American Victory

Perhaps an unlucky omen, she was launched on Halloween 1942 as the tanker Marquette. She was built by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s yard in Sparrows Point, Maryland, as an oiler for the U.S. Navy. However the vessel was commissioned USS Neshanic (AO-71) and entered service in April 1943. During her first year, she was involved in several close encounters with enemy submarines and air attacks on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. On June 18, 1944, her luck ran out, as she was hit with a bomb from a Japanese plane while refueling a destroyer. She tied up alongside a sister ship, the Saranac, and some of the Saranac’s injured crew (she was also attacked) were treated aboard the Neshanic. The Neshanic was later repaired and was decommissioned in December 1945.

In 1947, she was sold to the Gulf Oil Co. and renamed Gulfoil. The years to follow were much less eventful than her war years until August 7, 1958, when she collided with the tanker S. E. Graham near Newport, Rhode Island. The Graham exploded, and the Gulfoil was heavily damaged, with 15 of her crew killed. After the collision, Gulfoil was taken to Baltimore, where it was determined that her engine spaces had not sustained unrepairable damage. The vessel was converted to a straight deck bulk carrier, her pilothouse and forward cabins were moved to the bow and, after lengthening and widening with the new midbody, she was purchased by the Pioneer Steamship Co. (Hutchinson & Co. mgrs.) and renamed Pioneer Challenger.

Pioneer Challenger entered service on July 16, 1961. The vessel was constructed as a maximum sized Seaway carrier, 730 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 39 feet 3 inches deep. With her steam turbine plant producing 7,700 horsepower, the Pioneer Challenger was capable of over 16 miles per hour under full load, and remained faster than most vessels on the Great Lakes. The Pioneer subsidiary of Hutchinson was disbanded at the end of 1961, and the vessels were sold to various other fleets. The Columbia Transportation Division of Oglebay Norton Company acquired the Pioneer Challenger and renamed her Middletown in 1962.

Over the next 20 years, the vessel would follow a steady trade route, often carrying taconite pellets from the Reserve Mining Company plant in Silver Bay down to the Torco dock in Toledo. As the steel industry and shipping on the Great Lakes entered a downturn in 1982, the Middletown received what was certainly the reprieve which kept her from a premature end to her Great Lakes career. The Middletown was converted to a self-unloader at Bay Shipbuilding Company in Sturgeon Bay, and this not only cut down her unloading time but also allowed her more flexibility in ports she could visit as well as being profitable in different types of cargoes. Because of the hull design of the vessel, including the old saltwater tanker parts, the deck apparatus of the Middletown’s self-unloading system was built to a lower profile than Bay Shipbuilding Company’s other conversions of the era and much lower than the Fraser Shipyard’s conversions.

The vessel began carrying a greater number of coal cargoes, and on one of those trips, disaster again struck the ship. On September 15, 1986, while on her way to Port Washington, Wis., some methane gas (which can be a by-product of coal) gathered and ignited in her boiler room, causing an explosion. The vessel raced into port in an effort to treat injured crewmembers quickly. After this incident, all Great Lakes vessels began taking regular readings of gases in the cargo holds while carrying coal, in an effort to prevent a similar build-up of dangerous, invisible gases.

The 1990 season saw the Middletown involved in a pair of notable events exactly one month apart. On April 19, 1990, the Middletown took on the first cargo at the reactivated Silver Bay plant, which had closed in 1986 and was reopened by Cyprus Minerals. A month later, on May 19, the Middletown was being towed out of Fraser Shipyards in Superior by the tug New Jersey. In strong winds, the tug went aground, and was later pulled off by the tug Minnesota, undamaged. The Middletown was also undamaged in this incident.

Throughout the 1990s, the Middletown followed her own three-leg trade pattern for Oglebay Norton Company. A typical trip started at the Northshore Mining dock in Silver Bay to load pellets. The pellets were taken to the Pinney Dock in Ashtabula to be unloaded, and the Middletown usually shifted over to the coal dock. The vessel then took on a coal cargo, usually for Milwaukee Bulk Terminal, but sometimes for Port Washington. After unloading on Lake Michigan, the vessel returned to Silver Bay empty. The vessel made occasional departures from this route, including loads of iron ore at Duluth or Taconite Harbor, unloading ore in Toledo, and even some coal loads out of Superior Midwest Energy Terminal.

On June 6, 2006, in a joint announcement made with American Steamship Compamy of Williamsville, New York, Oglebay Norton Company announced the sale of the Middletown and five of her fleetmates to American Steamship for $120 million. With the sale came a new name: American Victory. The other vessels going to ASC were the Armco, Columbia Star, Courtney Burton, Fred R. White Jr. and Oglebay Norton.

American Victory entered long-term lay-up November 12, 2008, at Superior, Wisconsin, a victim of that year’s economic downturn. In late December 2017, she and three other American Steamship Company vessels (the others were Buffalo, Adam E. Cornelius and American Valor) were sold to the Algoma Central Corp. of St. Catharines, Ontario. Although the Canadian flag was hoisted on the stern, American Victory was never registered in Canada. She was sold for scrap in the spring of 2018.