1853
GENERAL SCOTT (wooden side-wheeler, 105 foot, 64 tons, built in 1852, at Saginaw, Michigan) was tied up to her dock on the Saginaw River when she was crushed beyond repair by ice that flowed down the river during the spring breakup. One newspaper report said that while the vessel was being cleaned up for the new navigation season, a seacock was left open and she sank before the spring breakup.
1874
The two schooners NORTH STAR and EVENING STAR were launched at Crosthwaite’s shipyard in East Saginaw, Michigan. They were both owned by John Kelderhouse of Buffalo, New York.
1908
MARLHILL was launched as a.) HARRY A. BERWIND (Hull#40) at Ecorse, Michigan by Great Lakes Engineering Works for G. A. Tomlinson of Duluth, Minnesota.
1951
NOTRE DAME VICTORY was floated from the drydock after three months and two days and was rechristened b.) CLIFFS VICTORY.
1959
The retired sidewheel steamer WESTERN STATES, known as S.S. OVERNIGHTER, caught fire while waiting to be scrapped in 1959. The vessel had last sailed in 1950 and had briefly served as a flotel at Tawas, MI, before being sold for scrap. Final demolition of the hull was completed at Bay City later in the year.
1965
Pittsburgh Steamship Co.’s GEORGE F. BAKER was sold to the Kinsman Marine Transit Co., Cleveland, Ohio, and renamed b) HENRY STEINBRENNER.
1970
The West German freighter WILHELM NUBEL made one trip through the Seaway in 1959. It sustained machinery failure as c) SAN GERASSIMOS following an engine room fire on this date in 1970. The vessel was traveling from Galatz, Romania, to Lisbon, Portugal, with a cargo of maize and had to be abandoned by the crew. While taken in tow by the tanker STAVROS E., the ship sank in heavy weather in the Ionian Sea.
1982
The c.) CHEMICAL MAR of 1966 sustained severe damage when sulfuric acid leaked into the pump room while she was discharging her cargo at the island of Curacao. Flooding occurred later and the vessel was declared a constructive total loss. She was scrapped at Brownsville, Texas in 1983. From 1979 until 1981, CHEMICAL MAR was named b.) COASTAL TRANSPORT for the Hall Corp. of Canada. She never entered the lakes under that name.
1998
Three crewmembers were killed by phosphine gas when they went to assess flooding damage in #1 hold after the MARIA A. encountered heavy weather on the South Atlantic. The ship, en route from Argentina to Jordan with wheat, put into Paranagua, Brazil for repairs. The ship had been a Seaway caller as RIGHTEOUS beginning in 1979 and as AFSAR in 1986. While renamed ARIA later in 1998, the British built bulk carrier was never repaired and was either scuttled or scrapped.
2018
Algoma Central Corp. CFO Peter Winkley said in a story appearing in the March 2018 issue of Canadian Sailings magazine that Algoma has decided to scrap the veteran laker AMERICAN VICTORY. He further stated that Algoma is still studying the “best reconfiguration” for AMERICAN VALOR. Both are steamers Algoma acquired from American Steamship Co. late last December. Their two other acquisitions, BUFFALO and ADAM E. CORNELIUS, will sail this season as ALGOMA BUFFALO and ALGOMA COMPASS. Winkley said the price for the four vessels “was attractive enough to make the purchase a useful stop-gap measure.”
Contributors & Sources
Skip Gillham, Max Hanley, Joe Barr, Dave Swayze, Ahoy & Farewell II, and the Great Lakes Ships We Remember series from the Marine Historical Society of Detroit.
Compiled & Maintained by Roger LeLievre
