Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Scanner, v. 29, no. 2 (November 1996), p. 12

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

Ship of the Month - cont'd. vived the sinking and managed to make their way safely to shore. 12. LIVINGSTON had a close call in March of 1943. There are different versions of what occurred, but what is certain is that LIVINGSTON was a member of convoy SC 122. She reportedly was bound from New York to St. John's, N e w foundland, with a cargo of United States military stores. One report stated that the convoy was attacked and its vessels scattered, while a seemingly more believable account has LIVINGSTON falling out of convoy in heavy we a ther. In any event, it seems that LIVINGSTON was able to reach the safety of the harbour at St. John's on her own. A year and a half later, however, her luck finally ran out. On Sunday, Sep tember 3rd, 1944, LIVINGSTON was en route from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to St. John's, on a voyage that had begun at Boston, Massachusetts. Some 80 miles east of Cape Breton Island, in position 46°15' N. by 58°05' W., the ship was torpedoed by U-541. She sank quickly, and 14 of her crew of 28 were lost. LIVINGSTON and WATERTON were pretty ships and good carriers. They survived the effects of the Great Depression and the foundering of their original ow ner, but nothing could save them from the unexpected dangers of wartime ope ration on salt water. Had they survived the hostilities, we might even have seen them back on the lakes in the years before the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, something that would have given us much pleasure. The old saying that "the good die young" has particular significance in respect of these two steamers. * * * Ed. N o t e : We are pleased to be able to bring you some very fine photographs of LIVINGSTON and WATERTON to accompany this feature. We had many from which to choose, and we wish we could have shown all of them to our readers. For ships that had relatively short lives, they were often photographed, and this may have been because they were such good-looking boats. For details of the loss ofLIVINGSTON and WATERTON, we acknowledge the assistance provided by "Great Lakes Ships Lost by Enemy Action in the 20th Century", an as-yet-unpublished manuscript by T. M. H . S. member, Rev. Peter J. Van der Linden. * * * * * OF DALHOUSIE ROVER AND OTHER THINGS We never duce for details tors may feature, cease to be amazed at the items that our members are able to pro us as follow-ups to our feature articles. Sometimes there are more concerning the featured ship, while on other occasions, contribu pick up on something else that was mentioned during the course of a and carry that subject forward. T. M. H . S. member Don Boone, of Collingwood, has recalled that he was a fire man aboard the then-steam-powered Canadian Dredge & Dock Company tug G. W. ROGERS, longtime partner of TRAVELLER (the former DALHOUSIE ROVER), when the company was doing dredging operations at Prescott in 1956. This was part of Canadian Dredge & Dock's major involvement in the preparations for the coming of the St. Lawrence Seaway. In our Mid-Summer issue feature on DALHOUSIE ROVER, we mentioned the May 3rd, 1947, incident, wherein TOWMASTER (the former DALHOUSIE ROVER) and HELENA encountered problems in getting the United States Maritime Commission scrap steamer (and former longtime member of the fleet of the Great Lakes Steamship Company) B. LYMAN SMITH through the Burlington Canal, at the en trance to Hamilton Harbour, in heavy weather. The SMITH was bound for the Stelco scrapyard. We noted that Capt. Herbert Oates commanded TOWMASTER at that time, while HELENA was under the command of Capt. W. J. Hawman. Don

Powered by / Alimenté par VITA Toolkit
Privacy Policy