Boatnerd Discussion Forum

Yes, that's it. His name was Robert Noffze. On the Thayer in 1978 he stood up for me when the first mate was ripping into me for transferring into a wheelsman job on the Roesch. I always remembered that act of kindness. Then in 1997 I worked as a relief AB on the Armco for 110 days before "quitting" or turning down the request to be bosun vacation relief for a few weeks. While getting my discharge paper Capt. Noffze said that I was leaving under an emergency relief and paid me travel money. Nice guy again.

David -
The Individual you are referring to is Robert Noffze. He is listed as the first graduate of the Great Lakes Maritime Academy and joined Oglebay Norton in 1974. He retired as Captain off the Armco in 2000.

Interesting tidbits of information, thanks for posting. I noticed the deck strapping in a pic that was posted during fitout this spring. I was wondering what the reason was for that strapping, I didn't realize that tunnels had been removed.

My memory was that the monopoly charges made Kinsman get rid of the self-unloaders when they bought the Wilson boats in the early 70's. The Roesch and Thayer were built and operated after that date (came out in 1973). I have no ideas why they sold to Oglebay Norton at a later date.

Regarding Pringle Transit: I thought that the Roesch and Thayer were set up under Pringle Transit because of the unlicensed crew's SIU contract. They definitely were being operated by Columbia (Oglebay Norton) even with the Pringle name. In 1978 I worked with Bob Naftse (spelling?) when he was second mate on the Thayer. I stopped sailing that year and came back to sailing in 1997 on the Armco with Bob Naftse as captain.

Not many positive memories about the boats . I worked on the Roesch in 1973 and both of them in 1978. Very noisy in every room. Cheaply made. Flat decks that were very hard to clean. No cargo capacity whatsoever. In 1973 before the side tunnels were removed you could hardly load down to the marks with taconite. After the side tunnels were removed to increase cargo hold size, reinforcement straps were welded to the decks near the outside. This made it even harder to clean the decks.

Technically, the Roesch and Thayer were never kinsman boats. They were built by American Shipbuilding for Union Commerce bank. They were managed by Kinsman for a couple years but the bank retained ownership. The bank changed management companies to Pringle Transit in 1976. I suspect the anti-trust action against Steinbrenner/Kinsman influenced the banks decision. The boats were eventually sold to Columbia.

In 1972, Steinbrenner acquired all the boats of the former Wilson and Republic fleets. This gave them one of the largest fleets on the lakes (22 boats) plus the shipyards and resulted in an anti-trust lawsuit filled against them. Steinbrenner/Kinsman chose to keep the shipyards and sold off/scrapped most of the boats. In 1982, the shipyard was permanently closed due to a labor dispute. Kinsman was reduced to a couple of boats that ran seasonally in the grain trade.

Part of an anti trust suit that Kinsman had a monopoly. Since Kinsman was hauling a lot of grain the self unloaders were the logical choice as well as the fact that they were the only ships anyone would want to buy.

Why did Kinsman sell the William R. Roesch and Paul Thayer, two new boats with unloaders?