An Unexpected Double Play, 40 minute Bridge Lift and a Hopefully Temporary Goodbye to Tug Missouri

An unanticipated two-for-one at the Canal, came down for the Mesabi Miner, didn’t have my radio but as I was standing there watching I noticed the Federal Seto’s radars spinning at the dock and had a feeling she might just follow the Miner out. Sure enough she did! Made for an insanely long bridge lift for the cars though, since Seto was at a standstill and under tug escort, it took them 40 minutes to reach the bridge. No idea why they did not put the bridge down between the two ships, they certainly had the time, although perhaps not the distance on paper. Then of course it wasn’t down for long, Missouri came right back in after providing pilot services. It was also the Missouri’s last tug job for awhile, that evening the 99 year old tug got swapped out for the Kentucky and taken down to G-Tug HQ in Cleveland for a refit and hull inspection in their dedicated drydock. I’m really hoping they send her back here one they’re done (since sometimes they don’t) really want to celebrate her 100th birthday here! Since Mesabi Miner led off, I’ll start with her. Measuring 1004ft long, built in 1977 and carrying a full load of 63,300 tons of iron ore out of the harbor for Cleveland, Miner is one of our regulars and in fact is named for the local iron mines roughly an hour’s drive north of town. Her naming broke the long held tradition of naming ships exclusively after company and contractor executives, after her intended namesake, Elton Hoyt III, declined and instead directed the company to honor the miners that make everything possible. It was a significant gesture given that the vessel was and still is one of the largest bulk freighters in the world. Aside from a few incidents with ice she has had a fairly clean career, with no major accidents, name changes or sales. Her only modification came in 2017 when her twin stacks were replaced by a single one equipped with an exhaust scrubber that gives her a large steam plume. Federal Seto is far more rare here. An oceangoing vessel sailing for the Canadian Fednav fleet, she is one of the company’s “Tramp” vessels, which sail miscellaneous routes wherever she’s needed to take cargo, meaning she can end up in any port in the world that can fit her. In this case it was a load of structural steel, possibly for the new harbor bridge construction here in town but could be for any major construction project in the upper midwest or south central Canada. The ship measures 656ft long with a carrying capacity of 40,200 tons. Constructed in 2004 she is one of the original 11 “laker” style vessels that would prove so successful for their ability to easily handle any conditions in both the Lakes and oceans that they would become the gold standard for Lakes-overseas design through the 21st century, now numbering in the hundreds with various companies introducing spin-offs of the design. She has no recorded incidents or changes in her entire career, but given the nature of things going unrecorded when not in a region like the Great Lakes, this may not be entirely accurate. She departed empty to load up wheat in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Last but not least since it might be awhile before we see her again: the Missouri. Built in 1927 and measuring 88ft long, Missouri has long been Duluth’s primary heavy assist tug. She started life as the coal powered steam tug Rogers City, working for US Steel as a pusher tug at their limestone facility in Rogers City Michigan. In 1959 she was renamed Dolomite following a product shift at her home port. In 1973 a major winter ice shove crushed her hull and sank her at her dock, the vessel was repaired and put into limited service for the next five years but failed a later hull inspection and was retired. Before she could go to scrap however, she was scooped up in 1980 by the North American Towing Company, based in Duluth. She was fully restored and repowered with new diesel engines and renamed Chippewa, entering service the next year as a Duluth harbor tug and she’s never left. In 1990 the company was bought out by Great Lakes Towing (G-Tug) and she was renamed Missouri. Today, despite her years she is still by far the most active harbor tug on western Lake Superior. Hope you enjoy!