Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Scanner, v. 29, no. 3 (December 1996), p. 5

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

5. Marine News - cont'd. tern Railway, and replaced an earlier gravity-shute dock which had been con structed back in 1903. The Chicago & North Western was acquired by the Union Pacific in 1995. More has now become known about changes within the cement-carrying fleet of the Alpena-based Inland Lakes Transportation Inc. In its November 2nd issue, "Skillings Mining Review" reported that, on September 1st, Andrie Inc., of Muskegon, Michigan, had acquired a controlling interest in Inland Lakes Transportation, and that Stan Andrie had become president of Inland Lakes, succeeding the former majority owner, James W. Gaskell. It would appear that this change, which followed closely upon the commissioning of the Lafarge Corporation's 460-foot barge INTEGRITY, then resulted in the lay-up of the entire existing Inland Lakes fleet. There then followed a series of adver tisements in various lake-area newspapers for masters and mates, and for chiefs and first, second and third assistant engineers. INTEGRITY continued in service through all of this, pushed by the tug JACKLYN M., which was brought in for the purpose from salt water. As far as we know, of the exis ting Inland Lakes fleet, only ALPENA and PAUL H. TOWNSEND have returned to service (with new crews) since the change in the fleet's ownership. Needless to say, the 98-year-old E. M. FORD, (a) PRESQUE ISLE (I)(56), did not get to see any service this autumn, as originally had been intended by the fleet's former ownership. Rumours abound concerning the future of some of the Inland Lakes ships. Canadian lake tanker fleets have been undergoing much stress in recent times. On November 8th, whilst she was upbound from Sarnia to Marathon with a cargo of 7, 554 metric tons of Bunker 'C' fuel oil, the Enerchem Transport Inc. tanker ENERCHEM REFINER, (a) INDUSTRIAL TRANSPORT (87), was put to an chor off Pipe Island in the lower St. Mary's River. On the following day, she was boarded by U . S. marshals to exercise a ship-seizure order signed on November 7th by U. S. District Court Magistrate Timothy Greeley in Marquette, Michigan. Although court officials in Marquette were barred by court rules from describing details of any pending cases, it was determined that the seizure of ENERCHEM REFINER was the result of a pending civil suit which has been instituted against Enerchem Transport byIntamico Shipping, Ltd. We have no other details at this time. In previous issues, we have detailed some of the problems encountered by Socanav Inc., of Montreal, and the disposition of a number of the tankers which once formed part of its large fleet. What few Socanav tankers remain in lake service now appear to have some affiliation with the Groupe D es gagnes, according to crewmen on the ships, and we shall be most interested to learn the details of what has transpired in this respect. Simply because she was that rarest of things, a major Canadian-flag, salt water, passenger steamer, we have followed in these pages the extremely sad latter-day history of the 335-foot, former Canadian National west coast cruise ship PRINCE GEORGE (II), which was built in 1948 at Esquimalt, Bri tish Columbia, and which operated on the Alaska route for many years. Having undergone a succession of ownerships over the last two decades since being retired by Canadian National, she suffered major fire damage whilst lying at Britannia Beach, B. C., during 1995. Recently sold to the Chenco China steel mill at Shanghai, China, for scrapping, PRINCE GEORGE departed the Vancouver area on October 10, 1996, in tandem tow with the former U . S. Navy tanker VICKY RAY, behind the Vancouver tug PACIFIC CHALLENGE. The tow encountered heavy weather early in the trans-Pacific passage and the tug requested, but was denied, emergency entrance to the port of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. After developing a 35° port list in high seas on October 24th, PRINCE GEORGE sank stern-first in 575 feet of water, 3. 1 miles off Dutch Harbor in Unalaska Bay. After the sinking, the Artificial Reef Society of B. C., which had wanted PRINCE GEORGE sunk in B. C. waters to create an arti ficial reef, questioned why the damaged ship had been permitted to depart.

Powered by / Alimenté par VITA Toolkit
Privacy Policy