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Ship of the Month - cont'd. 10. the Cunard Line. She had departed Quebec City for Antwerp, Amsterdam and Rotterdam with grain and mixed cargo, under the command of Capt. D. G. Martin, and had a crew of 46. JOHN A. FRANCE was sailing from Matane, Que­ bec, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, with a load of pulpwood bound for Erie, Pennsylvania. The FRANCE was able to proceed under her own power when the fog lifted, but the severely damaged WOODFORD went to anchor awaiting the arrival of the tugs ROCKY RIVER and MANOIR. Both tugs anchored a few miles from the WOOD­ FORD and waited for the fog to lift. WOODFORD then was towed to Quebec, where local firemen loaned a pump to help keep the incoming water in check, and a hole was burned through the deck to allow access to the engine room for suction hoses. The ship had a five-degree list, and crew members removed personal belongings and some of the cargo, including a dozen tractors. Twelve local firemen stayed aboard to supervise the pumping and the skipper posted a watch with a score of men to keep the ship afloat. There hadn't been any time to inspect the damage before WOODFORD started listing, but it was believed that an underwater plate was smashed in and a port hole had been pushed in when the ships collided. Sometime during the 1952 season, Foundation Maritime gave ROCKY RIVER the new name (c) FOUNDATION JOSEPHINE II. The new name honoured an earlier tug which had served the fleet for many years with great distinction. An unsourced news item from 1953 reads as follows: "Completes Difficult Tow. St. John's, Nfld., Dec. 5 - (CP) - The salvage tug (FOUNDATION) JOSEPHINE II towed the 1, 790 ton Norwegian freighter HELLO into port here yesterday after a week-long tow through heavy seas. " We have no further details. In November of 1954, the Panamanian freighter STORK found herself in trouble off the coast of Newfoundland. The ship was bound for Port Alfred, Quebec, from Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana (now Surinam) with a cargo of bauxite. With crew members working the pumps of the 7, 111 ton vessel, her plates cracked and the ship listing badly, the crippled STORK edged toward the western coast of Newfoundland, awaiting the assistance of a rescue tug. The RCAF search and rescue unit at Torbay, Nfld., sent planes over the ship and re­ ported that the crew was still aboard. The Captain had ordered his crew of 40 to abandon ship, but apparently he changed his mind. The seas were being tossed into a frenzy by 50-mile-an-hour-plus winds, and the temperature had dipped below freezing. The skipper's abandon ship message was picked up by the radio station at Grindstone in the Magdalen Islands. Up to that time, the crew had clung to the drifting ship for more than 30 hours, riding out the storm. The deck plates cracked when the ship was off South Head in Newfoundland's Bay of Is­ lands. Four ships raced to her aid, including FOUNDATION JOSEPHINE II from Quebec, a tug from Corner Brook, Nfld., the Canadian National Railway steam­ er SPRINGDALE, and the U. S. Coast Guard cutter CHIMCOTEAGUE out of Argentia, Nfld. (The storm was so intense that its waves also had driven the small motorvessel MARSOUIN hard aground at an isolated stretch of the Anticosti Island coast, and another motorvessel, CURLING, was reported aground off Amherst in the Magdalen Islands. ) STORK limped to Corner Brook harbour several days later at reduced speed and with a 14-foot crack in her weather deck plating, from superstructure to the starboard side. The tug CLAIRE SIMARD was the first to reach STORK, 30 miles from port, and she preceded her into Corner Brook harbour. Cheated of this salvage prize, FOUNDATION JOSEPHINE II may have assisted one of the other distressed vessels. Additional information would be welcomed. Because of alterations made to FOUNDATION JOSEPHINE II in 1955, her tonnage was increased to 874 Gross and 549 Net. This change probably reflected a dry docking and rebuilding, but we have no details. We do know that it was du­ ring her Foundation years that the tug's main deck bulwark was extended all the way forward, and additional crew quarters were added in a new cabin pla­