Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Scanner, v. 35, no. 7 (April 2003), p. 9

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9. Ship of the Month - cont'd. other Lake Ontario bulk cement boats, except ROBERT KOCH, loaded their car­ goes at the Lake Ontario Cement Company dock at Picton. LOC BAY, and PEERLESS before her, ran from Picton to Charlotte, New York, while METIS, and GLENELG before her, ran from Picton to Toronto, discharging their cement cargo at what is now the Essroc terminal at the mouth of the Keating Channel. METIS occasionally delivered a load to Charlotte. She was replaced in 1983 by STEPHEN B. ROMAN (formerly the CSL package freighter FORT WILLIAM). In 1991, METIS was cut down to a notched barge at Toronto and she still sees infrequent use with a variety of tugs. Erie Sand's small carrier DAY PECKINPAUGH (referred to in the KOCH logs on at least one occasion as "DAVE PECKINPAW" when the two ships were locking in tandem at the Welland) was an infrequent visitor to Charlotte. Her normal run was from Picton to Oswego, where she entered the New York State Barge Canal for the trip to her final destination at Rome, N. Y. After 73 years of travelling the New York State canal system, for the last 33 of which she hauled cement, DAY PECKINPAUGH was retired in 1994 and laid up at Erie, Penn­ sylvania, where she still lies idle. An additional operator, the Dundee Cement Company, of Dundee, Michigan, began hauling cement from Clarkson to Ashtabula in 1980 with the chartered barge MEL WILLIAM SELVICK, the former steamer SAMUEL MITCHELL of 1892. The Selvick Marine Towing Company tug JOHN PURVES was used to push the barge, but the SELVICK was unwieldy in the Welland Canal, was involved in a number of scrapes and close misses, and did not serve the route for long. Despite the number of Welland Canal transits she made, the KOCH was involved in relatively few scrapes. However, on September 29, 1981, whilst upbound, ROBERT KOCH brought up on the west abutment at Bridge 5, reportedly having been caught by the propeller wash from the downbound seIf-unloader ALGOBAY. According to the entries in her log, inspection showed that there was no damage to the ship's stem above the waterline, and the tanks were sounded and found to be dry. The KOCH finished her trip to Buffalo and passed down the canal the following day bound for Clarkson, where she arrived on the evening of October 1st. She did not load, however, and the next day she was ordered to Hamilton, where she rested until the afternoon of the 6th. She then made a trip to Oswego, returned to Clarkson, and lay there from October 9 until the 14th . Another rest was taken at Hamilton from late on October 21 to the early morning of the 26th. It was unusual for the KOCH to take any time out at all during the navigation season, but whether any of these layovers had anything to do with repairs following the accident is not re­ vealed by her log. Before this accident, the St. Lawrence Cement Company had purchased the barge D. D. S. SALVAGER from Deep Diving Services at Thunder Bay, with the in­ tention to convert the salvage lighter to a cement carrier for a shuttle run between Duluth and Thunder Bay. The McAsphalt Industries Ltd. tug TUSKER de­ parted Thunder Bay on September loth with the D. D. S. SALVAGER in tow for de­ livery to E. G. Marsh Ltd. at Port Colborne. The conversion project was, however, only partially completed there, and the work then was abandoned; the barge then became a storage hull at Thunder Bay. It eventually was sold to Purvis Marine Ltd., of Sault Ste. Marie, and was renamed P. M. L. SALVAGER (although it is listed erroneously in the Canadian List of Ships as P. M. S. SALVAGER). On October 12, whilst ROBERT KOCH was departing the Union Canal at Buffalo, she suffered a breakdown of her engineroom telegraph system. The snip was able to make Port Colborne, where she was moored on the West Street wharf. She lay there until the 17th, while repairs were made. Her log noted that, on the 15th, her port anchor was lifted ashore by an E. G. Marsh Ltd. mobile crane, which then transferred the anchor over to the D. D. S. SALVAGER. The anchor later was replaced.

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