The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

become the new Kinsman Independent, and an older vessel of the same name would be sold overseas for scrap. During the early summer of 1988, the new Kinsman Independent received the red hull of Kinsman Lines, returning her color scheme to the one she carried in her Hutchinson days. The vessel sailed on its maiden voyage for Kinsman in late June, settling quickly into her typical Duluth-Superior to Buffalo run. The vessel would make occasional depar- tures from this routine, most notably visiting Thunder Bay to load. The most serious acci- dent to befall the vessel during her career took place on one of those Thunder Bay runs on Nov. 24, 1990. While the normal route from eastern Lake Superior into Thunder Bay involves going around the eastern side of 44-mile long Isle Royale, the Kinsman Independent wound up miles off course and ran hard aground off the middle of Isle Royale in darkness early that cold November Saturday morning. The damage ran into the mil- lions, and the vessel had to be towed into Thunder Bay for repair. While it was rumored that her career might be over, Independent was repaired over the winter of 1990-'91 and resumed service. During the 1990s, the grain trade for U.S. straight-deckers continued its decline. Interlake Steamship Co.'s J.L. Mauthe was laid up on July 5, 1993, after spending most of the pre- vious decade on a similar grain run. Even Kinsman’s business declined sufficiently so that by the end of the 1995 season, the fleet’s other vessel, the Kinsman Enterprise, became excess capacity (she was towed away for scrap in 2002). With further declines in business, the Kinsman Independent soon found her- self with summers off, sailing only during the spring and fall grain rushes. Gone were the days where an occasional iron ore load might keep her busy dur- ing slow times in the grain busi- Fueling the rumor that Kinsman Independent's days were numbered was news that the grain elevator in Buffalo, where the Independent docked, was due to be fitted with a hop- per to receive grain from self- unloaders, making the labor- intensive unloading process used by the Kinsman Independent obsolete. The hop- per was installed and success- fully used during the 2002 sea- ‘on. Kinsman Independent tied at Buffalo with a storage cargo ae during the winter of 2002-'03, with no word yet as to what her Kinsman Independent in winter lay-up at Buffalo. future holds. (Brian Wroblewski) KYS 2003