Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Scanner, v. 35, no. 6 (March 2003), p. 3

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

3. Marine News - cont'd . In the February issue, we reported the January 25th launch at Marinette of U. S. C. G. HOLLYHOCK, the latest in the "Juniper class" of buoy tenders and the first to be designated for work on the Great Lakes. HOLLYHOCK will be stationed at Port Huron, where she will replace the 1944-built, 180-foot BRAMBLE. It was reported that the change of tenders at Port Huron was to oc­ cur in September, but the official commissioning of HOLLYHOCK may take place in early summer. (Her completion probably will not be delayed by the strike at Marinette Marine as subcontractors will be doing most of the finishing work. ) To accommodate HOLLYHOCK, the dock adjoining Pine Grove Park is being extended southwards some 50 feet and a new support building for office and storage space will be constructed. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard is continuing work started last autumn to build a new station at the head of the Huron Cut, at the foot of Garfield Street. Together with the work on building a new rescue boat harbour at that site done last year, it means that Coast Guard rescue vessels again can be based near the Fort Gratiot lighthouse instead of down by the Black River where they have had to be located in recent years. Faced with the fact that Austal Ltd. will have ready by early summer the ferry intended for the Rochester-Toronto service which won't be starting until 2004 (if ever), the shipyard will be trying to sell the 282-foot ship to other owners. It then will build another vessel for Canadian American Transportation Systems to be ready closer to the projected start-up of the cross-lake service. Had CATS taken delivery of the boat now under construc­ tion, it either would have incurred a huge loss keeping it laid up until 2004 or else it would have had to find some other work on the ship. Meanwhile, there still are noises about another fast service proposed by International Fast Ferry Corp. for a route between Toronto and Porter, New York (just east of Youngstown). There also is much talk of several ferry services proposed for Lake Michigan. On February 8, the board of the bankrupt Bethlehem Steel Corporation voted to sell its assets to the International Steel Group for some $1. 5 billion, and ISG's directors have approved the transaction. ISG last year purchased the steel-producing assets of the LTV Steel Corp. If it is approved by U. S. Bankruptcy Court, the deal for Bethlehem could become final in April, and would create North America's largest integrated steel producer. As we make our way through winter, work is continuing on the dismantling of the ore pellet reception terminal at Lorain, Ohio. Instead of shuttling the pellets from Lorain to Cleveland, as in the past, the Lorain terminal will be moved to Cleveland and reassembled there. The movement will be done with barges, but no details yet are available. Arriving at Montreal on February 7th was the ocean-laker MACKENZIE, (a) CA­ NADA MARQUIS (91), (b) FEDERAL RICHELIEU (91), (c) FEDERAL MACKENZIE (01), which, as previously announced, was reacquired late in 2002 and then flipped to Canada Steamship Lines Inc. She is to be renamed (e) BIRCHGLEN, but it is not yet clear when or where the renaming will take place, nor has it been announced in what trade BIRCHGLEN will be utilized. Meanwhile SPRUCEGLEN, her sistership formerly the FRASER, is laid up at Toronto and the last section of her storage cargo of sugar recently was unloaded. As yet, SPRUCE­ GLEN has not yet made the transition to C. S. L. colours. Back in the autumn, we reported the sale of the Seaway's SWEEP SCOW NO. 4 to Rankin Construction Inc., of St. Catharines. We now learn that the 1967- built vessel, which for her entire career with the Seaway was used along the Welland Canal, has been renamed (b) JUDIQUE FLYER. We have absolutely no idea why this peculiar name has been chosen for the 60-foot, self-propelled sweep scow. Last year, the ferry AMHERST ISLANDER (ii), the idle spare boat for the Am­ herst Island (Kingston) ferry service, was sent by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and Communications to Lake Erie to assist while the main

Powered by / Alimenté par VITA Toolkit
Privacy Policy