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7. Ship of the Month - cont'd. ted, of Fort William. This company retained the same basic colours but it has been sugges­ ted that Capt. R. Scott Misener's Colonial Steamships Limited may have been involved in the actual operation of the JOHNSON. Considering that the other Johnson vessels were tugs and barges engaged almost exclusively in the pulpwood trade, it might be reasonable to assume that the operations of E. E. JOHNSON might be somewhat different. E. E. JOHNSON was transferred on February 7, 1945, to Powell Transports Limited, of Winni­ peg, Manitoba, but Powell retained ownership only until March 6th of that same year, when ownership was transferred to N. M. Paterson & Sons Ltd., Fort William. The Paterson fleet had suffered major losses of its canallers during World War Two and also had lost its upper laker PRINDOC (i) by collision in 1943. The JOHNSON thus was a much needed addition to the fleet, and she was renamed (d) ALTADOC (ii) in honour of the grain-producing Canadian province of Alberta. Interestingly, she was not only much larger but also five years older than the 1901-built ALTADOC (i), (a) LAKE SHORE (13), (b) INDUS (26), which had been lost by stranding on Lake Superior's Keweenaw Peninsula in December of 1927 after only a short time in Paterson ownership. ALTADOC (ii) was not the only former Johnson vessel that wound up in the Paterson fleet. Acquired at the same time as the JOHNSON, and also via Powell Transports, was the consort barge ETHEL J., which became (d) PORTADOC (ii) and eventually (e) KENORDOC (iii), while in 1948 Paterson bought from Great Lakes Lumber and Shipping the barges ALFRED J., renamed (d) COLLINGDOC (ii), and FLORENCE J., which became (e) OWENDOC. Other veteran ships also came to Paterson from other owners. ALTADOC (ii) received a major rebuild once Paterson had her, and we believe that the work was done at the shipyard in Port Arthur. Her after cabin was extended somewhat and she was given luffing davits for her lifeboats. A brand new and much larger texas cabin was built atop an extended forecastle (with a longer steel bulwark), and it had a curved front, with a closed steel rail around the navigation deck above. A new and much larger steel pilot­ house was fitted. It had seven large windows across its slightly curved face, with a sunvi­ sor over all those windows and a separate individual visor over the centre window. There were two windows and a door in each side. A new and much lighter pipe foremast was stepped immediately abaft the pilothouse, rising up out of the texas. In subsequent years (and we believe that it was in 1952), the doghouse was removed from the spar deck and a new and larger one was constructed hard aft on the boat deck. ALTADOC was, of course, painted in the usual Paterson colours. Her hull was black. At first, just the forecastle head bulwark was white but eventually the entire forecastle be­ came white. The cabins were white, except for the forward face of the boat deck doghouse, which was black. The big smokestack was black with a large white letter 'P'. The foremast was buff, while the main was all black. At no time did ALTADOC ever carry any form of the Paterson red and white diamond which most of the fleet's ships carried on their bows or (in a few cases) on their bridge rails. ALTADOC only very rarely ventured into the Welland Canal or below. She did winter a few times at Humberstone or at Toronto, but she served mainly on the grain run from the Canadi­ an Lakehead to Goderich. The reason for this was that she was one of the few Paterson steamers that was capable of towing consort barges, of which Paterson had four. The other two towing steamers were the 1902-built BRICOLDOC, (a) JAMES H. HOYT (26), and the 1890- built QUEDOC (i), (a) MARISKA (23), (b) KAMARIS (26), the latter originally a Minnesota fleetmate of MARICOPA. During the months of heavy grain movement, these three kept shut­ tling the four Paterson consort barges back and forth between the Lakehead and Goderich, and they normally wintered at the latter port as well. ALTADOC had a largely uneventful time under the Paterson houseflag, but we do know of one incident in which she was involved. On June 23, 1948, ALTADOC was upbound on Lake Superior, heading for the Canadian Lakehead with the barge KENORDOC (ii) in tow. There was fog over the lake at the time. When west of the Apostle Islands, the two vessels came into collision with the downbound ore-laden steamer E. A. S. CLARKE (ii) of the Interlake Steamship Com­ pany. None of the ships received very serious damage, but the CLARKE put about and headed back to Superior, Wisconsin, for repairs. ALTADOC and her barge were able to proceed on their way to their intended Lakehead destination. However, by the late 1950s, the era of the consort barges was pretty well over, and those few fleets that still had them were retiring them or using them only infrequently. In the