Harbors

These days South Haven's a tourist and retiree town, mostly, and during the season the harbor's full of sailboats. Of course, most are out of the water by November. But the empty docks have their attractions.

South Haven's harbor, again.

Why we stay at South Haven's Old Harbor Inn....

"Sunday Nov. 6, 1938 Discarded barge 'Grampian' of the Blodgett fleet rotting on river front" Grampian's name honors a mountain range in Scotland. She was built at the Davidson Shipyard in 1894, and had been laid up at the same yard since 1930 when this photo was taken. The hull wouldn't be officially retired for several more years. You can see the remains of a rotting dock, here, and the entrance to one of the Davidson yard's abandoned slips. John Greenwood's book Namesakes 1930-1955 has a very similar photo, dated 1941. The main difference, besides more closely framing the subject, is that a power line's been run across the river in the interim. That looks to be the stern of Chieftain in the foreground, by the way. There's more information about the Davidson yard with the Chieftain photo in this collection. There's a 1915 diagram of the shipyard on this plat map , roughly in the center of the riverfront section. Borucki's Lakers

The prettiest place I know: Sleeping Bear Bay on Lake Michigan, on a cold February day. Glen Haven, now a cute little near-ghost town, was once a Great Lakes port, originally shipping lumber then later shipping fruit products. The pilings in this photo are a remnant of that past . That acknowledged, I find it really quite difficult to imagine this place as an active harbor .

"Sunday Nov. 6, 1938 Discarded Steam barge 'Sacremento' [sic] of Davidson fleet rotting in slip at Davidson shipyard" I've seen this ship's name misspelled often enough to wonder if perhaps she wore that spelling on her hull. Like her consort Chieftain, she'd been sitting untended in this slip since 1929 when Mr. Borucki made this photo, which was taken shortly before she was formally abandoned. John Devendorf's Great Lakes Bulk Carriers 1869-1985 tells me that remnants of the ship remained visible on the waterfront into the 1980s, when Bay City recovered the area as Veterans Park. Her rudder is preserved in the park; the remainder of the ruined ship was reportedly buried when the park developers filled the slip. Sacramento was built in 1895 at this yard as a 302 foot steamship (some sources say 307). Davidson Steamship's all-wooden fleet , including this ship, was discarded as obsolete in the late '20s. More information about that, and the shipyard, at the Chieftain writeup . Borucki's Lakers

Been reading about the history of the Duluth-Superior harbor for the past few days, which sent me looking for photos. This one dates from 1990 and shows tug Essayons at, I think, the Bunge Dock on Duluth's Rice Point. I shot it from the harbor tour boat with a cheap point-&-shoot camera. Essayons was originally Corps of Engineers tug, as her name suggests (that name's the Corps' slogan, which can be translated "Let us try.") The vessel was later sold to Zenith Dredge, and later yet to a private owner who planned to convert her into a waterborne B&B. Since I've not been able to find dates for those transactions, I'm not sure who owned her when the photo was taken. In the late 70s she was converted from steam to diesel power. Her old powerplant is on display at the Duluth Marine Museum, the installation of which is discussed here . A couple years ago she sank in this slip at the age of 101 years. This was her second sinking, I'm told, and the third major mishap of her career. When we visited Duluth in 2009 all that was visible was the top of her cabin and most of the stack .

Another Duluth-Superior photo, this one of the curvy high-level bridge that carries US-2 across the harbor. This bridge replaced a similarly-curvy bridge (great pix; go, look) which was much nearer water level. Dick Bong was a WWII fighter pilot, from Poplar, Wisconsin. Bong was credited with shooting down over 40 Japanese aircraft and was considered the United States Ace of Aces . He died in an aircraft testing incident in Burbank, California, on the same day as the Hiroshima bombing. Over the years I've taken several tours of this harbor . During one of those tours the guide made quite a point about the bridge--named after a Pacific War hero and crossing the world's greatest iron-shipping harbor--being built of Japanese steel. Ah, irony.

Fayette State Park's most important artifact, in 1981. Lake Michigan in the background.

Museum ship in Duluth, Minnesota; photo taken in August of 1988. Posting this today largely because this ship is not the Irvin.

A charcoal iron furnace consumes three main ingredients: Iron ore (of course), limestone, and a forest (to be reduced to charcoal). For Jackson Iron's purposes, Snail Shell Harbor was nearly perfect. There's a limestone cliff within sight of the furnace, forests surrounded the townsite, and Samuel Tilden's new-built Peninsula Railroad was delighted to connect the furnace with the company's mine. And the waterfront, as you see, was mere feet from the furnace. That, too, was a consideration. =============== Fayette State Park in 1981.

Around the time Jackson Iron built Fayette's charcoal iron village, the British iron industry closed down its last charcoal furnace. According to the British iron masters, charcoal iron was expensive and technologically obsolete; moreover the devastation caused by the method was considered unacceptable. What was different in Michigan? In June of 1981 I was halfway through my long-delayed senior year of college, and had just turned in a senior paper which I'd originally expected to address that question. But I soon discovered: * the answer was relatively obvious, * someone had already written that paper, and * I knew that paper's author. So I'd adjusted my focus, and spent spring term examining the business infrastructure supporting mining on the Marquette Range. That, too, was inspired by Fayette. Maria Quinlan Leiby's SUNY Oneonta MA thesis " Charcoal Iron-Making at Fayette, Michigan, 1867-1890 " asked my question, and concluded that America really was different. Forests were abundant, the patent-impaired American steel industry hadn't fully taken root, environmental concerns weren't nearly so prevalent, and (most important) the engineers running America's railroads preferred charcoal iron for making rail car wheels. (Evidently coke-fired iron wheels were more prone to fracture.) Others have since argued that Fayette and its Pennsylvania competitors were advancing the technology and had grown more efficient than the abandoned British operations. Maria was (is) a bicyclist, and we'd first met at a conference some years before. We'd occasionally ridden together, and I'd worked with her husband, another bike club president, on bicycling causes. I'd known she was a state-employed historian, but hadn't known she'd studied Fayette. It was a bit of a shock, but a pleasant one. Small world. ================ A slightly-related story, posted today on a dabbler's journal .

Last time we were in Petoskey this light was buried in ice (linked photo is not my picture). Far less dramatic this time. But Petoskey is always pretty. That's Harbor Springs across Little Traverse Bay.

"Taken March 29, 1940 at ft of Riopelle St. Nose of whaleback South Park." Third of three photos of this ship; I gave a detailed ship bio a few weeks ago . This is a fascinating photo, really; interesting detail. This is a lot more like a photo I'd take than the typical Borucki shot. Borucki's Lakers

In 1988, I believe. We used to visit Milwaukee with some regularity. We'd take in a game or two at County Stadium, visit the Arboretum, eat at a couple neat restaurants, tour the breweries, and wander the waterfront. Fun times. This saltwater ship was apparently built in 1979. There are many pictures of her on the web, and she still looks about the same. She now goes by Areti I , a name she shares (oddly) with a luxury yacht. Can't find many details about cargoes or ownership, though. Can't see any evidence that she's been on the Great Lakes recently, either. See Waterhause's notes, below. Much to our surprise, we saw this ship again in South Chicago, a few days later on our drive home.

Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. The big tug in the center is Wilfred M. Cohen; the even bigger tug peeking over the structure, to the right, is Reliance, and the crane ship beyond everything is Yankcanuck (which I still think of as Algoma's, but that's just me, as PML's owned her for a couple decades). And a dozen or so smaller tugs. And a couple barges--one of them, PML Ironmaster, is enormous. Something for every conceivable task, obviously. Impressive array of equipment.

The LS&I Railroad (a Cleveland-Cliffs subsidiary) built this iron ore dock in Marquette's upper harbor 99 years ago. It's still in use, though the cargo's evolved from raw ore to taconite pellets. This is one of the best places on the Great Lakes to view ore carriers up close. The not-quite-visible ship in this photo is Kaye E. Barker.

Not many navigation aids are named after ships, but Wawatam Light sits at the end of the dock which was long used by the Mackinac Straits carferry Chief Wawatam . This light marks the entrance to the Saint Ignace marina. It's a new light . Wawatam Light was originally built as a decoration for the Monroe Welcome Center on I-75. When the Center was rebuilt in 2004, arrangements were made to move this structure to Saint Ignace, where (as you can see) it now decorates the waterfront (and, not incidentally, anchors the waterfront boardwalk). Mackinac Island in the background, where to all appearances folks have been building new "cottages."