Dionne Quints launch ships

[Guest]

One additional fact about these five vessels a lot of you may not know about is that before they left the Lakes all five participated briefly in the Great Lakes grain trade just like the regular Lakes vessels.

Launched in May, they entered active service in late July. They sailed to Fort William, where they loaded cargoes of grain which they delivered to Lake Erie (all to Buffalo I think I remember -- don't have my detailed notes available) and returned to Fort William for another load. This went on for a very few trips and all five left the last time with grain which they took off the Lakes in the usual fashion, all by the middle of August, as I recall.

During World War II several hundred vessels were built by many Lakes shipyards to serve the Allied shipping needs off the Lakes. In all other cases I know about, they left as soon as they were completed. Those built to canal size went out the St. Lawrence and the ones too large to depart that way (and there were a lot of them) were towed down the Illinois canal/Mississippi system. In most cases the canallers were registered British. English crews were sent here, took over the vessels, had them loaded with grain and left. (I don't know the pattern for the larger ones.)

To my knowledge these five vessels were the only ones which served in this Lakes trade during the war. Whether these were selected because they were the Quints vessels or whether it was just coincidences I don't know.

I assume all this was done because the Lakes grain need was so great that they had to borrow some ocean-headed ships for a little bit to relieve the emergency.

[JohnH]

And here is a complete copy of that Christening Booklet.

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bi ... ry&isize=M

You might have to copy & paste the url.

[JohnH]

And here is another YouTube video of that launch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73yrPdVjMzk

[JohnH]

Here is a YouTube video of that launching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ydjnCS-Dw

[Kevin]

Christening booklet from that day. Interestingly, there isn't much about the ships in here. Mostly wartime propaganda and info on the quints.

[William Lafferty]

By the way, the date was 9 May 1943, not 8 May 1943.

[William Lafferty]

I wonder what became of those ships.

I posted this five years ago here. Wow, time flies:

The Watson Ferris wrecked 20 November 1949 off the Scarweather light ship in the Bristol Channel. Salvaged, it was dismantled by Wards at Briton Ferry the next year. The Asa Eldridge became Inchislay in 1950, Ceylon in 1959, Sang Balim in 1962 and Sang Perkasa in 1968. The vessel was deleted from Lloyds in 1993, its existence unverified. Bailey Foster became Larchland in 1949, Almora in 1951, and Natividad in 1964. It was broken up at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, in 1971. This adds to the information available at greatlakesvesselhistory.com, which, except for Watson Ferris, is fairly complete. These were five of thirty-five N-3s built on the Great Lakes (107 were built altogether) by Walter Butler Shipbuilders, Inc., at Duluth and Superior, and the Leathem D. Smith Shipbuilding Company at Sturgeon Bay. All were named for nineteenth century clipper ship masters.

[Guest II]

I wonder what became of those ships.

[JohnH]

On this day, May 8, 1943 the Dionnne Quints launched 5 ships at the Butler shipyard in Superior, WI. Here is a link to this event.

http://zenithcity.com/may-8-1943-dionne ... h-5-ships/