 | This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling.(April 2024) |
| Headquarters | Port Huron, Michigan, U.S. |
|---|---|
Region | Great Lakes |
| Website | https://boatnerd.com/ |
The boatnerd corporation, a registered not for profit corporation, circulates information about vessels that ply the North American Great Lakes. [1] [2]
The organization holds annual festivals, at sites of interest to those interested in maritime commerce on the Great Lakes. The Globe and Mail profiled boatnerd when the 2008 festival was held in a shipyard in Port Colborne, Ontario, where the Calumet, an 80-year-old lake freighter was being scrapped. According to The Globe and Mail the site gets over 20 million page views a month. According to The Globe and Mail the site's volunteers often report breaking news prior to its announcement by official authorities. The Globe and Mail quoted a volunteer who described how, while professional mariners kidded the volunteers, they obviously monitored it, because they could count on regular mariners promptly informing them when they had made a mistake.
The organization is large enough to maintain an office in Port Huron, Michigan, overlooking the confluence of the St Clair and Black Rivers. [3] [4] The site went online in 1995, and became a registered not for profit corporation in 2006, under the name Great Lakes & Seaway Shipping Online. [2]
The organization provides unusual prizes through fund-raising raffles. [5] Various lake freighters were built with an "owner's suite". These suites are rarely used today, but the organization has been able to convince shipping companies to make cruises on board a working lake freighter, in the owner's suite, available to donors. 76 donors have won Great Lake freighter cruises.
When Acheson Ventures provided space for a headquarters for the organization in their Maritime Center overlooking the St Clair River, they called boatnerd "the most widely-used website for Great Lakes maritime information." [3] Reporters consider the boatnerd site reliable enough that they cite or quote it by name in their articles. [6] [7] [8] [9]
The organization was profiled by The Globe and Mail in 2008. [10]
Travel writer Bob Boughner, reporting in the Chatham Daily News , in December 2014, that "The average person, like myself, would have no idea where the ships were headed or what they were carrying if it wasn't for a relatively new organization headquartered in Port Huron, Mich., known as BoatNerd.com." [11]
The Great Lakes Waterway (GLW) is a system of natural channels and artificial locks and canals which enable navigation between the North American Great Lakes. Though all of the lakes are naturally connected as a chain, water travel between the lakes was impeded for centuries by obstacles such as Niagara Falls and the rapids of the St. Marys River.
Port Huron is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of St. Clair County. The population was 28,983 at the 2020 census. The city is bordered on the west by Port Huron Township, but the two are administered autonomously.
The Great Lakes Storm of 1913 was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that devastated the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwestern United States and Southwestern Ontario, Canada, from November 7 to 10, 1913. The storm was most powerful on November 9, battering and overturning ships on four of the five Great Lakes, particularly Lake Huron.
Lake freighters, or lakers, are bulk carrier vessels that operate on the Great Lakes of North America. These vessels are traditionally called boats, although classified as ships.
The United States lightship Huron (LV-103) is a lightvessel that was launched in 1920. She is now a museum ship moored in Pine Grove Park, Port Huron, St. Clair County, Michigan.
The DeTour Reef Light is a non-profit-operated lighthouse marking the southern entrance of the DeTour Passage between the eastern end of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Drummond Island. The light is an automated active aid to navigation. It marks the northern end of Lake Huron. The passage is used by almost all of the Great Lakes commercial freighter traffic moving to and from Lake Superior, with approximately 5,000 vessel movements annually. It is said to be "the gateway to Lake Superior." In addition, many recreational boaters use the passage. The Light is located in Lake Huron, three miles (5 km) south of the nearest town, DeTour Village, Michigan.
SS Daniel J. Morrell was a 603-foot (184 m) Great Lakes freighter that broke up in a strong storm on Lake Huron on 29 November 1966, taking with her 28 of her 29 crewmen. The freighter was used to carry bulk cargoes such as iron ore but was running with only ballast when the 60-year-old ship sank. When built in 1906, she was the "Queen of the Lakes", being the longest ship then in service on the Great Lakes.
Poe Reef is a lighthouse located at the east end of South Channel between Bois Blanc Island and the mainland of the Lower Peninsula, about 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Cheboygan, Michigan.
Quebecois was a lake freighter that served the Great Lakes, operating between ports in the United States and Canada. The vessel was launched in 1962 by Canadian Vickers Ltd of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Used to carry grain and ore, Quebecois was built to the maximum dimensions allowed on the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The vessel entered service in 1963 and in 2012, the ship's named was altered to Algoma Quebecois. The ship was broken up for scrap at Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada in 2013.
Montrealais was a lake freighter launched in 1961. Constructed in two parts, the vessel was completed in 1962 and registered in Canada. Utilized as a bulk carrier, the vessel served on the Great Lakes until 2015. Montrealais was sold three times between 1962 and 2012, when the freighter was acquired by Algoma Central Corp. and renamed Algoma Montrealais. The bulk carrier continued in service until 2015, when the vessel was renamed Mont and sold for scrap. Mont was taken to Aliağa, Turkey and broken up beginning on 10 July 2015.
The Mississagi was a Type L6-S-B1 lake freighter launched in 1943. Originally she was powered by a 2,500 horsepower (1,900 kW) triple-expansion steam engine. In 1985 her steam engines were replaced by a 4,500 horsepower (3,400 kW) diesel engine.
Algoma Equinox is a lake freighter and lead ship of her class built for Algoma Central, a Canadian shipping company. The vessel was built to a new design by Nantong Mingde Heavy Industries at their shipyard in Tongzhou, China in 2013. The ship entered service in December 2013, operating in the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway.
The Blue Water River Walk is a nearly one mile stretch of land along the St. Clair River in Port Huron, Michigan. The River Walk begins just south of the mouth of the Black River and continues to the Seaway Terminal. It is less than a mile south of the Blue Water Bridge to Sarnia and the southern end of Lake Huron. The Blue Water River Walk includes a naturalized shoreline made up of natural rocks, boulders and pebbles. Native plants, flowers, trees and shrubs growing in a natural landscape make up the habitat onshore. The River Walk provides a place for natural habitat to thrive and for visitors to take a walk along the shoreline and enjoy looking for turtles, having a picnic, and watching freighters.
The Calumet was the second lake freighter of that name. The vessel was built in Detroit, Michigan, in 1929, by the Great Lakes Engineering Works. For her first 71 years she was operated by two subsidiaries of US Steel, the Pittsburgh Steamship Company, and the Bradley Transportation Company. She was christened the Myron C. Taylor after one of the directors of US Steel, Myron Charles Taylor.
SS Clifton, originally Samuel Mather, was a whaleback lake freighter built in 1892 for service on the Great Lakes. She was 308 foot (94 m) long, 30 foot (9.1 m) beam, and 24 foot (7.3 m) depth, and had a 3,500 ton capacity. The self-propelled barge was built by the American Steel Barge Company in West Superior, Wisconsin. Her builders used a design well-suited to carry iron ore, her intended trade. The new vessel was christened Samuel Mather, after a cofounder of Pickands Mather and Company, which at the time was the second largest fleet on the Great Lakes.
The Henry Phipps was a 601-foot-long (183 m) American Great Lakes freighter that served on the Great Lakes of North America from her launching in 1907 to her scrapping in 1976 by Hyman Michaels Company of Duluth, Minnesota. The Phipps was used to haul bulk cargoes such as iron ore, coal, grain and occasionally limestone.
SS Choctaw was a steel-hulled American freighter in service between 1892 and 1915, on the Great Lakes of North America. She was a so-called monitor vessel, containing elements of traditional lake freighters and the whaleback ships designed by Alexander McDougall. Choctaw was built in 1892 by the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company in Cleveland, Ohio, and was originally owned by the Lake Superior Iron Company. She was sold to the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company in 1894 and spent the rest of her working life with it. On her regular route between Detroit, Escanaba, Marquette, and Cleveland, she carried iron ore downbound, and coal upbound.
SS Edward L. Ryerson is a steel-hulled American Great Lakes freighter that entered service in 1960. Built between April 1959 and January 1960 for the Inland Steel Company, she was the third of the thirteen so-called 730-class of lake freighters, each of which shared the unofficial title of "Queen of the Lakes", as a result of their record-breaking length. She was not only the last steam-powered freighter built on the lakes but also the last one that was not a self-unloader. Since 2009, she has been in long-term layup in Superior, Wisconsin. She is one of only two American-owned straight deck lake freighters, the other being John Sherwin, built in 1958.
SS John Mitchell was a steel-hulled, American lake freighter in service between 1907 and 1911. She was built in 1906 by the Great Lakes Engineering Works in St. Clair, Michigan, for the Cornell Steamship Company of Chicago, Illinois, which was managed by C.W. Elphicke. She entered service in 1907, and had a sister ship named William B. Davock. Throughout her career, John Mitchell carried iron ore and coal. On October 4, 1908, she ran aground at Indiana Harbor, Indiana, while loaded with iron ore.