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Ship of the Month - cont'd. 8. not known to us. SATINLEAF and ABELE came to the lakes in 1947 and made their way to the lakehead to tow barges loaded with pulpwood from Lake Superior to Wisconsin ports. Great Lakes Lumber and Shipping at one time owned five big consort barges (all built in 1896 except for one constructed in 1897) that were used in this trade, namely ALFRED J., BLANCHE H . , ETHEL J., FLORENCE J. and MERLE H., and also the freight steamer E. E. JOHNSON (i). However, the JOHNSON (later ALTADOC [i ]) and ETHEL J. (KENORDOC [iii]) were sold to Paterson in 1945, leaving ALFRED J., BLANCHE H . , FLORENCE J. and MERLE H. to be handled by the tugs SATINLEAF, ABELE and others in the fleet. (Apart from E. E. JOHNSON [ii]/LENAPE of 1904, already mentioned, other large tugs operated by Johnson during the SATINLEAF period were GUARDIAN of 1906, W. E. HUNT of 1913, OSCAR LEHTINEN of 1903, MARGUERITE W. of 1908 and LAWRENCE H. SHAW of 1900. Smaller tugs did log boom duty, harbour service, etc. ) Unfortunately, E. E. Johnson died in 1949, after which the company withdrew from lake transportation, although some of the smaller tugs were retained for lakehead harbour service. The rest of the ships were advertised for sale and were sold off gradually over the years. SATINLEAF was acquired early in 1949 by the Quebec and Ontario Transportation Company Limited, of Montreal. The barges BLANCHE H. and MERLE H. also were purchased by Q & O at the same time. Q & O , which then operated a number of canallers and one upper laker (HERON BAY [i]), was a subsidiary of the Ontario Paper Company Limited, of Thorold, Ontario, which in turn was one of the enterprises controlled by the Chicago Tribune syndicate. It was felt that the Q & O fleet could make good use of SATINLEAF and the barges hauling pulpwood to be made into newsprint for the Tribune, as the Ontario Paper Company had just purchased the pulp­ wood holdings of the Pineland Timber Company Ltd., of Heron Bay, Ontario. For her new duties, SATINLEAF was given the usual Q & O colours which, at that time, included a black hull, white bulwarks and cabins, buff masts, and a buff stack with a red band and a black top. On the red band were placed in white the letters 'Q ' and 'O', tightly spaced and linked with an ampersand. SATINLEAF took both barges to Collingwood for drydocking in May of 1949 and then towed both of them in the pulpwood trade, mainly from Heron Bay (on the north shore of Lake Superior) or from northern Lake Huron to the Ontario Pa­ per Company's mill at Thorold. They often hauled finished newsprint from Thorold to the Chicago Tribune warehouse located on the north bank of the Chicago River, just west of the Outer Drive bridge. At South Chicago, the barges would take on coal for shipment to Georgian Bay ports, after which delivery they would proceed to Heron Bay (or, perhaps, Gore Bay on the North Channel of Lake Huron, or maybe to Cockburn Island) for another load of pulpwood bound for the Thorold mill. In Roy Snider's waterfront column in "The Telegram" (Toronto) on Thursday, June 30, 1949, it was announced that Q & O had effected three name changes in its fleet. SATINLEAF was renamed (b) ROCKY RIVER, while the barges MERLE H. and BLANCHE H. became, respectively, (c) PIC RIVER and (c) BLACK RIVER. The new names all honoured locations in the northern timberlands from whence came the barges' cargoes of pulpwoods. To the best of our knowledge, ROCKY RIVER never was involved in any serious accident during her Great Lakes service. On November 2, 1950, she was towing BLACK RIVER when the latter went aground at Little Current, Ontario, blocking the rail and road bridges for an hour and a half before ROCKY RIVER could release the barge, fortunately without damage. It did not take long, however, for Q & O to decide that the tug and barge operation was logistically impractical. Not only did ROCKY RIVER have to juggle both barges, leaving one to load wood (a time-consuming process) while taking the other on her way, but a second tug was required to assist when transitting the Soo Locks or the Welland Canal. Accordingly, the company de­ cided to rebuild both barges as self-propelled bulk carriers, and this con­