1907
1907: WILLIAM NOTTINGHAM broke loose in wild winds and flooding at Buffalo. When the storm subsided, the ship had come to rest high and dry about 440 yards from the channel. A total of 12 vessels stranded in the storm but this one was the biggest challenge. A new channel had to be dug to refloat the vessel.
1911
1911: January 20, 1911 – The ANN ARBOR NO 5 made her first trip into Kewaunee.
1917
1917: On January 20, 1917, American Ship Building’s Lorain yard launched the steel bulk freighter EUGENE W. PARGNY for the Pittsburgh Steamship Co.
1923
1923: On 20 January 1923, CHOCTAW (steel propeller packet, 75 foot, 53 gross tons, built in 1911, at Collingwood) burned at her dock at Port Stanley, Ontario.
1942
1942: LAKE FLAMBEAU Believed torpedoed off St. John’s on January 20, 1942
1960
1960: LAKE KYTTLE, under tow as b) JAMES SHERIDAN, foundered in a storm on Long Island Sound. The ship had been built at Manitowoc in 1918 and converted to a barge at River Rouge in 1927 before returning to the sea about 1945.
1962
1962: The Liberty ship FIDES was a Seaway visitor in 1961. It went aground at Grosser Vogelsand, in the Elbe Estuary and broke in two as a total loss.
1975
1975: The tug Built as the [CHARLIE S in 1954 C-197522, Renamed CATHY McALLISTER in 1975, Renamed SEVEN SISTERS, Renamed Doc Morin in 2005] sank alongside the dock at Montreal as CATHY McALLISTER after suffering some grounding damage on the St. Lawrence. The vessel was salvaged on February 13, 1975. It was scrapped at Port Weller as d) DOC MORIN in the fall of 2011.
1979
1979: ZAMOSC first came to the Great Lakes in 1971. It was enroute from Montreal to Antwerp when in a collision with the JINEI MARU off Terneuzen, Holland. The damaged ship was beached but it heeled over in the sand and had to be broken up.
1980
1980: 20 January 1980 – The E. M. FORD (406 foot, 4,498 gross tons, built in 1898, at Lorain, Ohio as a bulk freighter, converted to self-unloading bulk cement carrier in 1956, at Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin) was raised at her dock in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She sank on Christmas Eve of 1979, when gale force winds forced her from her moorings and repeatedly slammed her bow into the dock facing. Crews had to remove a solid three feet of hardened cement and patch her holed bow before she could be re-floated.
1981
1981: The former SILVER FIR, a Seaway caller in 1977, ran aground and became a total off Libya as d) GALAXY II.
1981: NORDIC BLOSSOM was launched January 20, 1981 as the a.) NORDIC SUN.
1983
1983: The YDRA sustained an engine room fire and went aground about a mile east of Bizerta, Tunisia, as a total loss. All on board were saved and the hull is still there. The ship first came to the Great Lakes as a) MANCHESTER PORT in 1966 and was back as b) BIOKOVO in 1972.
2023
2023: Richard Gray, second mate on the American Steamship Co. 1,000-footer Walter J. McCarthy Jr., died Monday night in a shipboard accident. 1-20-2023
2025
2025: Algoma Central has acquired two 2009 built, 16,600 dwt product tankers from Norway’s Knutsen OAS Shipping.
