Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Scanner, v. 35, no. 1 (October 2002), p. 11

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Ship of the Month - cont'd. ced on the upper deck, forward of the pilothouse. On June 5, 1955, the tugs FOUNDATION JOSEPHINE II, FOUNDATION VERA and BAN- STURDY positioned a 4, 500 ton lighthouse in the St. Lawrence River, some 100 miles northeast of Quebec City, to replace a lightship that had served there. They had towed the structure from Levis, and three attempts over two days were required to position the marker on a prepared bed of rock. In August of 1955, Hurricane Connie lashed the entire eastern seaboard, cau­ sing damage to ships and shores. (It also caused severe damage on the Toron­ to Islands. ) One of the victims of that storm, which was followed closely by Hurricane Dianne, was the British coal freighter LORADORE. Owned by the Ma­ ritime Shipping and Trading Co., LORADORE was under charter to the Dominion Steel and Coal Corp. She had departed Sydney with coal for Montreal on the morning of August 13. Storms lashed by Hurricane Connie struck her off the Magdalen Islands and tossed her onto the Bird Rocks, where she was pounded to a total loss. FOUNDATION JOSEPHINE II was sent to the rescue, and she was successful in taking all 32 officers and crew off the disintegrating vessel in a lifeboat relay. The survivors were landed at Sydney. FOUNDATION VERA stood by the wreck waiting for the seas to subside, in the hope of salvaging some of the ship's equipment before the seas could destroy it. In the spring of 1958, the new FOUNDATION VIGILANT joined the fleet, and a press report indicated that she would operate with FOUNDATION JOSEPHINE II covering the river and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. FOUNDATION JOSEPHINE II likely was involved in many more adventures, but we have no information about them. However, Foundation Maritime upgraded its fleet in 1960 and the JOSEPHINE, by then well past her prime, was sold to William Sumarah, Jr., of Halifax. He and his brother George outfitted the vessel for sealing, equipping her with dories and altering the ship enough to result in a tonnage change to 877 Gross and 492 Net. They renamed her (d) NORTH STAR IV. Her hull remained black and the rails and cabins white, while her stack became light buff with a blue band and a white star, and the cowl at the top was black. The following season, the Canadian Hydrographic Service of the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys in Ottawa chartered NORTH STAR IV for a 120-day arctic expedition, which ended abruptly when the wooden-hulled ship hit an uncharted rock in James Bay on Monday, August 14, 1961 at 15: 03 hours. The vessel had been travelling in roughly 70 feet of water for quite some time when she suddenly hit a rocky ledge and bounced her way up. There were 24 crew and five government hydrographers aboard, none of whom were injured. The vessel, which had carried 13 dories when she was a sealer, had on board her usual two lifeboats and also two 31-foot motor launches as well as seve­ ral dories belonging to the hydrographic survey. The motor launches, carried under special davits on the main deck aft, were MANDARIN and OLD SQUAW, and they were used primarily for collecting hydrographic data in shallow waters. The primary use for the dories was taking the hydrographers ashore. In this case, the launches, life boats and dories were used to take everyone ashore, as Capt. Jules Jourdain, 34, of Matane, Quebec, ordered the vessel aban­ doned. He sent an S. O. S. radio call, which was picked up by the Great Whale River radar station located a hundred or so miles to the north. Rescue ef­ forts then began. There was some difficulty launching the motor launches due to the ship poun­ ding on the rocks, but after this was resolved, all got off safely and in an orderly manner, with whatever they could carry. There had been some light fog in the morning, but it had lifted and the wind and seas became rougher as the day wore on. It was felt that lowering the launches might lighten the ship enough to get her off, and an attempt was made to haul her off with the launches, but this failed. Capt. Jourdain and his engineer, William Holton, of Halifax, remained aboard for several hours after the others had been ordered to abandon the vessel. They salvaged personal gear, ship's equipment

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