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Ship of the Month - cont'd. 12. Ed. N o t e : We fondly recall A. F. HARVEY / CEDARVILLE, for your Editor always considered her to be a very handsome ship, even after her conversion. We re member her loss, too, for a rather strange reason. On the day CEDARVILLE sank, Ye Ed. was in the middle of final exams in his first year of univer sity. He was "studying" at home that morning, when the phone rang. It was his father calling from his office, to say that "The Telegram", a venerable Toronto newspaper (gone now many years) had called him to inform him of the collision and wanting to know if he had photos of the two ships. As he was busy that morning, Y e - Wo ul d- B e- Ed . grabbed negatives of the two ships, hop ped a cab to the "Tely" building on Front Street West, and came away with two of his pictures on the front page of his favourite newspaper and a bit of cash in his pocket! Of assistance to us in preparing this feature were an article published by the Lake Carriers' Association in 1962 upon the 50th anniversary of the com mencement of operations by the Michigan Limestone and Chemical Company, and "The Bradley Transportation Line" by Gerald F. Micketti, which appeared in Vol. 35, No. 1, the Spring 1979 issue of "Inland Seas", the quarterly jour nal of the Great Lakes Historical Society. Also of much interest and assistance has been The Bradley B o a t s , a small softcover book of some 90 pages published independently in 1995 by Gerald F. Micketti. This profusely illustrated book is highly recommended to anyone interested in the Bradley fleet. For us, it yielded much additional detail concerning the loss of CEDARVILLE, allowing us to fill in some of the gaps left by press reports which appeared at and subsequent to the time of the steamer's loss. * * * * * SORELDOC REVISITED We thank members who have expressed appreciation for our feature on PHENICIA (later CHEYENNE and SORELDOC) which was our Ship of the Month No. 225 in the December issue. It was timely that we featured this canaller in our "Christ mas Issue", because SORELDOC once played a prominent role in Christmas cele brations at a lake city. One of our members, Rev. A l Hart, of Avon Lake, Ohio, has brought to our attention an item, originally penned by Lawrence A. Pomeroy, Jr., which appeared in Vol. 6, No. 4, of "Inland Seas". Ye Ed. must admit to having seen this item many years ago (as well as a photo of the event), but it did not come to mind when we were writing the December fea ture. We thank A l for reminding us of it. "A member of the Society visiting Chicago during November, 1949, noted a strange name in the daily newspaper listing of vessel arrivals and depar tures, the S. S. SANTA CLAUS. This name does not appear in any of the usual vessel directories such as the "Red Book", and some investigation was there fore necessary to discover the true identity of the ship in question. It de veloped that it was really our old friend, the Paterson Line's (sic) SOREL DOC, disguised as the SANTA CLAUS by means of flags, streamers, bells, candy canes, wreaths and Christmas trees, all befitting a vessel for the use of St. Nicholas himself. "The occasion for this was the opening of the Christmas shopping season in Chicago's many large department stores, this trip for Santa Claus on a ship named for him being arranged by the Chicago "Daily News". Santa Claus was accompanied by Bob Hope, members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team, n u merous entertainers and many other attendants. As the SANTA CLAUS sailed down the Chicago River from the Michigan Avenue Bridge to the Daily News Plaza, Santa's helpers showered the throngs of children and adults lining the bank on either side with baseballs, footballs and toy balloons. " If only we could century l a t e r ... see a Santa Claus * * parade * * * like that today, almost half a