Niagara at Boothbay, Maine. [NPR]

Ross Branch, the lead shipwright at Bristol Marine, is installing a valved water intake in Niagara’s underside, using a marine sealant called Sikiflex. “The launch is tomorrow, and Sikiflex can cure underwater. So, it’s a good choice in this instance,” he says, holding the fitting from the bottom while another worker cinches it down flush and watertight.

It’s one of a long list of tasks that must be completed before Niagara slips back into the water, capping the extensive restoration at the Boothbay Harbor shipyard that includes work to the hull, deck and other structural parts.

Once completed, the two-masted, 20-gun brig — credited with a pivotal victory in the War of 1812 — will head home to Erie, Pa., just in time for America’s 250th anniversary celebrations.

Captain Greg Bailey first volunteered aboard Niagara when he was just 12, more than 30 years ago. He says that the preservation of such tall ships is important to keep nautical traditions alive. “If we aren’t actively working to pass on these maritime traditions, they just go away,” he says.

Likewise with the construction techniques. Bristol Marine’s Samples Shipyard is one of the few in the country that combines the kind of local expertise for restoring a historic wooden-hulled vessel with the facilities to dry-dock a vessel the size of Niagara, which is about 200 feet from the tip of the bowsprit to the transom.

“We specialize in this type of work. … This project is very much a job that’s right in our wheelhouse,” Branch says. It combines “traditional boatbuilding techniques with the need to achieve Coast Guard certifications.”

That sign-off from the Coast Guard is necessary because Niagara — normally berthed at the Erie Maritime Museum — is more than a floating exhibit. Each summer, the ship serves as both a training vessel used to teach teenagers to sail and a goodwill ambassador on the Great Lakes, sailing under a 15-star, 15-stripe American ensign — the version of the flag that inspired “The Star-Spangled Banner” — alongside Niagara’s famous “Don’t Give Up the Ship” battle flag.

To meet modern safety standards while preserving its historic character, Niagara incorporates contemporary systems and materials. The ship recently received new diesel engines, along with electrical generators, plumbing and modern galvanized fasteners securing replacement hull components in places where the original vessel would have relied entirely on wooden pegs known as treenails.

Technically speaking, the ship is a replica of the vessel that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry commanded in his decisive defeat of the British at the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813. The original was intentionally scuttled in the shallow waters off Erie a few years after the war to keep it from rotting and preserve it for possible future use. But it wasn’t raised until 1913 to play a ceremonial role in the battle’s centennial celebration.

After undergoing multiple extensive rebuilds over the years — including this latest one in Maine — little of the original remains. Bailey likens the today’s Niagara to the Ship of Theseus, the ancient philosophical paradox that asks whether something can still be considered the same object after all of its parts have been replaced.

“There are pieces of the original that are in there,” he says, but not many. What counts more is the people who sail Niagara and the vessel’s mission, he says. “It’s still very much the same ship.”

The year of careful work has taken longer than the approximately eight months required in 1813 to complete Niagara and its sister ship Lawrence, which was destroyed in the September battle that year. The two largest and most powerful ships in the American lake flotilla were built in extreme haste to meet an impending British threat.

The original Niagara was made from “all green wood” — not great for ship construction, but there was no time to season any timber, according to Bailey. “They only needed it for one summer. Whether it was going to be captured, destroyed or victorious.”

In fact, Niagara emerged victorious and helped secure the Great Lakes and America’s northern frontier against the British.

The ship will spend another two weeks at the dock in Maine before shoving off for the return to Lake Erie, the waters that made its name famous more than two centuries ago.

Read more and see images here.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/16/nx-s1-5821141/niagara-ship-erie-maine-1812

SAULT STE. MARIE, MI – The MacArthur Lock at Sault Ste. Marie, MI, has opened for the season. The tour boat LeVoyageur was the first passage.

DETROIT, MI – A new book, “The Great Lakes Ships of Frank E. Kirby” (Michigan State University Press, $29.95), explores the life of a prolific Midwestern naval architect whose vessels once carried passengers who are still alive today. Kirby was a naval architect in the early 20th century who designed steamboats such as SS Milwaukee Clipper, SS Columbia and SS Ste. Claire. Though no longer operational, these three ships are the only Kirby boats that still remain.

As of today, the SS Columbia can be found in Buffalo, while the SS Ste. Claire is at Detroit’s Riverside Marina after a 2018 fire that consumed its wooden decks. The ship’s current owner hopes to refurbish the vessel. The Milwaukee Clipper is docked on Muskegon Lake and is presently a ship museum.

Another famous Kirby boat, the SS City of Detroit III, was scrapped in 1956, but its English Gothic Room – a part of the ship located on the upper deck and used as a men’s smoking room –was preserved and located on Belle Isle in the Dossin Great Lake Museum.

In the book, author Richard Gebhart describes a profile of Kirby as “long overdue.” That’s because no one has gotten around to writing about him, Gebhart said. Still, Gebhart, a Great Lakes History lover and writer, took on the challenge and began authorship of a book recounting some of the most famous naval architectural contributions of the 20th century.

Gebhart said the idea for the book came about after he repeatedly noticed Kirby’s name scattered throughout maritime documents. He had been combing through those materials while working on novels. Curious, Gebhart asked friends in the maritime history world if anyone had written about Kirby.

The answer came back from Jay Bascom, the editor of “Scanner,” the journal and newsletter of the Toronto Marine Historical Society. “In our correspondence while I was gathering information about Kirby, I asked him if he was aware of any biography about Kirby, and he said he wasn’t. When he was working on something relative to a Kirby boat, he said all he had were notes and crib sheets [cheat sheets students used when taking written exams] in his ship profile folders.”

Gebhart explained that Kirby was a designer who rose during a major shift in shipbuilding history. Moving from wooden hulls to iron and steel – all steam-powered – Kirby worked on almost every type of vessel on the Great Lakes and beyond. “He became an international figure because of his great prowess,” Gebhart said.

While researching and writing about Kirby, Gebhart was contacted by Kirby’s great-grandson, Nick Kirby, who visited and brought family treasures, troves and interviews that Nick’s grandmother conducted with Kirby before he died in 1929. “I was floored, and it was really emotional when they came too,” Gebhart said. “It was like we had blood that we didn’t know, and it was just a soul-touching moment for both of us.”

“The thing that I’m most amazed about is that it’s taken so long for somebody to write about him because the entire light he shot on Great Lakes shipping history over a half-century is just astonishing.”

Gebhart said he hopes someone with money stumbles across the book and can use it the right way to restore these boats to their former glory.

“There couldn’t be a better place right now than the Detroit Riverfront with all the renovations,” Gebhart said, adding, “it’s screaming to get those things back there.”

Great Lakes Now
Order the book here:

USS Cleveland. [Tom Shields]

Upon arrival, she will hook up with the ocean tug Grande Baie to assist her transit through the Welland Canal and up the Seaway, destination Mayport, FL, her homeport.

Ocean tug Grande Baie will assist the vessel, by guiding/controlling her. This vessel cannot use the Hands-Free Mooring (HFM) vacuum system due to the unique shape of her hull. Instead, line-handlers on the lock walls drop mooring lines down to the crew on the ship’s deck. The tug does not actually tow her like a dead ship, the tug’s job is to act as a braking mechanism and dynamic rudder to maintain precise lateral control in confined spaces. Because the USS Cleveland’s powerful waterjets lose steering efficiency at slow canal speeds, she operates under her own power but relies on the tug’s 360-degree thrusters to counteract crosswinds, absorb momentum, and prevent the hull from swinging into the concrete lock walls.

Janey Anderson – Ship Junkies

Mackinaw above the Rock Cut. [Steve Gunther]

It took 96 hours after the Soo locks opened for the year for the first vessel loaded with iron ore to finally clear the St. Marys River the critical connection point between Lake Superior and the lower lakes.  At one point 19 vessels were stopped for multiple days in the ice, waiting for icebreakers to clear the way to either get their loads or deliver them.

The ice season dragged on well into April stretching Coast Guard icebreaking crews and their worn-out ships.  The only U.S. Coast Guard heavy icebreaker on the lakes is the CGC Mackinaw and she was limited to operating below the Soo Locks due to an engineering casualty.  Where the Mackinaw was really needed was in the heavy snow-covered ice in Whitefish Bay at the southeast end of Lake Superior.  Unfortunately, with only one partially operational heavy icebreaker traffic came to a standstill for most of March with significant delays experienced well into April.

On several occasions during the ice season, federal icebreakers suffered significant engineering problems which left them sidelined during the height of the need.  The 140-foot Coast Guard icebreaking tugs, which are over 45 years old, continue to break down on a regular basis.

Things were bad this year for winter shipping which started in early December, but it could have been much, much worse.  Warmer temperatures on the southern lakes in March melted the significant ice pack on Lake Erie and the Detroit-St Clair River systems which allowed the Coast Guard to concentrate their limited operational assets in the north.

“This is a national problem that requires America’s attention,” said Jim Weakley, President of the Lake Carriers’ Association. “Our companies ability to move the building blocks of North American manufacturing which drives our economy and growth extend well beyond the Great Lakes Region.  The nation needs another U.S. Coast Guard heavy Great Lakes icebreaker.”

Lake Carriers’ Association

The U.S. Coast Guard has concluded all icebreaking operations in America’s Eastern and Great Lakes waterways following a severe winter season that continued well into spring in some regions. Operation Taconite, the Coast Guard’s final ongoing domestic icebreaking operation, has ended as ice throughout the western Great Lakes has nearly melted and icebreaking in support of commercial navigation is no longer required.

USCG Biscayne Bay breaking ice on the St. Marys RIver on Jan.18. [Roger LeLievre]

Austere conditions and ice buildup that accrued after storms such as Winter Storm Fern required persistent efforts from underway crews and assets. Coast Guard teams and partners maintained the majority of a navigable Marine Transportation System to support maritime shipping of vital products such as fuel to power plants in the mid-Atlantic, critical iron ore in the Great Lakes and home heating oil in New England.

A fleet of Coast Guard cutters that include heavy, medium and light icebreakers as well as ice-capable buoy tenders and boats worked in tandem with partner agencies and commercially contracted tugboats that were needed to augment service in areas typically used to milder ice conditions.

The Coast Guard’s leadership in icebreaking, being one of the service’s 11 statutory missions, helped keep U.S. waterways open for business and ensured navigational aids were corrected after ice flow displacement for safe navigation. Throughout the icebreaking season, approximately 6,940 domestic icebreaking hours were provided by more than 30 Coast Guard cutters and boats to directly assist or enable the transit of 981 vessels while maintaining critical waterways availability. Despite temperatures rising nationwide, always exercise caution when heading out onto the water due to the hazards of unseen ice and remember that hypothermia can set in within a matter of minutes.

Great Lakes District icebreaking missions fall under two major operations:
• Operation Coal Shovel, overseen by Coast Guard Sector Detroit, is an icebreaking operation that manages the safe maritime shipping of coal throughout an area spanning southern Lake Huron to the St. Clair-Detroit River system, and into Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, including the St. Lawrence Seaway.
• Operation Taconite, overseen by Coast Guard Sector Northern Great Lakes, is the largest domestic icebreaking operation. It is responsible for the safe maritime shipping of taconite from mines at the Head of the Lakes to the steel mills on Lake Erie and Lake Michigan.

U.S. Coast Guard Press Release

NEEBISH ISLAND, MI – A change is coming to the Neebish Island Ferry schedule Monday, May 18, and residents on the island, along with the ferry crew, are very excited. This has been a story SooLeader has been following since October 2023 after ferry runs to and from Neebish Island in the St. Marys River were drastically cut by the Eastern Upper Peninsula Transportation Authority due to United States Coast Guard regulations and a skeleton crew. Unless there was an emergency run, the ferry did not run in the late evening and overnight hours, preventing island residents from participating in evening activities or events on the mainland. Island residents and visitors were very vocal about the limited schedule. However, EUPTA worked on a schedule with Capt. Lon Calloway that adds more crossings, including weekends, longer runs into the evenings and an extra crew.

Calloway said it’s a win-win for everybody. “In the last year, Pete Paramski (EUPTA director) and I have been working really hard trying to come up with an ‘outside the box’ schedule, and we came up with a kind of a hybrid schedule where we have two crews now working every day in increased crossings all week. For us to be able to go forward and offer the schedule, we couldn’t be happier that we’re able to provide this extended service to our Neebish Island family. With this new schedule, we got it all. And everything I have heard from

Neebish Islander II.

the Islanders, they couldn’t be happier. I think they are going to be overjoyed with this schedule. We are happy that it came out like this,” Calloway said.

Phylis Reed, president of the Neebish Island Improvement Association, could not be happier “Because of the expanded schedule, we now have accessibility to our community, whether it be in school attendance supporting educational programming, furthering education, cultural events, mobility to connecting transportation systems like the airport, employment and medical treatments, or attendance at family celebrations and sporting events. We are greatly appreciative of this new schedule and the collaborative efforts that brought it about. With this increased accessibility, we look forward to enriching the lives of Neebish Island residents and the sustainability of the island itself,” Reed stated.

There needs to be a lot of shout-outs to all those who made it happen. “EUPTA was able to move some things around and with the way the schedule was gonna work out, it all came together. We’d like to thank the Islanders, thank you to Pete, a special thank you Sen. John Damoose who was bringing both sides together on this. We are just happy that it did come out like this,” Calloway continued

Calloway is concerned about the shortage of mariners, and not just on the local scene.

“This has been long and agonizing for everybody. For us trying to move forward, the biggest problem we had was staffing issues. For the last couple years there’s been a nationwide shortage of licensed mariners, big companies, all restricting schedules and canceling runs because of the shortage of licensed mariners that we also felt very strongly here,” Calloway explained.

Soo Leader – Jim Lehocky

PORT HURON, MI – The annual and long-running Port Huron Marine Mart on June 13 features vendors selling items related to the maritime history and industry of the Great Lakes, including artifacts, antiques, art, photographs, books, chinaware and more.

Event: Port Huron Marine Mart with Nautical Items and Great Lakes Marine Artifacts
Date: Saturday, June 13, 2026, from 10 am–2 pm
Location: American Legion Post 8; 1026 Sixth St, Port Huron, Michigan
Cost:
Admission $5
Early Bird Admission (9:30 am – 10 am) $10
Children Ages 12 and Under: FREE

For more details, call Rob Cioletti at (586) 822-1319

MANITOWOC, WI – The SS Badger’s summer season is setting sail. The car ferry began its trips across Lake Michigan between Ludington, Michigan, and Manitowoc on Friday. “Folks just want to come out and celebrate really what it means to them to have this historic ship here and have the exciting tourism season that’s to come,” said Courtney Hansen with Visit Manitowoc.

Badger in Manitowoc, WI. [Lake Michigan Carferry FIle Photo]

Whether passengers were veterans like Diane and Tom Driver from Indiana, who said, “We love Lake Michigan. Love the slow pace. Sitting out, looking at the lake. Very relaxing. Very relaxing. We saw another freighter on the way over to which was fun.” Or first times like Rob Thrasher who added, “It’s actually pretty cool, first time done it. My son’s done it a couple times. My daughter’s done it a couple times. It’s actually cheaper to ride across here than it is for me to trailer it around.”

Sailing on the SS Badger is quite a treat. “Our small businesses, especially in our downtown, our hotels, they just fill up once the sailing season kicks off,” Hansen added. “Everyone extends their hours and they’re so excited to greet those passengers and have recommendations of where they should go to lunch and what they should do and explore but it’s huge for all of our tourism partners here in our community.”

The SS Badger sails into and out of Manitowoc daily. A one-way trip across the lake takes about four hours. And with up to 600 passengers traveling into Manitowoc daily, it’s a boost for the local economy too.

WLUK
Watch a FOX 17 news video here.

David Plowden, American industrial photographer, died on May 4 at age 92. Besides his iconic B&W images of trains, steel mills and taconite mines, he was also known for documenting some of the last operating Great Lakes steamboats, published in a book fittingly titled “End of An Era.” Plowden captured not only the old steamers, but the heart of them, giving ordinary Americans a rare glimpse inside the vessels and crews, paying special attention to the firemen and old coal-fired steam engines that are almost extinct on the lakes today.

Among the 22 books that he wrote, Railfan & Railroad readers probably know best Farewell to Steam (1966), A Time of Trains (1987), and Requiem for Steam (2010), but Plowden’s oeuvre also included definitive volumes on other subjects, including Lincoln and His America (1970) and Bridges: The Spans of North America (1974, reprinted 10 years later).

David Plowden.

Born in 1932, Plowden spent much of his childhood in New York City.  Throughout his youth, he rode trains in the New York area, in New England, and across the U.S., and he made friends with enginemen and train crews.  He reached adulthood and chose to make a living as a photographer in the 1950s, a decade defined in railroading by dieselization.

In the preface to his 1997 retrospective book Imprints, Plowden wrote, “I was born astride two eras.  The fact that the demise of the steam locomotive and the beginning of

my career occurred simultaneously was a coincidence that determined the course of my life.  It was that initial sense of loss – and perhaps that my father died later the same year [1960] – that greatly influenced the way I view the world.  It also made me keenly aware of photography’s unmatched ability to preserve the moment and, thereby, to capture things on film before they disappeared.”

Plowden began his photography as a railfan: He made his very first photo, at age 11, of a steam locomotive leading a Boston & Maine passenger train into Putney, Vermont, near the summer house that his well-to-do parents had bought a few years earlier.  Capturing steam before it disappeared drove Plowden’s efforts for more than 15 years and even led him to apply for his first job after college as a management trainee on the Great Northern Railway.  Assigned as assistant to the trainmaster at Willmar, on the Minnesota prairie, the

Cover of Plowden’s End of An Era. [Ryan Mihalak]

Before going out on his own, Plowden spent about four years studying photography and working for established professionals, first as O. Winston Link’s assistant in 1958-59; Plowden accompanied Link on a number of trips to document the Norfolk & Western.  He also spent time as a student of Minor White’s in Rochester, N.Y., and learned invaluable lessons that stayed with him throughout his later career.  In an interview for the afterword to David Plowden’s Iowa (2012), he said, “I never saw such prints as Minor made.  And I can remember Ansel [Adams] came . . . and the two of them were in the darkroom together one day . . . .  There was great rivalry there.  I felt that I was in the darkroom with Poseidon and Zeus.  One was throwing tridents, and the other was throwing thunderbolts.  They were arguing the points of order.  And here were these two great, great printers – some of the greatest printers who ever lived – arguing.  Imagine being in the corner listening to this.”

With the steam era effectively over, Plowden realized that his work as a photographer had just begun.  Continuing in the Imprints preface, he wrote, “It began to dawn on me that I hadn’t simply been documenting steam locomotives in their final hour.  I was witnessing something of far greater consequence: the transformation of a culture.  In this light, the body of my work depicts an America almost unrecognizable from the one that I began photographing 40 years ago.  The urgency to record has become ever more imperative as I have tried vainly to stay one step ahead of the wrecking ball.”

Plowden’s subjects over time came to include steamboats, bridges, barns, steel mills, and all aspects of the rural Midwest, including its people and their homes.  After tens of thousands of miles of traveling by car from coast to coast while researching and photographing for Lincoln and Bridges, Plowden moved from Long Island, New York, to suburban Chicago in 1978, and he taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology for a few years, then for a few more at the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism.  Plowden loved Iowa, and all of the Great Plains.  “I think I have more pictures of Iowa than any place.  Quite seriously,” he said in Iowa.  From 1988 to 2007, Plowden served as a visiting professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

Although not a “railfan photographer” in the same mold as his contemporaries Phil Hastings (born in 1925), Richard Steinheimer (1929), Jim Shaughnessy (1933), and J. Parker Lamb (1933), Plowden maintained close ties to Train World.  A friend of Center for Railroad Photography & Art founder John Gruber (born in 1936), he presented at a number of the CRP&A’s Conversations conferences, including the first one, and the Center has a traveling exhibition of prints that Plowden donated to the organization; entitled “Requiem for Steam,” it has visited almost a dozen venues from California to Connecticut since 2010.  More than 40 years after graduating from Yale University, in 1995, Plowden arranged for Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library to become the repository of his complete archive, including negatives, prints, slides, journals, audio tapes, and more.  Learn more about Plowden’s life and work here.