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13. Ship of the Month - cont'd. masts had been removed, but a short time later, after the second and fourth booms were added to the three remaining spars. Unfortunately, CHARLES W. WETMORE never returned to the Great Lakes, and her career on the deep seas was very short, for she became the very first whaleback to be lost by accident. Late in the summer of 1892, she loaded a cargo of coal at Tacoma, Washington, bound for San Francisco, California. En route, the ship stranded on the North Spit of Coos Bay Bar, off the Oregon coast, on Thursday, September 8th, 1892. The entire crew of 22 was rescued by a local lifesaving crew, but the seas and tidal currents soon reduced the WETMORE to a total wreck. The severity of the damage to the WETMORE is indicated by the fact that her registry certificate was surrendered to the authorities at Coos Bay, Oregon, on September 10th, 1892, only two days after the stranding. Happily, both JOSEPH L. COLBY and the barge 110 had longer and more success ful careers. The COLBY spent several years in the coal trade on the East Coast of the United States, and it would seem likely that she towed the 110 in this service. In 1896, the COLBY was returned to the Great Lakes, and on the upbound trip it was, of course, necessary for her to use the St. L a w rence Canals. Accordingly, the "nose" of her bow was cut off at Cantin's shipyard at Montreal; she carried the amputated snout on her deck during the passage and it was put back in place when she reached Buffalo. On March 22, 1900, JOSEPH L. COLBY was sold, along with the rest of the A m e rican Steel Barge Company fleet, to the Bessemer Steamship Company, of Cle veland. This company, controlled by John D. Rockefeller, had been formed in 1896 as a division of the Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mining Company. Bessemer already had a large fleet of conventional steamers and consortbarges, and it had no need of the relatively small whalebacks. However, it bought them anyway, for the sole purpose of keeping them out of the hands of one of Bessemer's competitors in the ore trade, the original Pittsburgh Steamship Company, which was owned by Andrew Carnegie. Bessemer did not operate most of the whalebacks it bought in 1900; in fact, it laid up most of them, and they did not run again until after June 4, 1901, when they we r e sold, along with the rest of the Bessemer fleet, to the "new" Pittsburgh Steamship Company, the lake shipping affiliate of the United States Steel C o m p a n y , which had been formed by J. Pierpont Morgan with the assistance of Elbert H. Gary. In the space of but a few short years, U . S. Steel bought out most of its major competitors including, in 1901, the Carnegie interests, which might have survived had it not been for the fact that Carnegie had been unable to buy the whalebacks for his lake fleet. The COLBY, under her new ownership, had her two original stubby masts removed and replaced by tall pole spars. As well, during 1901, she received two new Scotch boilers, 12'6" by 12'1", producing a working pressure of 180 p. s. i., which were manufactured by the Jenks Shipbuilding Company, of Port Huron, Michigan. The Pittsburgh Steamship Company, however, did not hang onto the smaller whalebacks for long, and on April 20, 1905, sold many of them to the Boutell Steel Barge Company, of Bay City, Michigan. On March 28, 1905, the COLBY had been renamed (b) BAY STATE by the new owner even though her ownership had not yet been officially transferred. Boutell sent many of the whalebacks to salt water right away, but BAY STATE was one of those which ran for a few more years on the lakes. Her ownership was transferred on November 7, 1907, to the White Oak Transportation Company, of Searsport, Maine. During 1911, this owner sent her to the coast, but not wanting to try the rapids run with her, had her nose cut off at the Great Lakes Engineering Works at Ecorse, Michigan. She then passed down through the canals and had her bow reattached by the Davie shipyard at Lauzon, Quebec. On September 29, 1922, BAY STATE Company, Cleveland, which returned was the acquired by the Central Dredging steamer to the lakes, cutting her