42 • Summer 2018 • http://www.shipsmonthly.com
Still in operation on the Lakes, and
still burning coal, is the ferry Badger,
which maintains a seasonal route
between Manitowac, Wisconsin and
Ludington, Michigan between May
and October. Completed in 1952
at Sturgeon Bay, Badger measures
410ft by 59ft and is powered by two
Skinner Unafl ow reciprocating steam
engines fed by coal-burning Foster-
Wheeler boilers.
Although laid up in 1990, the
former rail ferry was refurbished
and returned to service as apassenger/vehicle carrier thanks
to the efforts of Charles Conrad,
who purchased the Michigan-
Wisconsin Transportation Co in the
early 1990s, renaming it the Lake
Michigan Carferry Co.
The coal-fi red vessel was
designated a US National Historic
Landmark in 2016, and over the last
several years has been retrofi tted
so that it can store is coal ash,
which amounts to about four tons
a day, aboard for disposal ashore
rather than over the side.the coAl-burning bAdger
A coal-burner still in operation on the Lakes is the 1952-built Badger,
which is powered by two Skinner Unaflow reciprocating steam engines fed
by coal-burning Foster-Wheeler boilers. Jim SHawsuperstructure-aft confi guration
and do not carry a conveyor-
based unloading system.
Among the largest of these
are a series of eight 36,000dwt
bulk carriers built by Japan’s
Oshima Shipbuilding for
Montreal-based Fednav. These
geared bulkers follow an earlier
class of six ships built in China
in 1996-97 and are currently
employed moving steel
inbound and bulk agricultural
products outbound. They
can lift about 27,000 metric
tons while meeting the 26ft
draught restriction of the
Welland Canal locks.
Similar in design are a
series of six ships built by
Japan’s Mitsui Engineering
and Shipbuilding for the
Polish Steamship Company.
These 34,000dwt vessels are
also geared and have been
employed on long-term
contracts moving steel and
grain, the latter normally to
Europe or North Africa.
Another European operator
trading regularly into the
Lakes but with more versatile
multipurpose vessels, is
Wagenborg Shipping of the
Netherlands, which moves
such cargoes as inbound
wood pulp and outbound
sugar beet pellets.retired ships
The fresh waters of the
Great Lakes have enabled
a large number of historic
vessels to be preserved, most
maintained afl oat but some on
land. At Duluth, Minnesota
the 80-year-old bulk carrier
William A. Irvin is moored at
the city’s Canal Park. Once the
fl agship of the United States
Steel Company, the 8,240gt
ship was completed in 1938
by the American Shipbuilding
Co at Lorain, Ohio and retired
from service in 1978.
Two more well-preserved
Lakers can be found at
Toledo, Ohio and Cleveland,
Ohio. Willis B. Boyer, built
in 1911 as Col James M.
Schoonmaker for Shenango
Furnace Co, is on display at
the Great Lakes Historical
Society’s National Museum Built in 1949 as the first new American-built Great Lakes vessel constructed
after World War II, the 18-hatch Wilfred Sykes under an ore dock where rail
wagons discharge into bins that load the ship though steel chutes. DaviD Ruffof the Great Lakes at Toledo.
Cleveland’s William G.
Mather, built in 1925, served
her entire working life for
Cleveland Cliffs Co, but was
donated to the Great Lakes
Historical Society in 1987
and after restoration was open
as a waterfront museum at
Cleveland in 1991.preserved ‘whAlebAcK’
An oddity on the Lakes,
and now displayed ashore at
Superior, Wisconsin, is the
‘whaleback’ freighter Meteor.
Built as Frank Rockefeller
in 1896, the whaleback was
designed around a cigar-
shaped hull, fi tted with
conoidal ends to allow easy
passage in rough weather. A
number of these ships were
built, a variant becoming the
Doxford turret ship, but onlythe 122-year-old Meteor has
survived. She was converted
into a tanker during World
War II, then retired in 1969
and later purchased by the
City of Superior for use as
a static museum at Bakers
Island, where she rests today.