5. BEAVERTON and EDMONTON REVISITED Readers will recall that the canallers BEAVERTON and EDMONTON were featured in the Mid-Summer issue, Ship of the Month 257. We have received much favou rable comment concerning the feature and, as usual, our members have rallied 'round and provided additional detail, some of it in photographic form. Raymond M. Donahue, of Port Hope, Michigan, has provided a very interesting Pesha photo of BEAVERTON downbound in the St. Clair River at Marine City. The church in the village of Sombra can be seen over her deck. There are two notable things about this photo. We knew that BEAVERTON had the outline of the Mathews silver stack bands on her stack, but we did not previously be lieve that the bands had ever been painted in. This photo shows that, in deed, they were. Now look at her deck, just to the left of the church stee ple. You will see a small whirly crane. This is the ONLY view we ever have seen of either steamer with such a deck crane. Does anybody know why it was there? Leonard J. Barr II, of Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, sent us the first view we have seen of BEAVERTON in World War One grey livery. It was taken in the fall of 1917, when she was getting ready for salt water service. The grey paint is all fresh, and the pilothouse windows have been plated over, leaving only portholes for visibility. The mainmast has been relocated to a position between the hatches no. 4 and 5. (Compare with the 1916 Young photo that accompanied the feature). But where was this photo taken? Len wonders if it was taken at Buffalo, but we don't think so. Montreal, perhaps? Or Quebec? Maybe other readers can assist. Don Boone sent us a photocopy of an interesting view of the deck of BEAVER TON taken in the 1930s, the deck crammed with new cars and trucks. We wish we could have reproduced it here, as members might have enjoyed identifying the year and make of the autos. A view we could reproduce comes from Terry Beahen, and shows the forward end of EDMONTON being burned out in June of 1961, as the scrapping of the steamer was beginning at Lauzon. The photo is a bit "cluttered", but so rare that we could not resist running it. Ron Beaupre sent us a number of items, including clippings from the Ivan Brookes collection. One indicates that EDMONTON spent the winter of 1948- 1949 at Hamilton where, during the winter months, she was loaded with binder twine and harvesting machinery for clearance in the spring. Another shows that BEAVERTON did the very same thing at Hamilton over the winter of 1950- 1951, and either she or WINNIPEG was to be the first boat out of Hamilton in the spring. A record number of C. S. L. ships Spent that winter at Hamil ton, according to the clipping. A clipping dated April 28, 1959, showed BEAVERTON at Toronto, where she was to unload sugar at the Canada and Dominion Sugar (now Redpath) refinery. She operated only briefly that spring. We had not thought that BEAVERTON ran in the autumn of 1958, but she did, and a press report from Montreal, dated December 17, reported on severe ice conditions in the St. Lawrence, and par ticularly in the Lachine Canal. The last boat cleared from the ice glut was BEAVERTON, which had been stuck in the draw of a highway bridge for five days, blocking all traffic, both vehicular and marine. Ron Beaupre provides an interesting anecdote told to him by the late T. M. H. S. member, Capt. Horace Beaton, who sailed in EDMONTON, along with Capt. Roy "Sliver" Anderson during the 1936 and 1937 seasons. They ran the St. Lawrence River with a pilot then, and the two men decided to play a trick on a particularly excitable river pilot. Below Iroquois, when down bound, masters could elect to run the rapids rather than putting into the Morrisburg (Rapide Plat) Canal at Lock 24, the guard lock located at Flagg's Creek. Running the rapids was dependent upon the ship's draft and the stage of the river at the time. Continued on Page 12