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Ship of the Month No. 292 4. GROVEDALE (i) and PARKDALE (i) In his presentation to the members at this year's annual dinner meeting con­ cerning the vessel operations of Capt. Frank Manzzutti, Buck Longhurst undoubtedly will have much to say about the former Wolvin canallers MANCOX and MANZZUTTI which the Yankcanuck Steamship Company operated for many years. It seems only fitting that, to accompany them, we should feature here two more of the Wolvin canallers, these two having finished out their ca­ reers in the service of the Upper Lakes & St. Lawrence Transportation Compa­ ny Ltd. So what exactly was a "Wolvin canaller"? When we featured the upper lake steamer AUGUSTUS B. WOLVIN in the Mid-Summer 2004 issue, we gave details of the careers in the shipping business of Augustus B. and Roy M. Wolvin. In the very early years of the twentieth century, the Wolvins drew up plans to build a fleet of canal-sized ships, thinking that they would be able to cap­ ture a large part of the export grain trade. The St. Lawrence Terminal Com­ pany Ltd. was incorporated in 1902 to handle the trans-shipping of the grain at St. Lawrence River ports, while the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Trans­ portation Company, of Duluth, Minnesota, of which A. B. Wolvin was president and R. M. Wolvin was general manager, was formed in 1903 to own and operate the vessels. As well, two ocean-going ships, MINNETONKA and MINNEWASKA, were built at Cleveland in 1901-1902 and were intended to carry the export grain across the Atlantic. It originally was thought that most of the grain would be trans-shipped from the canallers at Quebec City, and the Wolvins even planned to build a grain elevator there, but by 1903 it was stated by the firm that most of the grain would be trans-shipped at Montreal. Ten canal-sized steamers, virtual sisterships, were built for Great Lakes and St. Lawrence in 1903 at four different lake shipyards. Named for suppor­ ters of the enterprise and associates of the Wolvins, they were christened JOHN CRERAR, H. G. DALTON, A. D. DAVIDSON, GEORGE C. HOWE, J. S. KEEFE, JOHN LAMBERT, ALBERT M. MARSHALL, S. N. PARENT, JOHN SHARPLES and ROBERT WALLACE. They were of very distinctive design and each was fitted with a large, triple chime steam whistle which gave them distinctive voices as well - big voices for small ships! The two ships with which we are interested were S. N. PARENT and ROBERT WAL­ LACE. The former was built as Hull 151 of the Detroit Shipbuilding Company, Wyandotte, and was launched without ceremony on Saturday, February 28, 1903. The WALLACE was Hull 204 of the Buffalo Dry Dock Company, and she was laun­ ched on Thursday, April 9, 1903, again without ceremony. They both were re­ gistered at Duluth, the official number of the PARENT being U. S. 117240, while that of the WALLACE was U. S. 111466. According to the Great Lakes Register (Bureau Veritas), the two steamers had identical dimensions, being 241. 0 feet in length between perpendiculars (260 feet overall), 41. 0 feet in the beam and 18. 0 feet in depth. (Lloyd's, how­ ever showed the WALLACE as 238. 7 x 41. 0 x 19. 2 and the PARENT as 241. 0 x 41. 1 x 18. 8. ) The Gross Tonnage of each was calculated as 1640, while the Net Tonnages were a bit different, that of the PARENT being 987, while that of the WALLACE was 944. There were three holds and three watertight and two non-watertight bulkheads. Each ship was fitted with a triple expansion engine with cylinders of 15, 25 and 42 inches diameter and a stroke of 30 inches. Both engines were built by the Detroit Shipbuilding Company and each produced Indicated Horsepower of 650 at 95 revolutions per minute. The Detroit Shipbuilding Company also ma­ nufactured the two coal-fired Scotch boilers for each ship, and they measu­ red 11'0" in diameter and 11'0" in length. Each ship had four furnaces, with 66 square feet of grate surface and 2, 500 square feet of heating surface, and steam was produced at a working pressure of 170 p. s. i. Each ship had a straight stem, a graceful counter stern and plenty of sheer