Boatnerd Discussion Forum

It is fitting to note that the steam powered vessel Cason J. Calloway is passing the steam blow. These are slowly disappearing now.

A steam whistle sound terrible when run on air and you would need a really big air compressor to supply the volume. There is an annual whistle blow called Whistles on the Water in St. Claire Michigan where a local person loans them a steam boiler (maybe a steam tractor) to blow a beautiful ...

I had a nice little adventure yesterday. I helped transfer a 9" diameter beautiful steam whistle from the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc Wisconsin to the Lilac Preservation Project in New York City.
The Lilac is a retired Coast Guard Lighthouse Tender undergoing restoration. She is a beauty ...

She is scheduled to arrive in Manitowoc today.

When we went out to the burning vessel, there was a Canada Coast Guard vessel attending.

Quite a while ago, I was in Copper Harbor, MI and managed to get close to a burning ship on Lake Superior. The aft superstructure acted like a big chimney and the crews quarters burned killing at least one crewman. This was a Canada vessel and I think a Patterson ship.
Does anybody remember this ...

Just for information, the steel mill in Ashland, KY that the ship was named after has been shut down permanently fairly recently.

I saw a grain ship with a high aft superstructure (no forward pilot house) on fire off Copper Harbor, MI in the 70's. I understand that a few members of the crew were casualties. The high aft superstructure acted as a big chimney for a fire that started in the crews quarters. I heard that the fire ...

That is a very narrow channel to navigate. Dredged each year and goes from 26 feet to 2 feet in a hurry. She doesn't show up on Boatnerd AIS, but does on Marine Traffic AIS.

Nobody has really answered my question. The companies mentioned in previous posts have maritime equipment and are active maritime dredging operations on the Great Lakes. So where is this Nevada company going to get the required equipment to do this work and get it there? Tugboats, cranes, barges ...

Does anybody else find it curious that a company from Nevada (where there is very little water and few (if any) navigable waterways got the contract for dredging on the new lock? What is up with that?

Due to heavy rains, the Sheboygan River is in flood stage and I noticed something yesterday.
I used to keep my boat at the Sheboygan Outboard Club upstream in the Sheboygan River and I parked it on an island that they own in the middle of the river accusable only by boat. They have water, sewer, and ...

They are manufacturing wind turbine tower sections in Manitowoc, WI.
Some of these are shipped across Lake Michigan on the good old SS Badger which can carry some VERY large and long loads across the Lake avoiding all the special oversize load permits required through the Chicago area. Very ...

An update: This weekend is the Tall Ships event in Green Bay.
One of the Tall Ships was affected by the water level as it attempted to enter Green Bay during a storm event that drastically raised the water level.
There was a design error when they built the Leo Frigo bridge over the entrance to ...

I knew the water was way up, but I decided to see for myself yesterday. The tiny Coast Guard (auxiliary I think) station at the mouth of the Fox River was surrounded by water completely as were parts of the marina next door. I lived on the water in Green Bay in 1986 the last time the water was this ...

One of the wrecks off the nuke plant is that of an old tugboat. I don't have the name, but we went to survey the possibility of taking the steam engine and putting it on display. The Maritime Museum in Manitowoc should know what that wreck is. What you see is a compound steam engine sticking out of ...

All three engines were the same horsepower (1500) and there were 6 boilers I believe (2 per engine, but not sure on this). The bow engine (the one in Manitowoc) was only used in wintertime for icebreaking so it has the least amount of hours on it. I was told that the maximum RPM's on it was 75. The ...

The bow engine from the Chief Wawatam rail ferry was put into the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, Wi back in 2005 and I put electric motor control and a lubrication system so that the engine could rotate for the public display. At that time it was controlled by a touch screen resembling an ...

On a steam powered ship, that overboard discharge water could be from the condenser that changes waste steam back to condensate for boiler feedwater.

There IS something about that smell of coal smoke!
Some people find it offensive and in the old days there was way too much of it. Really bad for your health.
Our modern society was built on it however and we survived it.

I was "privaleged" to shovel 7 tons a day into a 150 ton steam locomotive for ...