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9. Ship of the Month - cont'd. crew's quarters, together with mess and galley. This cabin was completely unp rotected from weather or boarding seas, there being no closed taffrail, and the only pro tection from above was a short overhang of the boat deck on each side, forming small platforms on which the lifeboats reposed. Originally, there was not even a canopy over the fantail, and most of the boats of this class never received one. The rather nondescript smokestack, not impressive in either height or thickness, and with almost no rake, rose near the front of the boat deck, just abaft the small hatch provided for the loading of coal into the wing bunkers. There were several ve ntilator cowls, water storage tanks, and other objects cluttering the boat deck back of the funnel, and the spindly, steelpole mainmast rose well aft, set at an angle which, on almost all of these ships, made it look as if the mast a c t u a l leaned forward a bit. When the first members of this initial group of Eastern Steamship Compa ny canallers arrived in Canada (many of them carrying Welsh coal across the A t lantic on their delivery voyage), their hulls were painted a dark brown, while the forecastles and cabins were white. We can only guess at the o r i ginal stack colours, because we have found no historians who can recall them with any certainty and our only source of in fo rmation is the odd rare (and n o n e - t o o - c l e a r ) ph otograph taken in the fleet's early period. The smokeband at the top of the stack was black, and there was a wide white band on wh ich was superimposed a large, black letter 'E '. Above and below the white band were narrow bands of what appears to have been red. Beneath the lower red band was a very narrow black stripe, and the remainder of the lower portion of the stack seems also to have been red. Before long, however, the fleet adopted a much less exotic livery. The hulls became black; the forecastles and the cabins, fore and aft, were white, while the stacks were black with a broad white band and a black letter 'E '. The ship's name was lettered in black on the forecastle, above the company's name. A large number of the canal-sized Great Lakes steamers whi ch were built in shipyards in the United Kingd om from the turn of the century into the 1920s and 1930s were re gistered or iginally at British ports. This was true of JUDGE HART, which began her life with Cowes as her port of registry. After a few years of service, however, she was re -r eg istered at St. Catharines, Ontario, which event ua ll y was to become the home port of all of the Eastern Steamship Company canallers. There is every ind ication that the first group of Eastern ships operated successfully in their intended trade. The original officers of the company were Nisbet Grammer, president; John J. Rammacher, vic e- pr es id en t and tre a surer; Edwin T. Douglass, vice-president, and No rman B. Macpherson, secretary, while H. H. Goode, of the Canad ia n Furnace Company, Port Colborne, was the Canadian representative. Louis Hart, altho ug h one of the leaders of the founding group, was not an officer, proba bl y because of his position as an elected court official. The initial ten-ship group of Eastern Steamship canallers comprised, in addition to JUDGE HART, the FRANK B. BAIRD, NO RMAN P. CLEMENT, WI LLIAM H. DANIELS, EDWIN T. DOUGLASS, AL BERT C. FIELD, NISBET GRAMMER, WATKINS F. N I S BET, ROBERT W. POMEROY and JOHN J. RAMMACHER, but one of these was destined to have an extreme ly short life. Strangely enough, it was NISBET GRAMMER, named for the fleet's president, that was the first to depart the scene. On May 31, 1926, the GRAMMER sank on fo g- shrouded Lake Ontario as a consequence of a collision with the Canada Atlantic Transit Company's steamer DALWARNIC, (a) CANADIAN HARVESTER (26). Fortunately, although the steamer foundered in deep water, there was no loss of life in the incident. In the meantime, however, the Eastern Steamship Company Ltd. had ordered eleven more canal-s iz ed steamers from various British yards. Built in 1925 were JOHN A. HOLLOWAY, JUDGE KENEFICK, NOR MA N B. MacPHERSON, JOHN B.