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

Ship of the Month - cont'd. 10. While the rail around the ZIMMERMAN's forecastle head was completely closed, there was an open wire rail down both sides of the spar deck. The steamer was equipped with 14 hatches on 24-foot centres, which gave access to her four cargo holds. She had five bulkheads, two of them watertight, as origi nally built. Aft, there was the usual squarish cabin on deck, with a closed steel taff rail running around the stern. The coal bunker hatch was set into the boat deck over the boilerhouse section at the forward end of the cabin. The life boats were located on either side of the boat deck, sitting on platforms which projected outward over the sides of the deckhouse. The stack was tall and fairly heavy, and was raked to match the masts. There were several large ventilator cowls spaced around the base of the funnel, and the tall pole mainmast was stepped close abaft the smokestack. EUGENE ZIMMERMAN was completed by the shipyard in time for her to be commis sioned very shortly after the opening of navigation for the 1906 lake sea son. Nevertheless, her debut in service was to be less than auspicious. At the beginning of her maiden voyage, she loaded a cargo of coal for delivery to Duluth, and she then set off up the lakes. She would never complete this inaugural trip. Monday, April 16th, 1906, found the ZIMMERMAN upbound in the St. Mary's River on Lake Munuscong ("Mud Lake"), near the junction of the upbound and downbound channels below Neebish Island. Downbound at the same time was the steamer SAXONA, of the Tomlinson fleet, which was carrying a cargo of flax consigned to a Lake Erie port. The two vessels collided almost straight head-on, the stem of the SAXONA cutting deeply into the port bow of the ZIMMERMAN abaft the stem and in front of the pilothouse. The stem of the ZIMMERMAN was pulled backward and over to port as the plates tore, and the entire forward section of the steamer was twisted, as evidenced by the visi ble skewing of the foremast out of line with the stack and mainmast. Nevertheless, the forward collision bulkhead held, and the ZIMMERMAN re mained afloat, although she was down by the head and her forefoot was dug into the mud of the river bottom on the Canadian (St. Joseph Island) side of the lake. SAXONA had continued on downbound after the collision, but she finally sank on the U. S. side of the river, in Little Mud Lake. Fortunately, there was no loss of life in the collision despite the force of the impact between the steamers. (Interestingly, this was only one of two major collisions involving SAXONA, a vessel perhaps better known for her many years of Mathews and Misener ser vice under the name [b] LAKETON [I]. On May 14th, 1917, the SAXONA was in another head-on collision, this time with the Pittsburgh Steamship Company's steamer PENTECOST MITCHELL. This collision occurred in the Pipe Island Chan nel of the St. Mary's River, above DeTour, and the damage was so severe that the two steamers sank together, their bows locked together even as they settled. ) EUGENE ZIMMERMAN soon was refloated, and she was taken back to her builder's yard at Toledo, where major repairs were put in hand. The steamer was able to re-enter service during July of 1906. As far as we are aware, her alter cation with SAXONA on her maiden voyage was the only major accident in which the vessel ever was involved in her more than half a century of service. She seems to have operated successfully, and it is to be noted that she served only two owners during her long life. At the close of the 1915 season, EUGENE ZIMMERMAN was sold to the ClevelandCliffs Steamship Company, and she was painted up in this fleet's usual dis tinctive colours, with a black hull, dusty green cabins, and black stack with a large red letter 'C '. She was renamed (b) GRAND ISLAND in honour of the 7 . 5-mile-long island which lies off the south shore of Lake Superior, not far from the port of Munising, Michigan. Much of the island had been ac-