On This Day: June 14

Great Lakes & Seaway History

1873

The steamer PRINCESS was sold to Little and Fitzgerald. She was built in 1858, at Algonac, Michigan by Z. Pangborn.


1876

The wooden scow TINKER was launched at Leighton & Dunford’s yard in Port Huron, Michigan.


1954

W.F. WHITE crushed the tug OHIO against a pier in Buffalo and the latter was a total loss. The tug was refloated and scrapped at Cleveland in 1955.


1957

The Interlake Steamship Company freighter HARVEY H. BROWN, Captain Percy E. Mc Ginness, delivered the first cargo of coal to the new taconite loading port of Taconite Harbor, Minnesota.


1972

ROGER BLOUGH departed the shipyard in ballast on her maiden voyage for U.S. Steel Corp., bound for Two Harbors, Minnesota, to load 41,608 gross tons of taconite ore pellets. She was nearly a year late because of a fire in her engine room.


1977

ALMAR came to the Great Lakes under Greek registry in 1964. It caught fire in the engine room as c) IJESHA LION at Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and sustained major damage. The hull was abandoned by the owners, towed out to sea and scuttled in 1978.


1985

Captain Edward Rogowski passed away. Captain Rogowski started sailing as a deckhand on the 514 foot JOHN SHERWIN in 1936. He retired in 1982 as the first captain of the largest freighter on the Great Lakes, the 1,013 foot PAUL R TREGURTHA.


1988

The CONSUMERS POWER of 1927, with her former fleet mate JOHN T. HUTCHINSON, departed Lauzon, Quebec, in tow of the Panamanian tug/supply ship OMEGA 809, bound for a scrap yard in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.


Contributors & Sources

Skip Gillham, Jody Aho, Max Hanley, Joe Barr, David Swayze, Russ Plumb, Father Dowling Collection, Ahoy & Farewell II, The Marine Historical Society of Detroit and the Great Lakes Ships We Remember series.

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