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Ship of the Mo nth - cont'd. 12. as they could jump. Ahern and Lawson were safely picked up by Capt. Pickard in the AJAX, off the stern of MUSCALLONGE, while a cott ager's canoe served as Dorm Ar bo ur 's means of escape from the tug's bow. An hour and a half after the fire began, M U S C A L L O N G E 's s u p erstructure c o l lapsed, the fire stoked by the tug's bunker oil which had been carried in w oo de n tanks. About dawn, burned to the waterline, the tug sank, and she then re lea sed a sheet of bu rn ing oil which spread 1 , 000 feet along the shoreline and set fire to a dock and a boathouse. It was re por ted in the press that Lloyd Tankers owned MUSCALLONGE, although there is reason to believe that she may still have been under charter from Sincen nes M c N a u g h t o n Tugs Ltd. (the 1935 successor to Sin-Mac Lines L t d . ) at the time of the fire. Nevertheless, Lloyd s u pposedly received a decent insurance se ttl ement for the tug's loss, and it is said that the insurance m on ey was put to good use by L. B. Lloyd in the purchase of the former Tree Line N a v i g a t i o n Company Ltd. steamer CEDARBAY, (a) CHARPENTIER, (b) VERNON (23), (e) CO AS T A L CASCADES. Lloyd Tankers acquired her in 1936 as a repla cem ent for ROY K. RUSSELL, renamed her (d) JOAN V I R G I N I A (52), and had her con ve rt ed to a tanker at the Muir B r o s . drydock at Port Dalhousie. With the spirit of M U S C A L L O N G E gone to w h e rever good tugboats go after long and faithful service, Lloyd Tankers a r r anged for the charter from Sincennes M c N a u g h t o n Tugs of the 1911-built, 8 0 . 5 foot, ste e l - h u l l e d tug JOHN PRATT (57), (b) Y O U V I L L E , but the PRATT ha ndled BRUCE HU D S O N for only one d o wn bo un d trip. Lloyd then took a charter from the same tug fleet of the 1923-built, 84.4 foot RIVAL, which was to tow BRUCE H U D S O N for as long as she re mai ned a barge. The HU D S O N seemed doomed to stumble from accident to accident, and she gr oun ded several times in the Well a n d Canal and also at Port Credit (the slip entran ce there being tricky to negotiate, and the barge having to be towed out bac kw ards because there was no room to turn inside). There were nu mer ous other incidents as well, but no permanent record of them ever was kept. As far as we are aware, however, only one accident of major potential befell BRUCE H U D S O N in 1937, that o c curring when she and RIVAL e n c o u ntered a heavy sou th we ster on west e r n Lake Erie. The towline parted and the barge dr ift ed in very close to the beach at Erieau, Ontario. The photo of the w a v e - w a s h e d HU D S O N which ap peared at the bottom of the front of our Ja nu ar y ph oto pag e was taken by a reporter who was at the Erieau pier heads w hen RIVAL, under the command of Capt. Les Pickard, fi nally m a n a g e d to get the wa yw ar d barge into the safety of the harbour there. Despite the fact that the 1938 season appears to have been relat i v e l y u n ev en tf ul for BRUCE H U D S O N and RIVAL (for want of any docu m e n t e d problems) the fact is that Lloyd Tankers Limited had become fed up with the barge's escapa des and had made the de cision to have the H U D S O N rebuilt as a selfpr op el le d tanker. Control of the Lloyd R e f i n e r y at Port Credit had passed in 1937 to the Good Rich Oil Company, but L. B. Lloyd still oper a t e d the tanker fleet, and over the winter of 1938-1939 he sent BRUCE H U D S O N off to the Muir Bros. Dry Dock Comp a n y Ltd. shipyard, situated on the west side of M ar t i n d a l e (or, more commonly, Muir's) Pond above Lock One at Port Dalhousie, for c on ve rsion to a steamer. Ed. N o t e : Here, for want of space, we must leave the story of BRUCE HUDSON. The third and final ins talment of her most in t e r e s t i n g history, and the c o n t in ua ti on of her saga of woe, will appear in the March issue. Full credits will appear then, but we would be remiss if we did not a c knowledge the c on ti nu in g ass istance of Lorne Joyce with this epic feature. * * * * *