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Type | Private corporation |
Founded | Cleveland, Ohio (1899) |
Location | Cleveland, Ohio |
Industry | Transportation |
Revenue | $20 million USD (2010) |
Employees | 200 |
Website | www |
The Great Lakes Group (GLG) is an American full-service marine-related transportation company headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. The Great Lakes Group is the parent Company to The Great Lakes Towing Company, Great Lakes Shipyard, Tugz International L.L.C., Puerto Rico Towing & Barge Co., Soo Linehandling Services, Admiral Towing and Barge Company, and Wind Logistics, Inc. [1]
The Great Lakes Towing Company was the first company of The Great Lakes Group, founded in New Jersey on July 7, 1899. [2] Its founding shareholders included Jeptha H. Wade II, John D. Rockefeller, [2] William G. Mather, and James R. Sinclair. T.F. Newman was the first president. The company began full operation on the Great Lakes (except Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River) in 1900, starting its first navigating season with over 150 tugboats.
The Company grew rapidly, so much so that in 1913 it was charged with operating a monopoly.
Frequent labor unrest during World War II resulted in the U.S. government assuming control of the Company in 1945–46.
During the 1950s and 1960s the company installed innovative communication equipment. Business began to decline in the 1960s when the decline of the steel industry and the introduction of new types of ships led to a reduction in the number of tugs needed. In 1972 the company was purchased by the American Shipbuilding Co., which sold the firm to Trans Commercial Industries, Inc., in 1973.
The company's headquarters have been in Cleveland since its founding, though the locations of its docks and offices have changed several times over the years. Ronald Rasmus serves as super leader.
GLT is the largest U.S.-flag tugboat company engaged in towing on the Great Lakes. [3] The company is widely referred to as “The Towing Company.”1, 10 GLT provides services such as local harbor towing, docking and undocking, interport towing of vessels and barges, icebreaking, as well as rescue and assistance to grounded or damaged ships with a fleet of nearly forty tugboats stationed throughout U.S. Great Lakes ports.
Throughout its corporate history, The Great Lakes Towing Company has always operated a Cleveland Shipyard. Originally located on Jefferson Road in the Flats until the Great Cuyahoga River fire in 1952 when it moved to the present site in the Old River Bed, the Shipyard constructed many of its tugs and repaired all of the Towing Company's tugs and barges throughout its history. [4]
Great Lakes Shipyard is located in the Old River Channel on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio. [4] In 2007, the Shipyard began new construction of tugboats. [4]
On July 29, 2011, the Shipyard debuted its new Mobile Vessel Hoist, named "America" after one of the company's original tugboats. The 770-ton hoist, manufactured by Marine Travelift, is the largest of its kind on the Great Lakes, second-largest in the Western Hemisphere and third-largest in the world.
Great Lakes Shipyard recently teamed up with Rolls-Royce Commercial Marine Inc. to create a marine service center. Rolls-Royce's repair and overhaul services in the Great Lakes Region will be performed by Rolls-Royce in cooperation with Great Lakes Shipyard, and Rolls-Royce's equipment will be stored, maintained, serviced, and repaired in the Shipyard.
Tugz, formed in 1998, designs, constructs, and owns tractor and tractor-type tugs for charter and operation by affiliated companies, and for charter to third parties for use throughout the United States.
PRT was formed in 1997 and is based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. PRT provides vessel assistance and towing services to commercial vessels and barges in San Juan Harbor, other inland ports, and ports throughout the Caribbean. The company is known in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean as "PRT."
Soo Linehandling provides linehandling assistance to vessels transiting the United States Army Corps of Engineers-administered and -operated Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan on the St. Mary's River, the only water connection between Lake Superior and the other Great Lakes. The Soo Locks are located in the St. Mary's Rapids, where the water falls about 21 feet from the level of Lake Superior to the level of the lower lakes. Vessels must transit the Soo Locks en route to the principal ports of Duluth, Minnesota and Thunder Bay, Ontario and outbound to the sea.
In 1999 Admiral Towing and Barge Company was awarded a Military Sealift Command contract. Admiral provided tugboat and harbor towing services at the United States Naval Station, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and in the waters of the Hawaiian Islands for a period of up to five years with three Z-Tugs.
USS Zuni (AT/ATF-95), a Cherokee-class fleet tugboat, formerly called Navajo class, was a ship of the United States Navy named for the Zuni, the popular name given to a tribe of Pueblo Indians indigenous to the area around the Zuni River in central New Mexico near the Arizona state line.
Seaspan ULC provides marine-related services to the Pacific Northwest. Within the Group are three shipyards, an intermodal ferry and car float business, and also a tug and barge transportation company that serves both domestic and international markets. Seaspan is part of the Washington Companies, owned by Dennis Washington. Seaspan is run by his son Kyle Washington, as Executive Chairman, who has become a Canadian citizen. Seaspan ULC was formerly known as Seaspan Marine Corporation, and prior to that Washington Marine Group.
The Defoe Shipbuilding Company was a small ship builder established in 1905 in Bay City, Michigan, United States. It ceased to operate in 1976 after failing to renew its contracts with the United States Navy. The site of the former company is now being developed for business and housing on the bank of the Saginaw River.
Edna G is a tugboat which worked the Great Lakes and is now preserved as a museum ship. Edna G was built by the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company in 1896 for the Duluth and Iron Range Railroad at a cost $35,397.50. She was named for the daughter of J. L. Greatsinger, president of the railroad.
Luna is a historic tugboat normally berthed in Boston Harbor, Massachusetts. Luna was designed in 1930 by John G. Alden and built by M.M. Davis and Bethlehem Steel. She is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a U.S. National Historic Landmark. In 1985, the Luna was designated as a Boston Landmark by the Boston Landmarks Commission.
Thomas Hebert was an ocean-going tugboat that sank off the coast of New Jersey on Sunday 7 March 1993.
The tugboat is a symbol that is sometimes heavily associated with New York City. Once all became steam-powered, they soon became prevalent, starting with the first hull, the paddler tug Rufus W. King of 1828.
Foss Maritime, is an American tugging company. The company was founded in 1889 by Thea Foss (1857–1927) and her husband Andrew Foss. The company is now the largest tug and towing concern on the west coast of the United States.
There is a long marine tradition of Seattle tugboats. The complex inlets of Puget Sound needed tugs to move sailing vessels against contrary winds. Tugs would wait in the open Pacific off Cape Flattery to greet the sailing ships entering the sound to move lumber. During the war years and the Alaskan booms, it became of renewed importance.
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.
Sause Bros., Inc., a pioneering Oregon ocean towing company founded in 1936, is a privately held, fourth-generation family company serving routes along the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii and other islands of the South Pacific, as well as Alaska. It maintains a sixty-vessel fleet of tugboats and barges, employing approximately 400 people at its facilities in Coos Bay, Portland, and Rainier, Oregon; in Long Beach, California; and in Honolulu and Kalaeloa, Hawaii.
The AmboyandGeorge SpencerShipwreck Site is an archeological shipwreck site which consists of the wrecks of the wooden bulk freighter George Spencer and the wooden schooner-barge Amboy. Both vessels were wrecked during the Mataafa Storm of 1905. In 1994 the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
SS Selah Chamberlain was a wooden hulled Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Michigan in 1886, 6 miles (10 km) off the coast of Sheboygan, Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, United States after being rammed by the steamer John Pridgeon Jr. with the loss of five lives. On January 7, 2019, the wreck of Selah Chamberlain was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and was given the reference number 100003288. She was the first shipwreck listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.
Radium Franklin was a tugboat built in 1951, and operated by the Northern Transportation Company - popularly known as the "Radium Line", because many of their tugboats contained Radium in their name, since they were originally built to haul Uranium ore from Port Radium, on Great Bear Lake. She was retired in 1979, after spending most of her career hauling barge packed with ore, and then briefly serving as a yard tug.
Albert is a U.S.-flagged tugboat owned by U.S. Oil and operated by Andrie. Albert is paired with the tank barge Margaret and transports petroleum products to ports along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River.
115 was an American whaleback barge in service between 1891 and 1899. She was built between May and August 1891, in Superior, Wisconsin by Alexander McDougall's American Steel Barge Company, for the "McDougall fleet", based in Buffalo, New York. She was one of a class of distinctive, experimental ship designed and built by McDougall. The whalebacks were designed to be more stable in high seas. They had rounded decks, and lacked the normal straight sides seen on traditional lake freighters. 115 entered service on August 25, hauling iron ore from Superior.
104 was an American whaleback barge in service between 1890 and 1898. The fourth whaleback constructed, she was built between October 1889 and February 1890, in Duluth, Minnesota by Alexander McDougall's American Steel Barge Company, for McDougall's fleet of the same name, based in Buffalo, New York. She was a whaleback, a class of distinctive, experimental ship designed and built by McDougall. The whalebacks were designed to be more stable in high seas. They had rounded decks, and lacked the normal straight sides seen on traditional lake freighters. 104 entered service on April 21, hauling iron ore from Two Harbors, Minnesota.
SS Cayuga was a steel-hulled American package freighter in service between 1889 and 1895. She was built in 1889 in Cleveland, Ohio, by the Globe Iron Works Company for the Lehigh Valley Transit Company of Buffalo, New York. One of five identical sister ships, Cayuga entered service in 1889, carrying package freight between Buffalo and Chicago, Illinois, also making stops in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Gladstone, Michigan. Prior to her sinking, Cayuga was involved in two accidents. In the first in 1890, when she went aground in a gale just outside of Buffalo harbour; six tugboats managed to pull her free that same day. The second accident occurred in 1891, when Cayuga was involved in a collision with the package freighter Delaware near Cheboygan, Michigan.
M & J Tracy Inc. was a shipping and tugboat towing company founded in New York City by the racy brothers in 1881, as M & J Tracy Transportation company. The brothers: John Tracy, Michael J. Tracy and Thomas Tracy founded the Tracy Towing Line in 1917. The brother's sisters: Catherine Tracy and Helen Tracy were on the company's board. M & J Tracy Inc. office was located at 1 Broadway in New York City and had a field office in Brooklyn. The Tracy companies owned both owned tugboats and barges. Early work was transporting coal to New York harbor port in barges. M & J Tracy Inc. supported the World War II effort by operating United States tugboats and ships. After the war, M & J Tracy Inc. purchased some surplus ships. M & J Tracy Inc. also operated the M & J Tracy New York Harbor Industrial site. The family lived in the Frank J. Helmle 1912 Tracy Mansion at 105 8th Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, now a 7 unit Condo. John Tracy founded the Maritime Association of the Port of New York. John Tracy was born in 1855 and died on October 1, 1931. Michael J, Tracy died on November 7, 1927,