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9. Ship of the Month - cont'd. Transit intended PEAVEY PIONEER to operate in the grain trade to Cleveland and Buffalo, as well as in the iron ore trade. It would not be so. Steinbrenner ships looked very imposing when freshly painted up in the com­ pany's livery, with their dark reddish-brown hulls and forecastles, white cabins, and black stacks with two narrow silver bands, a broad green band, and a large, silver letter 'S'. The fleet normally painted both masts on its steamers black, and a large letter 'S' was carried on the foremast as a "whistle light", which was illuminated when the whistle was blown. (Modern regulations prohibit the use of such whistle lights, but back then it was considered necessary to provide a visual evidence of a passing signal in case the whistle itself should not be audible. ) PEAVEY PIONEER looked resplendent in her Kinsman colours, as good as any ship the Steinbrenners ever ran, and she arguably was one of the most hand­ some steamers they ever owned. Unfortunately, however, she was to enjoy only a few weeks of operation for Kinsman, and few were the photographers who ma­ naged to catch her in service. In fact, PEAVEY PIONEER suffered incredibly bad fortune in her debut in the 1966 navigation season. Loading iron ore out of Ashland, Wisconsin, she suf­ fered a grounding there on April 20th, and she found the bottom again at Ashland on Tuesday, May 31st, 1966. In his Lake Superior Shipwrecks, Dr. Julius F. Wolff, Jr., stated that "she was apparently little damaged in ei­ ther incident". Would that it had been so! After the second grounding, PEAVEY PIONEER was taken to Fraser Shipyards at Superior, Wisconsin, where it was determined that she had suffered such extensive bottom damage that she failed her five-year inspection and her certificate to operate was cancelled, and she was abandoned as she was con­ sidered to be beyond economical repair. She was laid up at the Fraser yard, and there she remained. PEAVEY PIONEER was sold on August 16, 1966, to the Waterman Steamship Compa­ ny, of New York, which bought her with the intention of trading her in to the United States Maritime Administration on new tonnage. She was, however, resold to the Bay Steamship Company, and then in short order to Sea-Land Service Inc., of Elizabeth, New Jersey, which did, in fact, trade her in to "MarAd". She then was resold for a sum reported to have been $35, 111 to the Hyman-Michaels Company, of Duluth, for scrapping. It was said that Hyman- Michaels then spun the PEAVEY PIONEER off to an affiliate, Duluth Iron. The scrapper moved PEAVEY PIONEER to its scrapyard at Duluth but did not im­ mediately cut her up. In fact, in 1969 the breaker was busy scrapping the former Canadian steamer GEORGE HINDMAN (III) when it was reminded that its contract with MarAd for the purchase of PEAVEY PIONEER for scrap required that the vessel be cut up by the end of 1969. Work was suspended on the cut­ ting of GEORGE HINDMAN and was begun in earnest on PEAVEY PIONEER. Her deck­ houses were gone by May 20th, her hull was half cut-up by July 12th, and by the deadline of December 31st, all vestiges of the once-proud steamer had disappeared. Thus ended the career of a vessel which had served two of her three owners most admirably for many years, and which began service for the third with high hopes. But if navigation on the Great Lakes ever teaches us anything at all, it is that good fortune can be fleeting indeed, and that disaster is never far away. * * * Ed Note: We extend sincere thanks to John Greenwood, who assisted us with several aspects of the history of STEPHEN M. CLEMENT, including the wreck survey. The writings of the late John H. Bascom and James M. Kidd were, as usual, most helpful. And we should all be grateful that Bill Wilson was at Point Edward on the morning of Sunday, May 22, 1966, when PEAVEY PIONEER passed down through the Huron Cut. His photograph of the ship taken that