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Ship of the Month - cont'd. 8. quest of the Salvage Association, London, Great Lakes Department. With such extensive damage, one might well have imagined that JOHN J. BOLAND would have been abandoned to the underwriters and quickly taken off the drydock and dispatched to a scrapyard. Indeed, that might well have been her fate had this accident happened just a few years later. But this collision occur­ red in the immediate post-war period, when lake tonnage was much in demand and materials still were hard to obtain for new ship construction in the private sector. In fact, a few of the vessels traded in to the United States Maritime Commission in exchange for wartime-built bottoms (like the FRANK ARMSTRONG) were still running under charter to their former owners. Accordingly, with no replacement tonnage immediately available and, presuma­ bly with insurance proceeds payable, Boland & Cornelius gave to the Toledo yard of the American Ship Building Company a contract to rebuild the BOLAND. The forward end of the ship was completely beyond restoration, and so the old bow was cut off back to the forward end of No. 1 cargo compartment, and an entirely new bow section was constructed. The cost of this work amounted to $352, 864. 30, an enormous sum at that time. The steamer, as rebuilt, had a fully topgallant (raised) forecastle, with a much larger texas cabin and pilothouse, and a rather stubby new foremast. The anchors now were stowed in large pockets, set close to the new stem post. Her tonnage now was calculated as 6053 Gross and 4657 Net. The rebuil­ ding was done very tastefully, and the JOHN J. BOLAND that re-entered ser­ vice in 1949 was a very handsome vessel, although she had lost many of the distinctive features of her original Mitchell design. The reconstruction, however, along with the addition of new sidetanks and a new tanktop over the winter of 1951-1952, undoubtedly extended her career rather significantly. During the 1953 navigation season, the American Steamship Company took deli­ very of a brand new flagship, JOHN J. BOLAND (III), which was built as Hull 417 of Manitowoc Shipbuilding Inc. In anticipation of the advent of the new self-unloading steamer, the old JOHN J. BOLAND was, in April of 1953, re­ named (d) NIAGARA MOHAWK. The name honoured the Niagara Mohawk Power Corpo­ ration, much of whose coal was carried by Boland & Cornelius lake ships. As still was the custom with ships named for corporate clients, the NIAGARA MO­ HAWK'S name was carried in large, white-lettered "billboards" down the stea­ mer's sides amidships. NIAGARA MOHAWK operated well for BoCo. But as time passed, the company fo­ cussed it operations on its self-unloaders, a trade into which the fleet had ventured with great success during the Depression years of the 1930s. Gradu­ ally, the straight-deckers were sold out of the BoCo fleet, and by 1965, NIAGARA MOHAWK, the best of them, was the last still under American Steam­ ship Company ownership. After several years of running only self-unloaders, this situation would be reversed in 1969 when American acquired control of the Gartland Steamship Company and the Reiss Steamship Company fleets in quick succession. However, American did not acquire these fleets for their venerable straight-deckers; it bought them for their self-unloaders and for their cargo contracts. In any event, during November of 1965, the idle NIAGARA MOHAWK was sold by the American Steamship Company to the Kinsman Marine Transit Company, of Cleveland. The Kinsman fleet then was in a period of expansion, and it was acquiring numerous used bottoms to service its various trades as an "inde­ pendent" operator. A period advertisement for Kinsman read: "We Admit - They're old and they're slow, and they're not very big but when we haul your cargo, it gets a 'swingin' ride'. (P. S. And we're there when we promise! )" Kinsman had a very strong presence in the U. S. grain trade, and thus it is not surprising that, in March of 1966, NIAGARA MOHAWK was renamed (e) PEAVEY PIONEER, the name honouring one of the United States' major grain dealers. The Peavey Company was formed in 1874 at Sioux City, Iowa, and its founder was Frank Hutchinson Peavey (1850-1901). It is clear that Kinsman Marine