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STEWART 4 CORT Cort finds ice on her first trip of the season. (Al Jewell) record, 27,500 gross tons, set by fleetmate Arthur B. Homer in 1970.The Cort would continue to surpass her own records throughout the 1972 shipping season, reaching a peak of 55,832 gross tons loaded on October 7 1,1972. During her first year, in Hinged hatch covers are one of the Stewart J. which she made 35 trips, the Cort Cort’s many innovations. (Andy LaBorde) carried more than 2 million tons of taconite, or about 2.5 percent of all the iron ore shipped on the Great Lakes in 1972. Other companies were forced to compete by building larger vessels and modernizing older ‘ones. U.S. Steel’s Great Lakes Fleet, by a stroke of bad luck, lost the chance to operate the Great Lakes’ largest vessel for a period before the Cort came out. Its 858- foot Roger Blough suffered a fire and explosion on June 24, 1971, while nearly complete at the American Ship Building Co, yard in Lorain, OH.,and needed to be extensively rebuilt. The Cort was already six weeks old by the time the Blough was ready to sail on her maiden voyage on June 15, 1972. The Blough, however, wasted no time in setting impressive tonnage totals of her own, Ua | Cort’s port propeller and rudder. (Roger LeLievre) KYS 2002 7