Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Scanner, v. 21, no. 8 (May 1989), p. 4

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Marine News - cont'd. While the EXXON VALDEZ tragedy was being played out on the waters off Alas ka, Lake Ontario was fighting its own battle against "The Blob". On April 2 6 , the Singapore-registered tanker TOVE COB released some 20, 000 gallons of tallow into the lake off Clarkson when she was holed whilst docking to load a part cargo of petroleum product. Much of the mess was contained by inflatable booms, and crews worked to suck up as much of the rest as possi ble. Late in the week, the foul-smelling blob came ashore in the Burlington Beach area. The material was not considered to be toxic, but its effect on marine life was feared, and the Ministry of the Environment laid charges against Cob Shipping, owner of the vessel, as a result of the spill. On April 12th, the Norwegian-owned and Liberian-registered tanker STOLT CAS TLE was involved in a pollution incident at Sarnia. The ship apparently al lowed a quantity of styrene to escape into the St. Clair River, and it was detected by an Ortech International water monitoring station near Courtright, although amounts of pollutants detected were not sufficiently high to endan ger local supplies of drinking water. Nevertheless, the ship was charged wi t h polluting the river, and her master was charged with failing to report the incident when it occurred. Toronto Harbour will see several new excursion boats in local service during the 1 9 89 season. The largest of the additions will be PRIDE OF TORONTO, CAPT. MATTHEW FLINDERS and JUBILEE QUEEN. The former, (a) NEW SPIRIT, is a Blountbuilt, three-deck dinner and cruise boat, which arrived at Toronto on May 3 . She is now owned by C. 0. Charters, which also operates CHALLENGE and ORIOLE on the bay. The FLINDERS, three years old, 144 feet in length, and with three decks in yacht-like configuration, was purchased in Australia by A d ventures Afloat, which has been operating MARIPOSA BELLE on the harbour. At the time of this writing, the FLINDERS was nearing the completion of her long delivery voyage from "Down Under". JUBILEE QUEEN is yet another of the "pho ny -sternwheel" type of boat, brought from New Brunswick by the owner of the equally ugly PIONEER PRINCESS which has been on the bayfor several years. JUBILEE QUEEN arrived in Toronto on the afternoon of May 5"th. Speaking of Toronto excursion boats, we would be remiss if we did not m e n tion that TRILLIUM will once again be running public harbour cruises during afternoons from late June until early September. She will also run charter trips many evenings, and the ferry service to Centre Island when heavy traf fic warrants (principally on public holidays). TRILLIUM began her public ex cursions in 1 9 8 8 , to allow the general public the opportunity to enjoy rid ing the 1910-built, double-ended, steam-powered sidewheeler. In previous issues, we reported the grounding of the partially-sunken barge OLS-30 on Lake Huron last autumn, the barge being loaded with liquid calcium chloride. The sealed barge, upside down and with one end above the water, was left to winter where she lay when adverse weather conditions interrupted salvage efforts. With the break up of the ice along the shore near Rogers City in March, however, the wrecked barge began to move, and in less than a week she travelled almost three miles. The Coast Guard kept an eye on the situation and reminded Hannah Marine Corp. that it bore the responsibility for arranging salvage. Malcolm Marine was retained to mark the moved wreck, and salvage efforts were to get underway as close to April 15th as possible, weather conditions permitting. Over the years, we have reported that the former Upper Lakes Shipping vessel WHEAT KING has been used in the Rotterdam harbour area as a storage barge since she was sent overseas, ostensibly for scrapping. Now comes word that recently she has been observed at that same port, but now wearing the name B O CAT, or something similar. We would appreciate receiving confirmation of any renaming of WHEAT KING, if any of our readers have access to such infor mation, in order that we may update our records on this unusual vessel. It will be recalled that she was (a) LLANDAFF (60), built at Glasgow in 1953, converted to a laker in 1 9 6 0 -19 6 1 , and lengthened to full Seaway size in 1976.

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