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Ship of the M o n t h No. 218 THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN F I V E 4. The Story of the Barge BRYN MAWR Last month, we not ed that we chose our Ship of the M o n t h be cause we had not fe atured a vess el of her type for quite some time, and hence we sele ct ed a U . S. upper lake packa ge freighter. Look i n g aro un d for other types of lake ships that we might have o v e r l o o k e d whe n choo si ng subje ct s for feature a r ticles, we found that one p a r t i c u l a r class of ve ssel has been almost f o r g o t ten c o m p l e t e l y in these pages. In fact, on only two occ a s i o n s have we fe atured a consort barge built for the bulk cargo trades on the upp er lakes. Back in the summer of 1973, we fe atured A G A W A (I), w h i c h was be tter k n o w n after she was con ve rt ed to a steamer, and most people k new her as the Quebe c & Ont ar io T r a n s p o r t a t i o n Com pany's H E R O N BAY (I). The secon d upp er lake barge that we feat ur ed was MALTA, later known as T H U N D E R BAY (I). She also was best kno wn for her years of service after she was g iven her own power, and most peopl e will reme mb er her as the Bran ch Lines tanker PINEBRANCH. We feat ur ed her in April of 1978. Many of today's sh ipping ob servers will never have seen a consort barge in service. The y have seen all sorts of tug/b ar ge co mb in ations, rang in g from the v ery small to the 1, 00 0-foot PRESQ UE ISLE, but un less they were w a t c h i n g ships back in the early 1960s (or earlier), they will not have had the p l e a sure of seeing a tr ad itional lake freight steamer towin g a barge of almost the same size! Indeed, the e arly 1960s saw the last gasp of such opera ti on s on the lakes, and by then only a very few consort ba rges still wer e in active service. What was the purpose of to wing such big barges in upper lake bulk trades? Large fleets, such as the M i n n e s o t a S t e amship Company, whose ships mai n l y ca r ried iron ore from Lake Super io r to Lake Erie ports, thought that ore could be carri ed more e f f i c i e n t l y and e c o n o m i c a l l y if each of the big s t e a m ers towed a barge. Each stea me r wou ld be e q u ipped wit h a very powe rf ul e n gine, and her barge w o u l d have its own st eering appa ra tu s so that it wou ld be r e a s o n a b l y m a n o e u v r a b l e w h e n out at the end of a towline. The barge could be op erated wit h only a v e r y small crew. At the larger ore docks, both ste amer and barge could be loaded or u n l o a d e d together, but at smaller f a c i lities, the steamer, once hers e l f unloaded, could pick up a light barge left b ehind by anothe r steamer, and leave the barge she had brought so the next steamer could pick it up later. In the latter years of the n i n e t e e n t h century, the idea of consort barges was quite popular, but the big barges we re built for only a few years. The concept fell from favour in the early years of the tw entieth century, whe n more mo d e r n cons t r u c t i o n meth o d s all ow ed larger steamers to be built, ma k i n g the use of cum bersome barges unn ec es sa ry . Never th el es s, most of the barges that had been built in those few years r e m ained in o p e r a t i o n for many years indeed, some of them ru nning for more than half a century. One of the iron ore t r a n s p o r t a t i o n fleets that adop t e d the concept of barge towing was the origina l P i t t s b u r g h St ea mship Company, w hich was owned by the famous steel ma gnate A n d r e w Carnegie, and mana g e d for him by H enry W. O l i ver. This fleet was c o m p r i s e d of thir te en vessels. Four of these were the 266-f oot sisterships GRIFFIN, JOLIET, LASA L L E and WAWATAM, whi ch were a c qui re d in N o v ember of 1898 from the Lake Superio r Iron Company. Three more ships were p u r c h a s e d in 1899, the steamer CL ARENCE A. BLA CK from the N o r thern Lakes Steamship Company, of Detroit, and the st eamer WILL I A M R. LINN and consort barge C A R R I N G T O N from C. W. Elph ic ke & Company, of Chicago. By far the most famous of the Car ne gi e and Ol iver boats, however, were the six ves sels that c o m prised what came to be known as "The College Line". Of these, five were s i stership steamers, a p p r o x i m a t e l y 454 x 50 x 2 8 . 5 (there were slight var ia tions), and of just over 5000 Gross Tons, while one was a