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Pe PR Ie The 1930 Record of Wrecks on the Great Lakes By Carlos C. Hanks REVIEW of the Great Lakes A for 1930 shows that the season of navigation will make a good showing when compared with other seasons, except 1929, which marked all-time tonnage carrying rec- ords in more than one commodity. While there was some deflection in the iron ore movement, it held up well with several of the last ten sea- sons. The grain movement also com- pares favorably with the past, while the 1930 shipment of coal ranks sec- ond to the 1929 figures with an ap- proximate total of 38,085,000 net tons, as compared with 39,383,842 net tons for the latter year. It is gratifying to record that the past season did not begin to exact the toll in ships and lives that weighed so heavily against the tonnage records of 1929. Four small cargo-carrying vessels, aggregating approximately 4500 gross tons, together with a dredge and a drill boat went down. The loss of these vessels claimed 65 lives, of which 38 are accounted for by a dyna- mite explosion following a bolt of lightning. This disaster, while actu- ally occurring in the St. Lawrence river, involves lake equipment and sailors, so it is included in this re- sume of the year’s wrecks. Though the loss of life is lament- ably high, it does not begin: to com- pare with 1929, when 111 people died in lake shipwrecks that claimed 19 vessels approximately 30,000 gross tons. The first disaster on the Great Lakes and tributary waters occurred on the afternoon of June 26, when a bolt of lightning from an almost cloudless Sky, set off twenty tons of dynamite, blew the drill boat J. B. Krne to kind- ling wood and killed 38 of her crew of 53 men. None of the survivors es- caped injury. Prompt work by the crew of the United States coast guard patrol voat No. 211, first on the scene, Saved several of the injured from drowning. The drill boat, the second largest vessel of its type in Canada, and val- ued at $250,000, was owned by J. P. Porter & Sons of St. Catharines, Ont., and was engaged at the time in blast- ing out shoals in the St. Lawrence Ship channel at Hillcrest off Cockburn island, three miles west of Brockville. The heavy loss of life was partially - due to the practice of having the night Shift sleep aboard the boat in quarters beneath. the water line, and the ma- jority of these men perished without having a chance to save themselves. The next loss occurred on June 27, when one of Lake Erie’s sudden sum- mer blows engulfed the dredge PATAPSCO, working west of the penin- sula off Erie, Pa. No lives were lost but only the boilers and a portion of her equipment could be salvaged by divers. The dredge owned by the Arundel & Monkers Construction Co., of Buffalo, was engaged on the city of Erie’s new water intake project and her sinking involved an estimated momentary loss of $30,000. The same lake also claimed the next vessel lost as well as 15 of her crew when the cargo of the stone carrier GEORGE J. WHELAN shifted during a squall early in the morning of July 29, and the steel boat rolled over and sank in 190 feet of water off Van Buren, N. Y. Captain T. J. Waage of Cleveland, chief engineer A. A. Wal- ters of Sandusky, and a woman cook were among those lost. The six sur- vivors, clinging to bits of wreckage, managed to attract the attention of the watch on the bulk freighter AMASA STONE, and were picked up and taken into Erie by that ship. The WHELAN, owned by the Kelly Island Lime & Transport Co., Cleve- land, was bound from Sandusky to Tonawanda with stone. Originally named the Erwin L. FisHer, the boat was built in 1910, was 220 feet long, 40 feet beam and measured 1430 gross tons. During the war the vessel, be- ing of canal size, was turned over to coast parties who renamed her the CLAREMONT. Recent years saw her re- turn under Canadian registry to the lakes coal trade in which she was engaged until purchased by her last owners in ‘the early spring of 1930. The WHELAN was abandoned as a total loss, estimated at $150,000. No other disaster occurred on the Great Lakes until the 40-mile gale of Sept. 26 and 27 lashed Lake Michigan to a fury that brought death to 12 persons and sank three small vessels. The first to succumb was the steel barge Satvor which broke loose from the tug RicHARD FITZGERALD and went ashore two miles north of the Muske- gon harbor entrance on the afternoon of Sept, 26. Seven of the barge crew including two women drifted ashore on a life raft, while two more men were saved by coast guards after clinging to a partially submerged der- rick for 16 hours. Four men and a boy were drowned. The barge, which was bringing a cargo of stone from Gill’s Rock, Wis., to Muskegon for use on a new break: Marine Revirw-—March, 1931 ¢ water, was owned by the T. L. Duro- cher Co., of Detour. She had a carry- ing capacity of 3,000 tons, was 253 feet long, 44 feet beam and was built in 1896 as a steamer the Jorny INEz. The Satvor was abandoned as a total loss amounting to about $75,000. The same afternoon marked also the passing of the last sailing vessel from Great Lakes service, when the gale overpowered and sank the old schooner Our Son twenty miles off Ludington, Mich. Captain Fred Nelson and his crew of six men were rescued by the freighter Witt1am Newson. The Our Son was built in 1875, was 182 feet long, 35 feet beam and measured 720 gross tons. The third storm victim was the 64- foot, diesel-driven fruit carrier Nort SHorRE, which went down somewhere off St. Joseph, Mich. with Captain E. J. Anderson, his bride of two weeks, and a crew of five men. No steel steamers must spend the winter on rocky shores as happened in 1929, and no constructive total losses confront the underwriters. The year’s record of wrecks reveals once more the fact that all disaster due to stress of weather involved only older and smaller ships, while the modern bulk carriers again came through a season without a casualty. Finish Tanker at Chester The 13,400-ton diesel bulk oil car- rier NoRtHERN Sun, built for the Mo- tor Tankship Corp., was launched at the yard of the Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., Chester, Pa; On Jan. 31. The new tanker, one of the largest built in the United States, has a capacity of 4,000,000 gallons and is 500 feet overall with a beam of 67 feet. She is propelled by a Sun Doxford opposed piston type internal combustion engine of 2700 horsepow- er, driving a single screw, giving her.a sea speed when fully loaded of 11 knots. Her trial runs were held on Feb. 10 and the ship was scheduled to leave in ballast for San Pedro on Feb. 11. She was 95 per cent com- pleted when launched. Elected General Manager Following a recent meeting of the board of directors of the New Eng- land Steamship Co., it was announced that effective Feb. 1, J. H. Lofland, marine superintendent of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Rail- road Co., had been appointed general manager of the New England Steam- ship Co., with offices at Pier 14, North river, New York. Mr. Lof- land, who is a graduate of Annapolis, was connected with the Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., for 16 years. He has been marine superintendent of the New Haven for the past six years and will continue in that capacity. 43