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

Ship of the Month - cont'd. ters, was positioned below the windows of the new pilothouse. (Previously, there had been no nameboard, but the gold letters spelling out the steamer's name had been positioned above the windows of the old pilothouse. ) Over the years, there has been much debate as to whether this new upper pi­ lothouse added to the beauty of HAMONIC or detracted from it. Your Editor always has been firmly in the "pro" camp, thinking that the new house added a certain grace and style to the ship, while his father, the late T. M. H. S. secretary, disliked the upper house and felt that it marred the steamer's fine lines. We had many intense although amicable debates over the issue. The general consensus seems to be that the added height forward complimented HAMONIC's considerable sheer. Late in the 1922 season, there occurred a rather eerie preview of what was to happen eventually with HAMONIC, although fortunately without loss of ships or life. On Tuesday, December 5th, 1922, the C. P. R. freight shed, to­ gether with five railway cars and their contents, were consumed by fire at Fort William. Moored at the wharf alongside the shed at the time were the C. P. R.'s ASSINIBOIA, and the N. N. Co.'s HURONIC. Both ships were pulled away from the wharf before they could sustain any major damage, but reports indi­ cated that ASSINIBOIA "was somewhat scorched". Capt. W. H. Montgomery and Chief McLeod were appointed to HAMONIC again for the 1923 season, with Capt. Wright back on HURONIC and Capt. Aitken in the NORONIC. During the last week of April 1923, HAMONIC sailed from Sarnia for Collingwood, where she was drydocked for "certain hull repairs" before com­ mencing her scheduled pre-season trips. It is interesting to note that Capt. 0. M. Wing, who grounded HAMONIC on Lake Huron in 1920, was in 1923 appoin­ ted by C. S. L. as master of the canaller BEAVERTON. He appears to have stayed in freighters thereafter. The 1923 season seems to have been generally uneventful for the N. N. Co. steamers, except for the fact that NORONIC was, on September 19th, held at Port Arthur owing to a "broken propeller". The Port Arthur shipyard had no drydock space available, and so as soon as her flour cargo was off-loaded, NORONIC was towed to Superior, Wisconsin, for repairs. Her passengers were, on September 20th, transferred aboard HAMONIC for their passage down to Sarnia. Captain Montgomery and Chief McLeod were appointed to HAMONIC again for the 1924 season. Nothing untoward happened to HAMONIC that year, but something did occur at the Point Edward wharf. That facility, although handy for its rail connections, was situated at the curve in the river where Lake Huron empties, via the Huron Cut, into the St. Clair River. The swift current at that point has always created problems for vessels negotiating that stretch of the river, and many accidents have occurred there over the years. On May 24, 1924, the 1906-built Tomlinson steamer FRANK C. BALL (30)(U. S . 202770), (b) J. R. SENSIBAR (81), (c) CONALLISON (C. 800597), suffered a steering gear failure whilst attempting to negotiate the Huron Cut, and she became unmana gable, striking and considerably damaging the Northern Navigation wharf and also HURONIC, which was moored there at the time. * * * And there, a little less than halfway through HAMONIC's career, we must leave her history for want of space. We will resume the feature in our Mid-Summer issue, at which time we will recount the steamer's sad end, and show you even more remarkable photographs of her. Please stay tuned and, of course, let us know if you have any additional details to add to our account. A full list of credits will follow the final instalment of the HAMONIC story. We would recommend that our readers check out the T. M. H. S. website to view two additional photographs of HAMONIC. Go to ww w . wellandcanal. ca and page down and click on Toronto Marine Historical Society. http://www.wellandcanal.ca