I have a book on the st. Marys Challenger which is a similar vessel launched in 1906, unsure if it was converted to a barge. But I'm certain it was in service for over 100yrs always saw it in the kk river in Milwaukee.
The built in 1906 st. Marys Challenger is still operating on the lakes today as a barge. How many machines can you think of still operating today that were built back then??
Dam salty water.
From Wiki
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Operating history
Steamship
The vessel was launched on February 7, 1906, by Great Lakes Engineering Works in
Ecorse, Michigan. The shipyard had received an order to construct a 551-foot (168 m) Great Lakes bulk carrier for what was then the booming
Minnesota iron ore trade. Soon the large boat, christened
William P. Snyder, was shuttling
hematite for the Shenango Furnace Company.
William P. Snyder was beginning her working life at the same time as the development of the
assembly line for bolting together consumer goods made with steel, such as
automobiles. Iron ore boats would have plenty of work to do.
William P. Snyder also carried iron ore to furnaces to make munitions used in
World War I and
World War II.
[1]
St. Marys Challenger in 2012
The lake carrier was originally powered by two
Scotch boilers. In 1926, the vessel was sold to the Stewart Furnace Co. of Cleveland, OH, being renamed
Elton Hoyt 2nd. She was sold again in 1929 to the Youngstown Steamship Co., also of Cleveland, being operated by Pickands Mather & Co. In 1930, she was transferred to Pickands Mather's Interlake Steamship Co. as part of a fleet consolidation.
Elton Hoyt 2nd was repowered in 1950 with a
Skinner Unaflow steam engine and two
watertube boilers by the Christy Corporation of Sturgeon Bay, WI. Too small by the 1960s to serve as a profitable ore boat, the vessel was laid up at Erie, PA, in 1962. In 1966, she was plucked out of a freshwater boneyard for reconversion and a new life as a
cement carrier for the Medusa Portland Cement Co. She was converted to a self-unloading cement carrier by Manitowoc Shipbuilding of Manitowoc, WI. Now based in
Charlevoix, Michigan and named
Medusa Challenger, the aging steamship shuttled powdered cement from Northern Michigan to a wide variety of roadbuilding contractors in various port locations on the Great Lakes.
[1] In Chicago she acquired a reputation as a "jinx ship" that caused the city's
drawbridges to become stuck when they were raised to let her pass, causing long delays to traffic.
[2] Such an incident became the setting for the 1977 dramatic film
Medusa Challenger. In 1998 the Medusa Corporation was acquired by Southdown Inc., of Houston
[3] and the vessel was renamed
Southdown Challenger. After two more acquisitions, the vessel became the property of St. Marys Cement Inc. of
Toronto in 2005 and finally renamed
St. Marys Challenger.
[1]
During her second half-century of life the vessel became a favorite of boatwatchers up and down the Great Lakes as a final example of the
riveted steamships of the
Second Industrial Revolution.
[1] St. Marys Challenger was acquired by Port City Marine Services of Muskegon, MI, a subsidiary of the McKee family-owned Sand Products Corporation, who had picked up the contract to haul cement for St. Marys.
Barge
St. Marys Challenger enters the harbor at Owen Sound, Ontario on November 11, 2021.
In November 2013
St. Marys Challenger reached the end of her working life as a self-propelled vessel. She steamed to the Bay Shipbuilding Co. in
Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, to be cut down to an articulated lake barge pushed by a dedicated
tugboat. The refitting of the former steamship lake carrier as a barge was described as a work with a cost of more than $10 million.
[2] The tug
Prentiss Brown had been built in 1967 in Gulfport, Texas and worked in Florida, South Carolina, and New York before coming to the Great Lakes in 2008.
[4] The two-element vessel combination resumed the dedicated transport of powdered cement on the Great Lakes.
[1] In this trade, it was described in 2019 as making about 30 annual trips to the
Port of Chicago.
[2]
The lake vessel's now-redundant
pilothouse was conserved and, in spring 2015, was donated to the
National Museum of the Great Lakes for display in
Toledo, Ohio.
[5] Pilothouse restoration work has uncovered the vessel's original name,
William P. Snyder.
[2]
