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7. Ship of the Month - cont'd. W. B. Davock was the manager continuously until his death on November 3rd, 1 9 1 2 , while other reports seem to indicate that, at least in 1 90 9 and 1 9 1 0 , J. R. Davock was the manager. This latter gentleman appears to have been the brother of W. B. Davock, and he remained active in the coal, coke and lake shipping businesses, out of Cleveland, until his own death in 1 9 1 7 . The Great Lakes Register indicates, as does the American Bureau of Ship ping, that the Vulcan Steamship Company was managed during the 1 9 1 3 and 1914 seasons by R. H. Pigott and/or Pigott & Company, of Cleveland, but that J. R. Davock & Company was the manager in 1915. The present-day h i s t o r i a n may make of all this what he will, and we probably will never be any the wiser. Suffice it to say, however, that the Davock family inte rests were most certainly involved in the management of the steamer from 1907 until 1 9 1 5 . We do have a veiled reference to the possibility of Elphicke & Company be ing involved with WILLIAM B. DAVOCK during the 1 9 1 5 season, but we have been unable to obtain substantiation of this from any source. If Elphicke did become involved, even briefly, with the DAVOCK, it would bring full circle the connection between the DAVOCK and her lost sistership, JOHN MITCHELL, but we do not imagine that we ever will be able to document El phicke management of the DAVOCK. In addition, the Elphicke interests had just gone through the failure of their Chicago & Duluth Transportation Company, and it seems rather unlikely that they would have been involved with the DAVOCK at that period. In any event, on October 4th, 1915. WILLIAM B. DAVOCK was purchased by the Interlake Steamship Company, of Cleveland, which was managed by Pickands Mather & Company. This rapidly expanding fleet, which had acquired many of the steamers formerly operated by the Gilchrist and Mitchell fleets, gave the DAVOCK its usual colours, namely a red hull, white cabins, and black stack with an orange band. Although many of the vessels acquired by Interlake during this period were given names representing various "heavenly bodies", the DAVOCK retained her old name, perhaps out of de ference to the respect which other shipping men had held for Mr. Davock. The steamer settled into her new duties and operated successfully in the ore and coal trades, with various other bulk cargoes carried as necessary. We know of no accidents in which the steamer was involved in her early Interlake years. She apparently was rebuilt in 1923. and her tonnage was decreased to 4220 Gross and 26 71 Net at that time. There was almost no outward alteration to the steamer, so we must assume that the reconstruction was all of an internal nature. The DAVOCK still retained her rather unusual forward ca bins, including the big closed rail around the monkey's island (although all navigation then was done from within the pilothouse), and the only change in the texas was the replacement of its large and widely spaced windows with portholes to avoid damage from boarding seas. It is interes ting to note that, throughout her Pickands Mather years, the DAVOCK had her name painted on the rails astride the boilerhouse in the abbreviated form "W. B. DAVOCK". The DAVOCK's life apparently was uneventful until November of 1940, when the Great Lakes area was hit with a storm of particularly intense nature. The morning of Armistice Day, November 11, had dawned bright and clear on Lake Michigan and in the areas to the west of the lake, with very mild temperatures and light southeast winds. The weather on the day before (Sunday, November 10) had been almost summer-like, with temperatures in the 6 0 s, and such conditions had lured many people outdoors to enjoy what would probably be the last good weather of the autumn. However, a tremendous cyclonic storm was brewing over the western states and it was speeding toward the lake area. On Lake Michigan, the weather began to change rapidly during the morning of November 11 (and in conse quence, the storm has ever after been known as the Armistice Day Storm