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Ship of the Month - cont'd. sit of the year. She was able to make it back down with a storage cargo for Toronto and, on December 18 she made the last Welland passage of the year. The canal actually had closed already, but it was reopened to let the GEORGIAN pass down. GEORGIAN operated successfully for the Hudsons until late in the 1932 season. On November 28, 1932, at about 3: 30 p. m., whilst downbound for Toronto with a winter storage cargo of flour, GEORGIAN ran aground in Lake Superior as she was seeking shelter behind Grand Island near Munising, Michigan, She was under the command of Capt. D'Alton Hudson and, in severe blizzard conditions, she fetched up heavily near Trout Point. The northwest gale kept pounding her farther onto the rocks, and neither the United States Coast Guard tender SEMI­ NOLE, nor the Sin-Mac tug STRATHMORE and wrecker MAPLECOURT were able to free her. The crew members were removed from GEORGIAN on December 4th, and even Capt. Hudson's collie Barney was rescued, although at first he was reluctant to leave the ship. Salvage efforts soon were abandoned, as GEORGIAN's holds were full of water and she was hard aground amidships. MAPLECOURT returned to her home base at Sarnia on December 12. GEORGIAN spent the winter on the rocks and was abandoned to the underwriters on Decem­ ber 11. She was later acquired by Sin-Mac Lines Ltd., Montreal, which sent wrecking equip­ ment to the site in the spring. On May 29, 1933, she was pulled free by the tug JAMES WHA­ LEN. One report had GEORGIAN taken first to Port Arthur, while another suggested she would be taken to Sarnia. An unsourced Ivan Brookes clipping, dated June 12, noted that GEORGIAN had been towed down the Welland Canal on the previous day by the tug EUREKA, "on its way to Port Dalhousie to enter drydock for repairs". It appears that the ship was renamed (d) FORDONIAN again in 1933, but she was not in the 1933 Dominion List. In any event, Sin-Mac sold the ship to the Federal Motorship Corp., of Buffalo, and we think the sale occurred in March of 1934. She was taken to Ogdensburg, New York, where she was cut down and rebuilt as a barge-canal type bulk carrier by the St. Lawrence Marine Repair Dock Company. The 1935 issue of Merchant Vessels of the United States showed her as (e) BADGER STATE (U. S. 214598) registered at Buffalo, 250. 0 x 42. 6 x 16. 7, 1539 Gross and 1118 Net Tons, 930 horsepower. The 1941-1942 Lloyd's Register showed virtually the same information, although listing her manager for Federal Motorship Corp. as Geo. D. MacDonald. It showed her machi­ nery as a 6-cylinder oil engine, 18" - 22", 190 N. H. P., built by the Bessemer Gas Engine Company, of Grove City, Pennsylvania. It also showed that the ship had a special survey at Ogdensburg in May of 1934, and another at New York in January of 1939. BADGER STATE was a typical barge-canal motorship with a flush deck, very low cabins, lower­ ing pipe masts, six hatches, a tiny pot-style smokestack, and two lifeboats aft worked with luffing davits. Her hull was black, her cabins white, the foremast white and the main black, and it is anyone's guess whether the little stack was anything but all black. BADGER STATE was part of a fleet that included several other ships built specifically for the New York State Barge Canal trade. From 1942 to 1945, due to wartime shortages, she was chartered to the Quebec and Ontario Transportation Company Limited for service between Baie Comeau, Oswego and New York City. After the cessation of hostilities, she ventured farther afield and, on January 14, 1946, she foundered in the Gulf of Mexico, near Tampico, after striking what variously has been described either as a submerged wreck or a breakwater. She was a ship that never seemed to find a niche that would last for her, and she ended her days looking far different than the vessel that came from the Clyde in 1912. Would she have had a different life if she had been completed as a traditional steamer rather than as an unconventional motorship? We will never know, but she remains a part of Great Lakes ship­ ping history. * * * Ed. Notes: A speial word of thanks goes to Ron Beaupre who dug up some very interesting items for us, including the Owen Sound elevator records which come through the courtesy of Coy Currie former yard manager of Great Lakes Elevators. The records of the late Jim Kidd, Ivan Brookes and John H. Bascom again were invaluable. The Hudsons' fleet was reviewed by John Greenwood in The Fleet Histories Series - Volume Two.