Boatnerd Discussion Forum

The last vestige of South Chicago steelmaking is the former Acme Steel sheet rolling plant at "Acme Bend" on the Little Calumet just west of the old Chicago Regional Port District facility on south Lake Calumet, once part of Interlake Iron Company, later owned by ISG, Arcelor/Mittel, and now ...

Speaking of Tugfax, Mr McKay hasn’t posted in a while. Hope he is well.

This recently appeared on LiveJournal under Shipfax. Mr. Mackay has had computer problems before posting from his remote Québec vacation home. I assume this is related, and applies to Tugfax, as well.

Out of curiosity, was Dwight Boyer any relation to Willis B. Boyer, onetime name of the Toledo museum ship?

No. Willis Boyer, a Pennsylvania native, was a longtime Republic Steel executive who ended his career as president, then CEO, and finally chair of Republic Steel, all positions that ...

Mr. Boyer died 15 October 1977. Here is an extensive obituary from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 16 October 1977. I have never seen a reference to a dog in contemporary press reports of the loss of Kamloops.

Max Hanley specialized in carferries, rather than the auto carriers. The Ludington native passed away in 2022. The book already cited, Autos on the Water by Lawrence Brough, is a fairly good overview of the trade, the focus on Nicholson and McCarthy for obvious reasons. There was a copy available on ...

Indiana Harbor had a close encounter of the embarrassing kind with the Lansing Shoal lighthouse 8 September 1993 that culminated in $1.96 million in damages, blame placed on a third mate. Is that the incident?

Unfortunately I have not found any pictures online of the near capsizing.

From the Ludington Daily News article I posted earlier.

The Ludington Fire Department pumped about 200000 gallons of water out of its engine room. I'm not sure how close to "capsizing" it really was. From the Ludington Daily News, 30 January 1987:

The Virginia Steamship Company, Mentor, Ohio, was incorporated 9 June 1909 at Columbus with a capitalization of $150000, incorporators being J. S. Ashley, Robert L. Ireland, Samuel Folsom, and William D. Crawford, for the purpose of owning and operating the Isaac M. Scott , which you will note was ...

If the vessel was "lost" in December 2022 and remained so its documentation would not have been renewed 21 April 2025, as it was. Seaway Maid is featured currently on the "Equipment" tab online for Seaway Marine Group.

It's listed as Mainstay Maritime on Linkedin and on Grand River's FB page. In my experience, corporate "rebrandings" are generally the sole remaining attempt to fix past shortcomings and embarrassments after all else fails. Maybe this was the banks' idea after the April refinancing.

Did Leathem Smith ever end up making a canal boat out of portions of the hull?

In 1934 Leathem Smith was in no position to do much of anything. After Reiss and the underwriters could not agree on rebuilding William A. Reiss Reiss turned it over to the underwriters who sold it for a few thousand ...

Here are two brief articles about the metamorphosis, one from the Door County Advocate, 28 June 1935, and another republished in the Sheboygan Press 24 June 1935 from the 23 June 1935 edition of the Milwaukee Journal that shed some light.

A bit about the vessel: Arnhemsche Scheepsbouw Maatschappij NV launched Dock Express Texas as Happy Runner at Arnhem, Netherlands, 22 October 1976 for Compañia Maritima Sequoia Lloyd SA, Panama, managed by Mammoet Shipping BV, Amsterdam. 81.82m x 74.40 x 9.15; 1599 gross and 654 net tons; twin Stork ...

GLTCo installed the quizzical devices to provide forward vision for its low slung tugs when it was one of the contractors (Hannah the major one) to haul sand from the construction site of the Bethlehem plant at Burns Harbor to Evanston for the landfill at the old alma mater. The Crown boys who ran ...

Governor Miller last operated during the 1975 season, laid up at Duluth 15 October 1975. The few functioning synapses I still possess offer the recollection that about 1979 Fraser-Nelson bought the wreck of the Frontenac with the idea of joining its rear end with the front end of Governor Miller ...

I believe that barge is now Bahama Pride , built 1943 at Seattle by the Puget Sound Bridge & Dredging Company for the navy, in American registry again, not to be confused with the tug of the same name. Or it could be the barge Orion , paired with that tug, owned by D & T Shipping, Ltd., Nassau ...

The vessel is the Joseph G. Butler, Jr. , in a McKenzie photograph. Since the vessel has an enclosed pilothouse at this point, my guess is the photograph was taken after 1910 or so and probably from somewhere on the lift bridge structure using a relatively long lens. The other vessel seems to be one ...

Sewell Avery left Superior 3 May 1987 in tow of Avenger IV , arriving at McLean's facility west of the Algoma Steel plant the next day assisted by Dakota . On 26 June 1987 approximately 30000 tons of slag from the Algoma plant began being poured into its hull. The vessel's superstructure was ...

The Standard Oil barges had a boiler in the forecastle to supply steam to dual pumps and auxiliaries such as heating and winches. The funnels were very high, 90 feet above the waterline per the Corps of Engineers in 1941 although listed as 75 feet in the 1930s, intended to keep hot cinders as far ...