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ee oe ee ee, Kinsman has acquired seven Great Lakes bulk freighters from Amer- ican Steamship (BoCo) as part payment for a self-unloader un- der construction in Toledo by American Shipbuilding. The deal was consummated Jan. 10. This brings the Kinsman fleet up to 23 vessels with the addition of CHICAGO TRADER, GEORGE D. GOBLE, WILLIAM A. REISS, RAYMOND He REISS, JOSEPH S. MORROW, OTTO M. REISS and JOHN P. REISS. The latter two may be sold to a Ham- ilton scrap dealer. American Ship has also announced plans to buy the Wilson fleet of 10 boats but there is no recent news of progress in thesé nego- tiations. The J. BURTON AYERS plowed Lake Erie Jan. 13 enroute from Buffa- lo to Lorain where she is sched- uled to receive a deck strapping job. This will give her, in ef- fect, an extra six inches of draft and let her carry an extra 400 gross tons of cargo. ‘Two o- ther Wilson boats will get the same treatment, J.H»HILLMAN at Lorain and THOMAS WILSON at Erie. The MEDUSA CHALLENGER was due in winter quarters at Manitowoc on Jan. 15 after delivering her 94 cargo of the year at Milwaukee, completing 293 days of operation which is a long season even for a cement boat. When she deliver- ed a cargo in Chicago the first week in January, she was hailed as the latest vessel ever to en- ter the Chicago River's downtown loop on a commercial visit. Will contracts be let this year for construction of 10 new dry bulk carriers, seven smaller vessels and 17 major conver- sions? Andrew E. Gibson, assis— tant Secretary of Commerce for Maritime Affairs, in a speech in New York in January, said sever- al Great lakes companies have plans to undertake construction. A check of companies listed by a spokesman for the Maritime Ad- ministration (MarAd), however, indicates these plans may be several years in reaching the contract stage and, in fact, company directors have not yet even been asked to approve such expenditures in most cases. Ten companies were listed by MarAd as having applied for establish- ment of capital construction funds. Seven have been approved: American Steamship, Kinsman Mar- ine Transit, Pickands, Mather, Oglebay Norton, Cleveland Cliffs Ford and O. L. Schmidt. The three pending applications are: Ashland Oil, lLuedtke #ngineer- ing and Hannah Inland Waterways. It has already been announced that Amship is building two and P-M is lengthening the BEEGHLY. Other "plans" remain highly ten- tative although Cliffs indicated they were contemplating cons- truction of three diesel-powered self-unloaders, two of convent- ional size and one somewhat smaller. On Jan. 18 the polar icebreaker EDISTO went to the Straits to free CASON J. CALLAWAY which got stuck while upbound for pellets. The same day the cutter SUNDEW freed IRVING S. OLDS, downbound for Chicago while the KAW freed PETER REISS, downbound in the lower Detroit River with salt for Fairport, 0., and a little farther downstream BRAMBLE was assisting HENRY FORD II, enroute to Toledo for coal. ARUNDEL and WOODBINE were at Muskegon work- ing with the tanker MERCURY and tug JAMES A. HANNAH. Busynday! Negotiations for purchase of the YMOND H. REISS by Cleveland Cliffs from Kinsman are nearing final stages. With long-term charter of GIRDLER, WHITE and