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3. Marine News- cont'd. vice anyway, now would be a good time to repower the vessel with a diesel engine and thus ensure her operating viability for a number of years to come. Her steam deck winches would be replaced with electric winches during the winter conversion. We are a bit sorry to see the NORRIS lose her steam machinery, but happy that the repowering will guarantee her a much longer life. If the summer of 1995 was hot and sultry around the lakes, the autumn has been one of the coldest and windiest on record, and this has made for a very difficult close to the navigation season. The lakes started to make heavy ice much earlier than normal, and as an example, Toronto Bay was frozen over by the middle of the second week in December, the earliest this writer can recall. The ice caused problems at the Soo, in the St. Clair River, in the St. Lawrence canals and even in the Welland Canal, with tugs and icebreakers required almost everywhere to keep traffic moving. At one stage, the salty PRIDE OF DONEGAL was wedged in ice at Lock 8, Port Colborne, and even McKeil tugs had difficulty getting her free of the lock. The salties were hardpressed to clear the lower canals, and on Christmas Day, the OLYMPIC MENTOR, carrying a cargo of steel and potash, ran aground in Lac St. Louis above Montreal. It took the efforts of four tugs pulling on the ship, and of CECILIA DESGAGNES, into which part of the grounded ship's cargo was light ered, before she was freed. OLYMPIC MENTOR finally was freed on December 28th, and that day was the last ship to clear the St. Lawrence canals. The Welland Canal closed on Christmas Day, with the upbound passage of CANADIAN TRADER, bound for Thunder Bay. One place where the ice was not as solid as some people might have hoped was Muskegon Lake where, on December 19th, some two-dozen ice fishermen were stranded on an "island of ice" which broke free as a result of the 1, 000foot self-unloader COLUMBIA STAR departing from the B. C. Cobb power plant of the Consumers Power Company. The stranded fishermen were rescued by fire fighters using hovercraft. Those affected claimed that they had no warning of the ship's movement, but Consumers Power had circulated press releases to the effect that three vessel shipments were expected at the plant that week. In the past two issues, we have commented upon the delayed scrap tow of C A NADIAN PATHFINDER and CANADIAN HARVEST behind the Russian tug NEFTEGAZ-16. The two retired lakers spent the summer and autumn at Mulgrave, Nova Scotia, after the tug fouled her port propeller and eventually went to Halifax for repairs. We have not as yet seen a departure date from Mulgrave for the tow, but we do have a report that CANADIAN HARVEST, (a) RIMOUSKI (94), broke tow during the North Atlantic crossing in heavy weather, and then broke in two pieces and foundered. We shall be glad to learn further details in due course of time. It was announced in the Toronto press on December 5, 1995, that a Court of Appeal had quashed criminal convictions on three counts of dangerous n aviga tion causing death against Gordon Stogdale, of the Canadian Coast Guard ice breaker GRIFFON, arising out of the March 18, 1991, collision with and sinking of the fishtug CAPTAIN K. on Lake Erie. The court ruled that the CAPTAIN K., running at full speed in fog, without radar or radar reflector, and not sounding fog signals on its horn, was "... in the circumstances a hazard to itself and other ships". Noting that the original trial judge had acquitted William Bennett, the officer of the watch on GRIFFON, of all criminal charges laid against him because he simply had been carrying out reasonable, lawful orders, the Court of Appeal questioned how the conviction of Stogdale could stand as it was he who gave those "reasonable and lawful orders". Part of the evidence presented indicated that the CAPTAIN K. "... was at best being navigated very imprudently; at worst, it was a shocking display of seamanship". * * * Please See Page 14 for a Continuation of our Marine News Section * * *