sulphur cargoes

[Guest]

The Inland Radio website has a pdf of the July 1947 issue of The Bulletin (LCA) which has an article on the movement of sulphur (used for pickling ingots) on the Great Lakes back then.

http://www.imradioha.org/PDFs/Bulletin_July_1947.pdf

[FWE]

Many of the old crane boats carried bulk sulphur and used their cranes with clam-shell buckets to unload at the customers docks. Columbia Transportation sent their crane boats to Buffalo and Cleve and other ports.

[Jon Paul]

The Frank E Viger a crane ship for Columbia Transportation was carrying a load of sulphur when it sank after a collision with the Philip Minch on April 27, 1944 in Pelee Island Passage

[Guest]

The modern preferred method is to heat the sulphur into a molten state that can be transported by pipeline, highway or rail tanker, or by water, generally barges fitted with tanks. The heated sulphur (around 300 degrees F) can stay molten in a sealed insulated container for days without needing heating in transit. Solid sulphur is much harder to ship, prone to hard caking, and generally an unpleasant cargo for perhaps obvious reasons. There, of course, have never been any dedicated liquid sulphur vessels on the lakes, although shipments of solid sulphur began in 1923 with New York State Barge Canal motorships bringing it from the coast to Buffalo and Detroit, and to Chicago by barge from the south for transshipment onto crane boats. A special terminal was established at Chicago in the late 1940s at Western Avenue on the South Branch of the Chicago river to facilitate this type of transshipment, later building a new facility ion 1956 at 106th Street and the Calumet. Anybody remember the ill-fated Marine Sulphur Queen? At about the time it sank the switch to molten sulphur carriage was well underway, at about the same time solid sulphur as a cargo on the lakes began to disappear. I'm sure increased environmental awareness also had something to do with. I'd say rail is by far the preferred mode of transport today.

I remember the Marine Sulphur Queen from growing up in the early 1970s, with the first time I saw it was in a paperback book I got when I was about five years old titled Limbo of the Lost. A lot has been made about this ship's disappearance, which seems to have an obvious cause, but then again making something mysterious is likely to make more money. It was after all the height of popularity for the so-called Bermuda Triangle. During the early 1980s, I read a book that I believed was named The Bermuda Triangle Solved that laid out a most logical explanation for the sinking.

[William Lafferty]

The modern preferred method is to heat the sulphur into a molten state that can be transported by pipeline, highway or rail tanker, or by water, generally barges fitted with tanks. The heated sulphur (around 300 degrees F) can stay molten in a sealed insulated container for days without needing heating in transit. Solid sulphur is much harder to ship, prone to hard caking, and generally an unpleasant cargo for perhaps obvious reasons. There, of course, have never been any dedicated liquid sulphur vessels on the lakes, although shipments of solid sulphur began in 1923 with New York State Barge Canal motorships bringing it from the coast to Buffalo and Detroit, and to Chicago by barge from the south for transshipment onto crane boats. A special terminal was established at Chicago in the late 1940s at Western Avenue on the South Branch of the Chicago river to facilitate this type of transshipment, later building a new facility ion 1956 at 106th Street and the Calumet. Anybody remember the ill-fated Marine Sulphur Queen? At about the time it sank the switch to molten sulphur carriage was well underway, at about the same time solid sulphur as a cargo on the lakes began to disappear. I'm sure increased environmental awareness also had something to do with. I'd say rail is by far the preferred mode of transport today.

[guest]

in bygone years sulhur was a common cargo on the great lakes. dont hear or read about it any more. why is this, railroads captured the haulage or what? anyone have an answer? thank you