The Queen of the Lakes Comes in with an Engine Down for the Second Time this Year

Paul R Tregurtha arrived on a beautiful but windy fall day, and was quite surprised to see she had an engine down! The ship slowed dramatically as they approached the Duluth Entry, enough that even the tourists on the piers were commenting on it. As she came through I noticed only the starboard stack had any steam coming from it, and sure enough as she passed there was nothing coming from her port side prop either with the starboard side working overtime. After the bridge, she was met by the tug Kentucky, which escorted her through the harbor and helped her spin into the ore dock. They took an unusually long time to load up, presumably trying to fix things at the dock. They left that dock after a day and half to make room for the Burns Harbor, which was waiting on them, and moved over to the old SMET coal dock for further work. I’m assuming it worked because they left the next morning at 4am, but I was asleep for that departure but she was going her normal full speed across the Lake according to Marine Traffic when I woke up. So assuming it’s a relatively minor issue, but this isn’t the first time this year this has happened. There was a nearly identical arrival by her in April and that time she spent several days at the coal dock getting work done, so hopefully not a larger concern. Regardless, it’s great to see how the crew handled taking her in straight and steady with power on only one side! Can’t imagine that’s easy, plus the very tight maneuvers further in the harbor and reversing into to the dock. Built in 1981 as the final swan song of Loraine OH American Shipbuilding Company, Paul R Tregurtha is the largest freshwater vessel on the planet by physical size. Measuring 1014ft long, 105ft wide and able to carry 71,000 tons of cargo, she is an icon of the Great Lakes that has held her title longer than any ship in Great Lakes history with no signs of stopping. Orginally named William J DeLancy, she was nicknamed the Fancy DeLancy by the lake crews for her luxurious accommodations, rivaling the best passenger ships of the day. In 1991 she was renamed after an internal company shakeup to her current name. Despite being designed and built to haul iron ore for the steel industry, the ship had hauled coal for most of her career, hauling weekly loads between Duluth and Detroit. However with the shutdown of the St Clair powerstation, this year sees Tregutha regularly doing the job she was designed for, for the first time. This year she’s been running a wide variety of loads to and from various ports, hauling taconite. Hard to say if the crew is enjoying the variety or missing the consistency of their old schedule! The ship has had a few incidents, in 2012 she ran aground in the St Mary’s River, then more famously again here in Duluth in 2014 in Bayfront Park right in front of the Lift Bridge and in front of a crowd of filming people. Both times she was pulled free with little incident. In 2018 she suffered a generator fire which injured one crewman before it was extinguished with no significant damage to the ship. In 2023 her ballast tanks were rebuilt at Fraser Shipyard here in Duluth/Superior after significant decay and holes were found in them. She has also had a few modifications made, in the early 1980s her bridge wings were removed to allow her to load at the ore dock in Marquette, Michigan, which has tighter space tolerances around the superstructure, then in 2016 her twin smokestacks were removed and replaced with a single, exhaust scrubber equipped stack which gives her a large steam plume as she sails, very visible in this particular video. Hope you enjoy!