Aquastar is a Great Lakes cruise boat, operated by Aquastar Cruises. She gives public and private charter cruises on Muskegon Lake and Lake Michigan. [1]
The former Mackinac Island ferry boat was purchased by Sylvia Precious and her husband Ralph and brought to Muskegon, Michigan in the spring of 1987. She was rechristened, Port City Princess. [2]
For about 30 years under the Precious family’s operation the Port City Princess hosted not only dinner and sunset cruises, she has also hosted weddings and corporate outings. [2]
In 2008, when the Precious family matriarch Silvia Precious retired, the boat was being optioned by an out of town buyer to move to a Northern Michigan port. [3] [2] To keep the boat in Muskegon, the Sand Products Corporation purchased the Port City Princess and extensively upgraded her, this included a number of aesthetic and structural renovations which featured a modern deco theme. [4] This also included the boat being painted aqua, gray, red and white with its name on the back and the owners obtaining a liquor license. [2]
The cruise boat was rechristened, Aquastar on August 3, 2018 by Miss Michigan and Miss Shoreline. [5] The name and color scheme pays homage to the SS Aquarama, the largest passenger ferry ever on the Great Lakes. [4] [2]
She continues to offer both private charters and public cruises along with a wide variety of specialty cruises throughout the sailing season. [4]
Muskegon is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Muskegon County. Muskegon is known for fishing, sailing regattas, pleasure boating, and as a commercial and cruise ship port. It is a popular vacation destination because of the expansive freshwater beaches, historic architecture, and public art collection. It is the most populous city along the western shore of Michigan. At the 2020 census the city population was 38,318. It is at the southwest corner of Muskegon Township, but is administratively autonomous.
West Michigan and Western Michigan are terms for an arbitrary region in the U.S. state of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Most narrowly it refers to the Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland area, or more broadly to most of the region along the Lake Michigan shoreline of the Lower Peninsula, but there is no official definition for it.
The Ann Arbor Railroad was an American railroad that operated between Toledo, Ohio, and Elberta and Frankfort, Michigan with train ferry operations across Lake Michigan. In 1967 it reported 572 million net ton-miles of revenue freight, including 107 million in "lake transfer service"; that total does not include the 39-mile subsidiary Manistique and Lake Superior Railroad.
Princess Cruises is an American-British cruise line owned by Carnival Corporation & plc. The company is incorporated in Bermuda and its headquarters are in Santa Clarita, California. As of 2018, it is the second largest cruise line by net revenue. It was previously a subsidiary of P&O Princess Cruises, and is currently under Holland America Group within Carnival Corporation & plc, which holds executive control over the Princess Cruises brand. The line has 18 ships cruising global itineraries that are marketed to both American and international passengers.
The Grand Trunk Milwaukee Car Ferry Company was the Grand Trunk Western Railroad's subsidiary company operating its Lake Michigan railroad car ferry operations between Muskegon, Michigan, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from 1905 to 1978. Major railroad companies in Michigan used rail ferry vessels to transport rail cars across Lake Michigan from Michigan's western shore to eastern Wisconsin to avoid rail traffic congestion in Chicago.
Muskegon Lake is a 4,150-acre (16.8 km2) fresh-water lake in Muskegon County, Michigan, USA. Located in the lower peninsula at the mouth of the Muskegon River, Muskegon Lake forms a 12-square-mile (31 km2) broad harbor along the eastern shoreline of Lake Michigan, approximately 2.5 miles (4.0 km) wide by 5.5 miles (8.9 km) long.
SS City of Midland 41 was a train ferry serving the ports of Ludington, Michigan, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and Kewaunee, Wisconsin, for the Pere Marquette Railway and its successor, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway from 1941 until 1988. The ferry was named after the city of Midland, Michigan.
SS Keewatin is a passenger liner that once sailed between Port Arthur/Fort William on Lake Superior and Port McNicoll on Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada. She carried passengers between these ports for the Canadian Pacific Railway's Great Lakes steamship service. Keewatin also carried packaged freight goods for the railway at these ports.
SS Milwaukee Clipper, also known as SS Clipper, and formerly as SS Juniata, is a retired passenger ship and automobile ferry that sailed under two configurations and traveled on all of the Great Lakes except Lake Ontario. The vessel is now docked in Muskegon, Michigan.
The history of commercial passenger shipping on the Great Lakes is long but uneven. It reached its zenith between the mid-19th century and the 1950s. As early as 1844, palace steamers carried passengers and cargo around the Great Lakes. By 1900, fleets of relatively luxurious passenger steamers plied the waters of the lower lakes, especially the major industrial centres of Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toronto.
SS Aquarama was built as Marine Star, one of five breakbulk cargo ships of the United States Maritime Commission (USMC) type C4-S-B5 having that C4 design variant. The ship was delivered to the War Shipping Administration (WSA) for operation in July 1945 just before the end of World War II and was operated until August 1946 by WSA's agent American Hawaiian SS Company. From September 1947 the ship was laid up except for brief periods in the James River.
MV Hebridean Princess is a cruise ship operated by Hebridean Island Cruises. She started life as the MacBrayne car ferry and Royal Mail Ship, initially RMS then MV Columba, based in Oban for the first 25 years of her life, carrying up to 600 passengers, and 50 cars, between the Scottish islands.
The SS Spartan is a railroad car ferry on Lake Michigan owned by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) from 1952 through 1979. It alternated routes from Ludington, Michigan, to Milwaukee, Kewaunee, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
Hornblower Cruises & Events NOW City Experiences is a San Francisco-based charter yacht, dining cruise and ferry service company.
Due to its unique geography, being made of two peninsulas surrounded by the Great Lakes, Michigan has depended on many ferries for connections to transport people, vehicles and trade. The most famous modern ferries are those which carry people and goods across the Straits of Mackinac to the car-free Mackinac Island but before the Mackinac Bridge was built, large numbers of ferries carried people and cars between the two peninsulas. Other ferries continue to provide transportation to small islands and across the Detroit River to Canada. Ferries once provided transport to island parks for city dwellers. The state's only national park, Isle Royale cannot be reached by road and is normally accessed by ferry. The largest ferries in Michigan are the car ferries which cross Lake Michigan to Wisconsin. One of these, the SS Badger is one of the last remaining coal steamers on the Great Lakes and serves as a section of US Highway 10 (US 10). The Badger is also the largest ferry in Michigan, capable of carrying 600 passengers and 180 autos.
Regal Princess is a Royal-class cruise ship operated by Princess Cruises, a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation & plc, and is the second ship to sail for the cruise line under this name. Regal Princess, as well as her sister ship Royal Princess, were ordered on 17 February 2010 from Fincantieri and were constructed at the Fincantieri shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy, and debuted in 2014.
The SS St. Marys Challenger is a freight-carrying vessel operating on the North American Great Lakes built in 1906. Originally an ore boat, she spent most of her career as a cement carrier when much larger ore boats became common. After a 107-year-long working career as a self-propelled boat, she was converted into a barge and paired with the tug Prentiss Brown as an articulated tug-barge. Before conversion, she was the oldest operating self-propelled lake freighter on the Great Lakes, as well as being one of the last freight-carrying vessels on the Great Lakes to be powered by steam engines.
Robert Logan was a Scottish naval architect. He was a university graduate of mathematics, science, and engineering. Logan designed and constructed several large ships for various shipbuilding firms worldwide. His first ones were passenger cruise excursion boats and later constructed freighter ships for the American Shipbuilding Company that carried railroad trains across Lake Michigan. He designed the world's first steel train ferry, followed by several more Logan boats that ultimately developed into the world's largest carferry fleet that operated out of Ludington, Michigan.
The SS Alpena is a lake freighter. She was built in 1942 by the Great Lakes Engineering Works in Ecorse, Michigan, to carry iron ore. She was originally owned by the Pittsburgh Steamship Company, a subsidiary of United States Steel. After also hauling grain in addition to ore in the 1960s and 1970s, the ship was put into storage in 1982.