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Ship of the Month - cont'd. 10. was involved in the operation of UGANDA, although the Editor's records show no other owner for this ship than Edward Mehl, of Erie. We do believe that McBrier was interested in another wooden steamer, ELFIN-MERE (02), (b) CHARLES B. PACKARD, and at one time he also had the schooner-barge GALATEA. In any event, McBrier gave command of EMILY P. WEED to Captain Donald Sutherland McDonald, of North East, Pennsylvania. Like many of the captains on the lakes, McDonald had a colourful background. As a lad, he had sailed with his uncle, Captain John Burgess, in the little steamer GEORGIAN out of Port Ryerse, Ontario, in the autumn of 1877. He then served on salt water for almost four years and was shipwrecked off Northern Ireland. He was back on the lakes in 1881, and received his first pilot's license on March 14, 1883. In 1886, he was appointed first mate of the new steel steamer SPOKANE. By 1894, James McBrier had him employed as master of the NYANZA, and he served in the same capacity during the 1895 season, although he only turned 35 years of age during August of that year. In 1897, EMILY P. WEED underwent a change of name, becoming (b) SEVONA. It has been suggested that the ship may have been named for a park in Italy, but we have no idea why James McBrier would ever choose a name such as that for his flagship, and we suspect that there must have been some other d e r i vation for the name. We will never know for sure. What we do know, however, is that SEVONA continued to carry cargoes such as iron ore, coal, grain, copper bars and package freight. Sometimes she would sail with barrels of flour in the hold and cedar shingles on deck. It was reported during the spring of 1897 that SEVONA's three boilers were removed and two others installed, not only for fuel economy but also to achieve a saving in weight that would permit the steamer to carry more cargo. It also was reported that, in May of 1897, Buffalo shipyard workers went to Erie and made "some additional changes in her machinery". We would like to be able to describe these new boilers for our readers, but the fact is that we can find no information about them at all. In fact, the 1899 Great Lakes Register (Bureau Veritas) still showed the ship carrying her original boilers. This may just have been a paper error, but that same re gister did show the boat under the new name which she also received in 1897, and indicated that she last had been "seen" (inspected) in May, 1897, so it seems peculiar that the new boilers were not also recorded. In any event, it was at about this same time that SEVONA underwent a change that did make her considerably more modern in appearance. The second and fourth masts were removed completely. They served no useful purpose anyway, and so their loss did not affect the ship's operation, except to make her less likely to foul any shore-mounted loading or unloading equipment. She also may have run for a season or two as SEVONA with the dark-coloured spar deck cabins, but then the upper portion of each house became white, and only a dark band remained near deck level. Only the boilerhouse remained all dark. During 1898, the Detroit Dry Dock Company drew up some preliminary plans for the lengthening of SEVONA's hull. For some unknown reason, this particular project never was followed through. It does, however, confirm in what high esteem her owner held SEVONA, especially since much larger steel-hulled v e s sels then were being built by lake shipyards. SEVONA appears to have been free of accidents while operating under her name until an incident in 1900. A press item, however, was datelined troit, June 29, 1900: "The steamer SEVONA, bound up, collided with schooner ISHPEMING, also bound up, off Grosse Pointe. The ISHPEMING is maged about the bows and the fore rigging is carried away. The SEVONA is injured. The ISHPEMING came here for re pa ir s . " new De the da not The January 5, 1905, issue of "The Marine Review" reported that "... during the past week, the American Ship Building Co. received instructions to leng