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Ship of the Month - cont'd. 8. carry three watches instead of two. LAKESHELL's hull was painted black, while her cabins and masts were buff. The top of the mainmast was black. The stack was buff with a very narrow black smokeband at the top, and an orange seashell on each side. The word 'Shell' appeared in black letters across the shell. In later years, a larger casing was built around the stack, and its lower portion eventually became red, while the smokeband and the shell retained their original colours. In her last few years, her cabins became white. An undated and unsourced clipping from the Jim Kidd scrapbooks, described the first arrival of LAKESHELL at Toronto in early May of 1932. "The new tanker, LAKESHELL, latest addition to Toronto's growing fleet of oil boats, passed through the Western Gap to-day at 1 p. m. on her first commercial trip to Toronto with the largest oil cargo ever to be brought up the St. Law­ rence, 712, 000 Imperial gallons of gasoline. She was under command of Captain Fred Foote. She docked at her slip at the foot of Carlaw Avenue (on the north side of the Commissioners' Street turning basin -Ed. ). Built in the yards of Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Wallsend-on-Tyne, for the Do­ minion Tanker Co. (sic), she is under charter to the Shell Oil Co., and will carry gasoline from Chicago and Montreal to Toronto... (She) sailed from Newcastle April 8, arriving in Montreal May 5th, after a stormy passage. She cleared Montreal Saturday afternoon (May 7th) when her Canadian lakes crew took over from the English crew and master, who brought her over... On her Chicago runs she will be able to carry 830, 000 Imperial gallons. " It is not surprising that photos of LAKESHELL (I) are rare, because in 1933, only her second season of lake service, she was renamed. Another Kidd clip­ ping from a Toronto newspaper, noted only as "1933", reported: "Yesterday the LAKESHELL came in from Montreal with gasoline, but failed to take out papers for clearance. To-day the tanker JOHN A. McDOUGALD cleared for Mont­ real. They are one and the same ship, and the change of name is to honour one of the directors of the Dominion Tankers Co., John A. McDougald. " In its issue of Thursday, November 16, 1933, "The Toronto Daily Star" pub­ lished a montage of photos entitled "King Winter Grips Great Lakes' Grey­ hounds". Of the five photos, four showed JOHN A. McDOUGALD, while one was taken aboard CYCLO-WARRIOR. The caption read: "Early freezing weather lash­ ing the Great Lakes into spume and spray that clings and freezes to all man­ ner of craft plying between lake ports has transformed the ships shown here into palaces of floating ice. Views of the ships you see here were taken at the foot of Cherry St., when they berthed today. (1) JOHN A. McDOUGALD, showing the ice-covered rigging. lce was eight and nine inches thick. (2) Members of crew chopping away ice on deck. (3) McCOLL (sic) WARRIOR with its ice-coated superstructure. (4) Ship's bell on JOHN A. McDOUGALD. (5) What the bridge of the same ship looks like. " We are certain that this was the only time in her workaday career that the Shell tanker ever was referred to either as a "palace" (albeit of ice) or a "greyhound". In fact, we are sure that there were times when her master and owner would have wished that the steamer's engine had been capable of giving her enough power that she might be called a greyhound and be able to squeeze more revenue-earning trips into the short lake navigation season. The operation of JOHN A. McDOUGALD was relatively free of untoward incident. It is recorded, however, that on Sunday, August 4, 1935, the McDOUGALD grounded in the St. Lawrence River, some 25 miles west of Quebec City, whilst en route from Montreal to Sydney, Nova Scotia, with a cargo of gaso­ line. The ship suffered extensive hull damage and she lost half of her cargo into the river. She was refloated and towed back to Montreal, where she was drydocked for the necessary repairs. In 1941, the ownership of JOHN A. McDOUGALD was transferred to a new corpo­ rate entity known as Shell Canadian Tankers Limited, of Toronto, and we be­