The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

7. Ship of the Month - cont'd. pany Ltd., Toronto. In 1934, the group, again with the assistance of the Bo land family, formed McKellar Steamships Ltd. in order to purchase two more former Mathews canallers which had been repossessed by their builders. That all of this fleet expansion had been accomplished during the years of the Depression, which had been so ruinous to so many lake ship operators, was due to the unfailing efforts of Misener and McKellar, which not only kept the growing fleet in service but also ensured the continued backing of sup porters such as the Bolands, without whose assistance none of the expansion would have been possible. In any event, it was in 1928 that the first two newly-built canallers were acquired by Sarnia Steamships Ltd. They were TYNEVILLE and SCOTT MISENER (I), which were built by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd., the famous shipbuilders of Newcastle, England. They were completed as Hulls 1282 and 1290, respectively, of the yard at Wallsend-on-Tyne (which the American Bu reau of Shipping reported, for these two ships, as Walker-on-Tyn e ) . Scarce ly had the two steamers entered the Sarnia Steamships fleet, when the com pany ordered four more sisterships from the same builders. They were deli vered in 1929 as JOHN O . McKELLAR (I), C. H. HOUSON, RALPH GILCHRIST and JOSEPH P. BURKE, which were the yard's Hulls 1 3 6 9 , 1371, 1373 and 1375, res pectively. In fact, Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd. had secured con tracts from several Canadian vessel operators who were unable to have ca nallers built on the lakes, and the Newcastle (Wallsend) shipyard was to become the most prolific British builder of Canadian canallers. Swan, Hun ter became the masters of the "built by the mile, cut off by the foot" mass construction of virtual-sistership canal steamers. TYNEVILLE was 252.9 feet in length between perpendiculars, 43.4 feet in the beam, and 17 .8 feet in depth. Her overall length was 2 5 9 .0 feet, while her tonnage was 1939 Gross and 1149 Net. She was powered by a triple-expansion engine, with cylinders of 15, 25 and 40 inches bore, and a stroke of 33 in ches, which produced 750 I. H. P. or 92 N. H. P. Steam at 180 p. s. i. was pro duced by two coal-fired, single-ended, Scotch boilers, which measured ap proximately 10'3" by 11'0". All of the machinery was built for the vessel by the shipbuilder at its Neptune Works, Newcastle. TYNEVILLE was typical of canallers built in the 1928-1930 period by Swan, Hunter for various Canadian fleets. She had a three-quarters forecastle (in other words, sunk about a quarter of a deck level below the spar deck), which was about 35 feet in length and contained accommodation for the deck hands and mates. A wide but fairly shallow texas cabin sat atop the fore castle head and contained the master's office and cabin. There were four portholes in the front of the texas, two placed close to the cabin's cen treline, and one out toward each side of the structure. Atop the texas, on the bridge deck, was located the pilothouse, a squarish structure with five big windows across its front. In each side of the pilot house were located two windows and a sliding wooden door. (These sliding doors proved to be something less than a blessing in that they tended to freeze shut in nasty weather, trapping the occupants inside. ) Stretcherframes were provided so that awnings could be raised over the bridge deck in summer. Open rails ran around the bridge deck and out around the bridge wings, and canvas weathercloths could be strung on them when necessary. It was in her pilothouse arrangement that TYNEVILLE differed from the other five canallers that Misener and McKellar got from Swan, Hunter & Wigham Ri chardson in 1928 and 1929. Whereas the others had a rather small sunvisor that ran not only across the front but also down both sides of the pilot house, TYNEVILLE was built with no sunvisor at all. In this respect, she most closely resembled a group of seven canallers which Swan, Hunter built in 1928 for the Paterson fleet, this group comprising CARTIERDOC (I), LA VALDOC, MONDOC (I), NEWBRUNDOC (II), NOVADOC (II), SORELDOC (I) and TROIS DOC (I). None of these steamers had any sunvisor as built, bu t shortly af ter coming to Canada, were fitted with a rather large visor which ran only across the front of the pilothouse. TYNEVILLE got the same treatment.