Burns Harbor break wall ships

[Duluth Guest]

It appears to me, after looking at these photos quite closely as well as taking a good look at the Google Earth imagery, that the Princeton and Bayton are still there, exactly where they were left within the breakwall.

The Charles Hubbard appears to have been mostly scrapped on site. In Mr. Lafferty's photo below, you can see a crane working on, what appears to be, the dismantling process of the Hubbard in 1968. How much of it was scrapped is unknown; there are likely pieces of it still there as evidenced by the 1974 photo.

The others are likely at least partially scrapped; they took the easy stuff and left the hard stuff then buried them where they were.

[Diver Dan]

The Marine Historical Society of Detroit covered "ships sunk as breakwalls" earlier in the year in their publication "The Detroit Marine Historian" in their issues from February to June.

[tugboathunter]

So from this thread, am I to understand that the reports of those vessels later being raised and broken up are incorrect? I was under that impression as well.

[Guest]

I doubt we'd see such a massive project carried out today with all of the environmental regulations.

[Mr Link]

Here are three cropped aerial photos from the USGS Earth Explorer website. Dates are in the file names.

[Guest]

The Google Earth imagery from September 2015 possibly provides the clearest indication of the remnants of the two ships in the NE corner (north is up in the attached screen capture):

[William Lafferty]

William Lafferty , what is your source for the five ships? Thanks.

There was a discussion of this on the Toronto Marine Historical Society Facebook page last November. It included this CAC photograph from the late Skip Gillham's collection, posted by one of the administrators of the page, Bill Moran. I have somewhere photographs from the Munster and Valparaiso newspapers that name several of the vessels. Here is one from the South Bend Tribune, 27 November 1966.

[guest]

William Lafferty , what is your source for the five ships? Thanks.

[guest]

Thanks for the replies. I have a photo that shows 2 of them, floating, land-locked inside the break wall that mattm posted a pic of. If you look closely I they are sunk up in the corner. My pic with them floating inside was too big to upload. I'll try to resize it and post.

[Guest]

According to the BGSU ship database, all five listed were used in the harbor building as temporary breakwalls, but at least four of the five were later scrapped one of which, the Hubbard, seems to have returned to service. The Pillsbury may have been buried on site. Her disposition does not appear to be well documented.

[William Lafferty]

Bayton, Princeton, Algosteel, Charles Hubbard, and Pillsbury.

[MattM]

There are 5 hulls out there. Most of them are well buried.

[Guest]

At least 3 ships were used as temporary break walls during the construction of Bethlehem Steels plant in Burns Harbor, IN. Does anyone know what their names were. Mid to late 1960's. I believe 2 were sunk on site and are partially visible from aerial shots just inside the break wall.