After seeing BaltACD's post of the drone video, I recalled recently watching a documentary video produced by the Badger people showing a lot of the onboard action both on the bridge and in the engine room. Enjoy!
Sounds like the days of the old Incan Superior, the last Great Lakes carferry, are coming to a close. She sailed from 1974-1992 hauling railcars between Thunder Bay and Superior, before moving to the Pacific Northwest where she has served since then as the Princess Superior.
But a new generation of vessels are on their way that will replace the Seaspan fleet serving the Vancouver-Vancouver Island route. Given her age, the time spent on salt water since leaving the Great Lakes in the early 1990's, and the small number of carferry routes across the world, I doubt she finds another home when retired in the coming months.
http://www.motorship.com/news101/lng/seaspan-ferries-takes-delivery-of-lng-hybrid
Leo_Ames Sounds like the days of the old Incan Superior, the last Great Lakes carferry, are coming to a close. She sailed from 1974-1992 hauling railcars between Thunder Bay and Superior, before moving to the Pacific Northwest where she has served since then as the Princess Superior. ...
...
Did this carferry used to haul rail cars to Vancouver Island?
Very interesting vessel, and a good looker, too. Can't seem to find out which 'General Motors' engines she has, though at 12-cylinder 2150 HP engines 645s seem plausible.
Yes, MidlandMike.
And I believe it was twin 12-645's, running at 800 rpm's or so.
Would be easy to confirm. Her 1st mate during her first seven years of operation posts at Boatnerd.com and just posted a story about her. I imagine he'd probably know. I'll ask and see what he says.
Will there be any carferries capable of handling rail cars, if the Vancouver Island line came back ?
Good question, but I'm not sure. Hopefully that's been taken into account.
As for the engines of the Incan Superior, her former 1st mate only remembered the horsepower and thought that they were GM's, but another helpful poster said that they indeed were twin 12-645E3s.
The Vancouver Island operation is still in use, though I am not sure how much trains get out of Nanaimo where the dock is. A barge is currently in use:
http://railpictures.net/photo/570443/
Ferries do seem to work well with EMD engines, with a good part of the Washington State Ferries having them. They are fun to ride on. Thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJQDwGTF2Ls
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Took my only trip on either the Badger (or the Spartan) back in 1963 and was impressed by the smooth docking handling coming into Ludington. Ship (boat, your choice) comes into the channel slowly, does a nice 180 turn while maintaining a small momentum toward the dock and then slows to a stop as it touches the dock. It was quite a contrast to the docking I experienced on a Staten Island ferry where the ship slid along the pole clusters pushing them a couple of feet to the side as we docked. Back in 63, the C&O ferry's were still carrying freight cars and autos were on an upper deck above the freight cars. One other memory was that the ship left Milwaukee about a minute before the scheduled 11:00 AM sailing time and I kept RR time. I watched the water churn behind the ship and there was a gap between the dock, and the ship at 10:59. It is nice to see it still operating.
On the Great Lakes, it's a boat, even when it's a 1000-foot long ore boat.
When I served aboard the USS Guam, the lifers and officers got mad if you called it a boat.
54light15When I served aboard the USS Guam, the lifers and officers got mad if you called it a boat.
How much of the Great Lakes did the USS Guam sail? Different mariners have different terminologies.
The closest we got to the great lakes was when we went from Norfolk to above the Arctic circle near Newfoundland for operations. Had to be called off, it was too damn cold! A ship can carry a boat, but a boat can't carry a ship. Salt water terminology, I guess.
The Great Lakes mariners have a terminology all their own, I've read it's because the Great Lakes sailors didn't come from salt water towns and citys as they did in the past, but from the farms and towns of the country's heartland.
But don't say they're not sailors! There's a story from World War Two, a US Navy reservist who was a Great Lakes mariner found himself on a ship caught in a full-blown North Atlantic gale. "Pretty bad, compared to the Great Lakes, huh?" a friend asked him.
"Oh yeah?" he replied. "Come try Lake Superior in November!"
Since it hasn't been mentioned, it seems apprioriate to add that the SS Badger started her season last weekend.
And yeah, you wouldn't catch me on Lake Superior in November. Spring can also bring some pretty bad storms and has been responsible for several of the significant storm losses of the past century on the Great Lakes.
This quote from Captain Jim Hobaugh of the buoy tender Woodrush about their search for survivors of the Edmund Fitzgerald, describes well just how nasty it can get out there on America's inland seas.
"We searched for three days in probably the roughest seas I've been in in my life, including the North Atlantic and hurricanes in the Gulf. Because you got three different seas from three different directions. At one point we rolled 51 degrees. It was a real quick snap roll, my XO went flying across the bridge and was actually standing on the port bulkhead. If the door had been open to the port bridge wing, he'd of went right on over the side. It was really bad..."
The ocean has swells of water that while it's rough, the ship's structure is supported. Lake Superior has a chop, which does not support the ship's structure- this caused the "Big Fitz" to break in half with a chop at the bow and at the stern leaving the middle unsupported. A friend in the Navy from Alpena, Michigan steamed on the Lakes, that's how he described it. Just out of interest, he served in ships boiler rooms, shoveling coal. 6 hours on, 6 hours off. For the first week of it he thought he was gonna die! He served with an old man who had been doing it all his life and survived by shoveling until the steam pressure went up, then sat on a coal pile and drank whisky until it was time to shovel again. Mike said that the ship was built in 1910 and this all happened in 1971.
No, she broke in half when she took a nose dive. That's something all the experts agree on due to the close proximity of the stern and bow sections on the bottom.
The opinion of Great Lakes sailors (Including the captain of the Arthur M, Anderson that was accompanying the Fitz and was in regular radio contact), the Lakes Carrier Association, Oglebay Norton/Columbia Steamship, and the initial NTSB report are that she bottomed out on Six Fathom Shoal.
The Coast Guard though got this turned around to blame the crew and deflect blame that the chart ships were using wasn't detailed enough to accurately show Six Fathom Shoal, with the NTSB then revising their conclusion to match (With some dissenters). The claim was ineffectual closure of the hatch covers, which is universally scoffed at by Great Lakes merchant mariners.
The popular opinion is that in rough seas with an inaccurate chart and a radar set that's out, that she got too close and barely bottomed out on rocks. From this point onward was when the captain was reporting that they were taking on water to the Anderson.
With the Fitzgerald gradually losing buoyancy and in a snow squall that temporary made the Anderson lose radar contact, the Anderson encountered the rare occurance of a quick succession of three huge rogue waves, nicknamed by Great Lakes sailors as the Three Sisters.
The intact Anderson survived it, but the Edmund Fitzgerald at her limits with buoyancy forward just about gone from flooding in the cargo hold, is believed to have been suddenly and catastrophically overwhelmed by one of these waves (Supported by such things as the lack of a SOS for a ship that had been in regular radio contact until moments before and no sign that the crew had time to abandon ship).
I can barely remember hearing about it, but I think that the "Carl D. Bradley" went down in Lake Michigan.
Yeah, it was Lake Michigan.
Perhaps you're thinking of the SS Daniel J. Morrell. She foundered in a November storm on Lake Huron in the mid 1960's, the 2nd most recent major storm victim on the lakes. Much like how the Bradley only had two survivors, only one man survived the sinking of the Morrell (a crewmember that just passed away not very long ago).
Come to think of it, I wonder if 54light15 was partially also thinking of this wreck. While overshadowed by the Fitzgerald a decade later, it was also pretty well known in the region (I imagine it was just a blip on the national news though, with no song immortalizing it in public consciousness nor the mystique of sinking mysteriously with all hands lost). This 60 year old freighter broke in half due to wave action much like he said did the Fitzgerald in, with the stern continuing on under its own power for several miles before finally sinking.
A sistership of the same design, the Edward Y. Townsend, suffered similar structual failure in the same storm but managed to not completely break in half. The frequency of the waves and such was just right that these two despite 60 years of reliable and safe service, were stressed in just the right way that they both suffered near identical structual failures of the hull in the same storm.
Thank God for Gordon Lightfoot! If it wasn't for his song "Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" the "Big Fitz" would be just another forgotten Great Lakes sinking, only important to the families and friends of those lost.
Probably the last great shipwreck song that will ever be written, it will live for years. The lost ones couldn't ask for a better memorial.
And about ships taking a nose dive? Several years ago I watched a video shot from a Coast Guard C-130 of a ship in distress in an Atlantic gale. A cargo vessel, it was down at the bow when a massive wave swept over the foredeck and the sea just swallowed the ship up! And in less time than it takes to tell it, gone without a trace.
Until 9/11/2001 the most bone-chilling video I'd ever seen.
Leo_AmesYeah, it was Lake Michigan. Perhaps you're thinking of the SS Daniel J. Morrell. She foundered in a November storm on Lake Huron in the mid 1960's, the 2nd most recent major storm victim on the lakes. Much like how the Bradley only had two survivors, only one man survived the sinking of the Morrell (a crewmember that just passed away not very long ago). Come to think of it, I wonder if 54light15 was partially also thinking of this wreck. While overshadowed by the Fitzgerald a decade ago, it was also pretty well known in the region (I imagine it was just a blip on the national news though, with no song immortalizing it in public consciousness nor the mystique of sinking mysteriously with all hands lost). This 60 year old freighter broke in half due to wave action much like he said did the Fitzgerald in, with the stern continuing on under its own power for several miles before finally sinking. A sistership of the same design, the Edward Y. Townsend, suffered similar structual failure in the same storm but managed to not completely break in half. The frequency of the waves and such was just right that these two despite 60 years of reliable and safe service, were stressed in just the right way that they both suffered near identical structual failures of the hull in the same storm.
Come to think of it, I wonder if 54light15 was partially also thinking of this wreck. While overshadowed by the Fitzgerald a decade ago, it was also pretty well known in the region (I imagine it was just a blip on the national news though, with no song immortalizing it in public consciousness nor the mystique of sinking mysteriously with all hands lost). This 60 year old freighter broke in half due to wave action much like he said did the Fitzgerald in, with the stern continuing on under its own power for several miles before finally sinking.
One would think the Great Lakes shipbuilding craft learned a few things about structural integrity between constructing the Morrell and Townsend in 1906 and the building of the Fitzgerald in 1958.
One of the big factors in the troubles of the Morrell and the Townsend could have been the fact that they had endured 60 years of Great Lakes stresses - metal that is continually stressed will fail at some point in time.
Wear and tear certainly was a factor. Had it been younger in the lives of these two ships that were built from the same blueprints, they very well may have been just fine.
That said, there were a lot of 600'x60' freighters of this vintage that served well past this date. Only with the arrival of 13 thousand foot giants in the US fleet and the 1980 recession that decimated the steel industry did the scores of these workhorses, the Geeps of the US flagged Great Lakes merchant fleet for 75 years, start to be paraded with regularity to the scrapyard.
Yet most lived uneventful lives until economic factors more so than old age finally did them in, and got through storms without issue even well past this date (Although I would hope heavy weather captains, happily mostly extinct today, were few and far between on these oldies by the 1970's).
So I do believe something was unusual about that storm that stressed this hull design in just the right way that it led to structual failure. If not, it's still an interesting coincidence that these two ships served for well over half a century and had their careers ended in the same storm, from similar damage.
"Said , if you don't hit them right the bow will be on one and the stern on another with the middle out of the water. Eventially something gives."
That sounds like what my friend was talking about. Supported at either end, nothing in between.
By the way, I've met Gordon Lightfoot a few times, he lives in Toronto and shows up at tributes to Stompin' Tom Conners (Canda's late poet laureate.) Man, he is OLD!
54light15That sounds like what my friend was talking about. Supported at either end, nothing in between.
I think they're looking at it too literally, as though the ship were in a bathtub and you were making a wavetrain past it.
Better to consider the effect of buoyancy due to depth of water at different parts of the hull. What you get is the stern being held up (or lifted) by the volume of water under the after part, and the bow being lifted by the incident wave, with the center part being 'undersupported' in the trough. It would not require actual lifting of the center hull out of the water with the ends supported to produce substantial strain in particular regions of the hull -- which would probably not have been designed with that particular stress mode in mind.
I was amused by the 'shipbuilding has improved between 1910 and 1958' comment. That includes the years of the impromptu learning curve in built-to-a-price welded fabrication, as in the fold-up Liberty ships. Not that I'm making fun of a welded (vs hydraulically riveted) hull, just that progress was not always forward and (as with the large liners in the very early 20th Century) there might have been significant failure modes that the designers did not properly account for, either in layout and fabrication.
54light15Ship's speeds are measured in knots, not miles per hour!
But it's relatively simple to convert from kt to mph and vice versa, to make the speeds more familiar to lay readers -- as I hope was done in those references. (I am too lazy and disgusted to check myself.)
There is no free lunch in randomly-BS-augmented numbers for "classified" top speed of displacement hulls, any more than there is any reason to presume mach-4 or higher speeds for the Archangel family of aircraft. The physics of the hull imposes the effective speed limit for non-hydrofoil ships, and this is not a situation where, say, better 'water wetting' will give you dramatic improvement in actual hydrodynamic resistance (rather than just 'skin friction') even with a Yourkevitch bow. Remember that the power to drive the Enterprise at 4kt is only about 200hp -- you could get this out of a good bass-boat outboard. Compare this with the required shp to make even the unclassified speeds, with the hydrodynamic resistance continuing to rise at corresponding scale beyond that point.
ISTR some mention of one of the non-nuclear carriers reaching 43kt (or mph, I don't remember thinking about the units at the time) at one point during aircraft recovery, which I'd think would be at the ragged edge of the possible.
Leo_AmesYeah, it was Lake Michigan. Perhaps you're thinking of the SS Daniel J. Morrell. She foundered in a November storm on Lake Huron in the mid 1960's, the 2nd most recent major storm victim on the lakes. Much like how the Bradley only had two survivors, only one man survived the sinking of the Morrell (a crewmember that just passed away not very long ago).
I worked as a deckhand on the Str. Reiss Brothers in the summer of 1967 and the recent wreck of the Daniel J. Morrell was still on everyone's mind.
The guy across the hall from me in my college dorm was on the sister ship of the Morrell and at the other end of the lake the night the Morrell sank. His description of the storm that night has stayed with me for over fifty years. I remember him saying that that night the ship's master rousted everyone out of bed and had them assemble on deck with their lifejackets on. After some time they decided the worst was over and returned to quarters. Of course, they didn't learn of their sister ship's fate until the next day when the ferocious storm had abated.
Like railroading, sailing on the Great Lakes and working on its ships is sobering, dangerous work and it has cost the lives of many men over the years.
The Bradley sank Nov. 18, 1958. Another that sank on Nov. 29, 1966, was the Daniel J. Morrell. Broke in half in Lake Huron, in 70mph winds and 25 foot waves. They abandonded ship but the stern kept going with all the lights still on for another 4 or 5 miles before sinking............. Don't remember what ship/ships my uncle was on, just remember we loaded 4 adults and 3 kids into my grandparents 16' power boat to go out on the St. Clare River to wave to him as he went by. He always tried to let my grand parents know when.
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