Northern Venture and Hilda Marjanne

[Guest]

Red Wings power plant had considerably less power than other contemparies i'm sure she had to be run full out so I can see where she wouldn't be very economical to run.

[Al]

They seemed to be good boats and were converted to lake service in an era when good lines were still a part of building a vessel. The Historical Perspective Gallery here at the website features the Red Wing for June 2009. It has great photos and some real interesting information.

[Guest]

So were they built on the cheap or were they pretty decent,I know they got converted in the early eighties, a conversion which will go down in history as quite possibly the ugliest ever, I wonder why The Red Wing never got converted?

[Al]

These two boats and the Red Wing were originally built as T2 tankers like Wheelsman said. Upper Lakes Shipping, who bought all three and had them converted, also owned Port Weller Dry Docks at St. Catharines, Ontario. The conversions were done to expedite achieving boats at the new size that was allowed through the rebuilt Seaway which opened 1959. The Red Wing was converted at Port Weller, the whole hull being scrapped even around the machinery spaces and an entire hull built to the new Seaway size. While work on the Red Wing was being done, Upper Lakes had purchased what later became the Wheat King and had it reworked, for use in both lake and ocean trade, at Port Weller after the Red Wing came out in 1960. The company wanted more hulls at the new Seaway size and found two T2s for sale in Europe. With their Port Weller Dry Dock at work on the Wheat King, they went with Schlieker-Werft in Hamburg, West Germany to convert them to lake boats. The Northern and Hilda differed from the Red Wing in that their sterns were mated with entirely new hulls and bows. The two of them were temporarily reinforced where necessary and crossed the Atlantic Ocean under their own power to Port Weller, where final work was performed to commission them for the lakes in 1961. Upper Lakes saved a lot of money in the process and got three boats at the new Seaway size within two shipping seasons.

[William Lafferty]

They weren't exactly "built" overseas but rebuilt overseas. Upper Lakes wanted new Seaway-sized tonnage quickly but its own yard at Port Weller was tied up with converting the relatively young ocean tanker Llandaff into a vessel suitable for both lake and ocean service, the Wheat King, and the construction of two coastal freighters. Canada had a generous 40% shipbuilding subsidy in place, but only for Canadian-built vessels, so Jack Leitch went looking for a cheaper alternative. Upper Lakes already had experience with this sort of thing, having had the Imperial Redwater converted from a tanker to the bulk carrier R. Bruce Angus at Collingwood in 1954 and had just had the Red Wing built around the machinery of the T-2 tanker Imperial Edmonton at Port Weller. Of course, American owners had been converting ocean vessels, especially T-2s, for the past decade at that point. Leitch located two T-2s in Europe, the Edenfield and Kate N. L., and had Schleiker-Werft AG at Hamburg convert the old vessels into the Northern Venture and Hilda Marjanne by installing new forebodies. Schleiker-Werft found itself a profitable niche doing this type of work in the early 1960s, also converting the Leon Falk, Jr., Paul H. Carnahan, and Walter A. Sterling. I always thought that even as T-2 conversions the Red Wing, Northern Venture, and Hilda Marjanne were quite good looking vessels.

[kamco]

In my research on this 2 reasons first the Canadian yards were building several ships with full order books.Port Weller was building Red Wing,Federal Palm and Sir.John Crosby.The others were also building full size lakes type ships.And secondly the cost of building Canadian as mentioned in the Book Ships of Port Weller by Skip Gillham,but I am not so sure on this as at that time a very lucrative substidy was available from the Government.Any one else wish to speculate?

[Wheelsman]

It was either the fore or mid-bodies that were built overseas. The stern sections with engine rooms were US-built T-2 tankers of WW2 vintage. All 3 were conversion jobs. Not sure of the politics behind the decisions other than probably the usual labor cost concerns and so on, or their designs were favored by ULS.

[Guest]

I don't see much written about them at all as to why they were built oversees instead of port weller, were they somewhat sister ships to Red Wing or were they a cheaper version, any insight would be appreciated.