the Saint Lawrence a year and a half ago.

 

Doubled up at the south end of the scrap yard were Algorail and Algoway, launched in 1968 and 1972, respectively.

 

Algoway on a towline was featured here.  This is the first post that includes Algorail.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Retro Road Photos

These photos I took on a road trip 10 years ago.  Revisiting some photos from this trip underscores how little I know about the inland waterways.  Let’s start in Pittsburgh with Consol Energy’s Gabriel.

Farther west at Pike Island locks, Brenda Rose pushes some large components up the Ohio.

Downstream across from the stadiums in Cincinnati, Shirley B waits at the dock.

McGinnis’ Canadian heads upstream.

And still in Cincinnati, TPG Mt Vernon Marine’s William Jeffrey Bayer moves coal downstream.  I wonder how they identify themselves on the radio.

Belle of Louisville–in Louisville–is a piece of history, launched only a little over 50 years after Herman Melville stopped by the port.

Cutting north to follow the eastern side of Lake Michigan, we came upon Captain George, looking immaculate for a 1929 built tug, here alongside Silversides.

This classic fish tug had no markings anywhere.

Nibroc, here in Muskegon, dates from 1938.

And finally, Paul H. Townsend, has since been towed to Port Colborne to be scrapped.  I hope to see her remnants, macabre as that may sound, when I pass through there in early August.

All photos taken in late spring 2008 by Will Van Dorp, who’s currently doing a trip taking in coastlines and waterways not explored before.

 

 

Other Watersheds 6

Allen Baker  has worked on four of the five Great Lakes in recent weeks and shares the next four fotos.  Massachusetts has that low, upswept “laker look” that reminds me of Grouper, which I’ve not received updates on.  Any guesses on location of the shot and launch date of Massachusetts?

For launch date, you were right if you said . . . 1928!  She’s 79′ x 20′ x 12′ and operates with Great Lakes Towing.  And then there’s Manistee, delivered in May 1943 to Reiss Steamship Company.  Since then, her original triple expansion

steam power plant  was replaced by a slightly-more powerful 2950 hp diesel engine and equipped with a 250′ self-unloader.  By the way, Reiss once owned Grouper, also.

Like most lakers, Manistee is long and narrow (621′ x 60′ x 35′), with a bluff bow, maximizing cargo space, and a wheel house forward with a stern “island” over the power plant.   The oldest laker operating on the “big lakes” is St. Marys Challenger, still hauling bulker cargo since its launch in February 1906!!  It still uses a Skinner Uniflow 3500 hp steam engine.

I took the next two fotos in Muskegon, MI, in June 2008, where Paul H. Townsend has been idled since 2005.  A fascinating detail about Townsend is its conversion:  built in Wilmington, CA in 1945, it was lengthened from 339′ x 50′  to 447′ x 50′ in 1952 . . . in Hoboken, NJ.   The wheelhouse was moved forward in a separate modification in 1958 on Lake Erie.  If you click on the link above, you’ll find before/after fotos.

When last sailing, she hauled gypsum or cement, now more frequently carried on barges pushed by the likes of  Samuel de Champlain.  Notice the same fleet colors.  In this 2008 post, notice the second vessel (in a Lake Ontario port)  down in the same colors as Townsend.

A “laker” moved into the sixth boro in the summer of 2005.  Ocean and Coastal Consultants and Bayshore Recycling use Valgocen (ex-Algocen) in the dredged materials decontamination process (See p. 2 in this newsletter.).  Valgocen currently lives along the Raritan River,

startling me every time I notice it.  A laker . . . in an estuary.  But there it is was, repurposed.  The foto below–as the one above– shows it in the St. Lawrence on its way to the sixth boro towed by tugs from Atlantic Towing Limited.  See important update at the end of this post.

Thanks to Allen Baker for the first four fotos, and to Kent Malo for the last two.

And if you hadn’t felt totally confident, Allen’s fotos were taken in the Calumet River, Chicago, an ocean port.

Unrelated . ..  I’ve been reading DieselDuck’s archives, not homing in on any particular post, just enjoying the sweep of their focus.  Check them out here.

UPDATE:  Jeff’s comment got me looking and –sure enough–Valgocen is no more, having reborn as  J W Shelley, back at work on the Great Lakes, as of this writing between Montreal and Lake Erie. Thanks, Jeff.