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The Ashtabula yard of the Great Lakes Engineering works, was closed down on March 9, 1961, and on May 26, 1961 was sold to the American Ship Building Company. In August, 1961 the dry dock was leased to the Luria Brothers, a large scrap metal concern, for use in their ship breaking operations. The old Straits of Mackinaw car ferry, Ste. Marie, was scrapped there during the winter of 1961-62. In October 1961 it was rumored that some of the land might be sold for the construction of a steel mill.31 But until the river is further improved to accommodate the giant freighters being built, the probability of the facilities being used is slight. So ends a shipbuilding site which has run the complete gamut of operations, from shipbuilding to ship breaking - at least at this writing. There are few shipbuilding concerns which have not ended as the property of the American Ship Building Company since 1900. Those few are, or were, relatively small in their operations. The only firm which did extensive building was the Great Lakes Towing Company, at Cleveland, Ohio. They maintained a small tug repair yard on the east side of the river at Jefferson Street. The site formerly was occupied by Pat Smith up to 1899, but it was not until 1909 that Great Lakes Towing began building their own tugs. In that year they built the tugs William A. Field, E. M. Pierce, and Yale. From then until 1931 they built fifty-six tugs, two lighters and a machinery scow, all for their own harbor towing and salvage business. In 1919 they also built a floating dry dock which was eighty feet long and forty-five feet wide. From 1931 to 1950 the yard was used for repair and modernization of tugs. In 1950 the yard was partially burned when oil in the river caught fire. After this, Great Lakes Towing acquired property from the Nottingham Steel Company along the Old River Bed and moved their repair yard and floating dry dock to that location. Today the yard, under the guidance of Captain John Kelsner, is used to modernize and dieselize their tugs and keep them in repair. Two small shipbuilding concerns operated in the Greater Cleveland area during World War I. The Ohio Ship Building Company had a small yard at East 40th Street. F. J. Sullivan was the president and treasurer, Thomas Deegan the vice-president, and R. G. Floyd the secretary. Their offices were at 409 Superior Avenue. Little is known of their operations. In 1918 they rebuilt the schooner-barge Thomas Quayle for the coal trade. In 1919 they built the trawler Penguin and six concrete car floats. After that, they apparently dropped from the scene. In 1917 the Rocky River Dry Dock Company was established on the west side of Rocky River, just north of the viaduct. Superintendent of the yard was Alec Sheppard.32 They built three submarine chasers for the Navy and six mine planters for the 110