Autos Across Mackinac: Straits Transit Retires The Straits of Mackinac
PART 61: Going topless in Wisconsin
By Les Bagley

Following years of faithful service to Straits Transit, The Straits of Mackinac was reluctantly retired after the 1968 season and offered for sale. Tied up in Cheboygan, she attracted several offers, but was ultimately sold to Petersen Builders, a shipyard in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. (The St. Ignace News)

To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the Mackinac Bridge, the St. Ignace News is serializing author Les Bagley's history of the Michigan State Ferries, "Autos Across Mackinac," which crossed the Straits for 34 years prior to 1957. After the bridge put them out of business, the state ferry fleet was sold. Some of the vessels found several different owners. The story of what happened to them continues:

Just after Romeo Crevier pulled the plug on the North-South Navigation Company in Quebec and sold the former State Ferry Vacationland, the owners of Straits Transit had to face pulling the plug on the flagship of their fleet at the Straits of Mackinac. Emil Potvin skippered The Straits of Mackinac until his death at age 79. His replacement, Louis Robarge, and his fellow crewmember-owners fought a losing battle to keep The Straits running against strong opposition from Arnold Line.

After years of neglect, The Straits' wooden superstructure was just too badly decomposed, and for safety, Petersen had it removed over the course of several years in the late 1970s. By 1980, nothing remained except the brief trunk above the cardeck. Surprisingly, nearly everything below decks, including the galley, crew quarters, and engine room, were almost fully intact and easily restorable. (Wendle Wilke photograph, Dave Christiansen collection)

In the early 1960s, they sued Arnold and Union Terminal Piers on Mackinac Island for trying to fraudulently buy their stock to gain control of the company. The courts had ultimately agreed. They took heat from local business people when they printed "Save the Bridge Toll" on their brochures, suggesting passengers take the ferry instead. And Straits Transit protested to the Michigan Public Service Commission when Arnold published an "excursion rate" 70¢ lower than normal, saying Arnold was using the lower fare to put them out of business.

With hopes of restoration, the hull was moved to Kewaunee, Wisconsin, and tied up near the carferry dock. But plans ground to a halt with the death of her owner, and the remains of The Straits of Mackinac were left to deteriorate in the elements. Finally, she was turned over to a scuba diving group who hoped to sink her as a diving attraction somewhere between Michigan's peninsulas, where shed spent all her working life. (William Rieshel photograph, Christiansen collection)

In justifying the fare, Arnold part-owner and attorney Prentiss Brown noted, "Straits' fare is based on the use of an inefficient steamboat, which would not allow a profit." He asked the commission to make the lower fare permanent, rather than reinstate the higher fare, "just to keep an inefficient competitor in business."

Straits Transit's attorney noted the company lost $80,000 in 1960 and 1961, but would have broken even in 1962 if the reduced fare hadn't wiped out the profit margin. It was apparent that operating the cherished Straits was largely to blame.

Finally, with no forthcoming plans to return the ferry to service, she was sold to Chenco, an American company charged with finding ships for scrapping in China, and she was towed out of the river. This view, taken from Vancouver's Lions Gate Bridge, shows the German container ship Act 9 passing the tow in September 1987 while enroute to Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, where her fuel tanks were drained. (Marc Piche photograph)

Straits Transit also found itself engaged in a bidding war when the Michigan Waterways Commission auctioned annual leases for slips on the former State Docks in St. Ignace and Mackinaw City. With prices escalating, Arnold, owned by Otto Lang and Prentiss Brown, usually won the slips they wanted, and, as was the case after 1963, Straits didn't bid. Waterways couldn't let Arnold have a monopoly, so Straits Transit got the remaining slip by default and they kept running.

After several weeks of preparation, both in Canada and at a Seattle shipyard, the former Vacationland was hitched in a tow with the WWII freighter Rose Knott, bound for scrapping in China. This view, taken from the stern of the Japanese tug Hoshin #8, shows the tow as it left Puget Sound on Thanksgiving Day 1987. (Photograph by Tatsuo Oda)

Straits had borrowed heavily in the early 1960s to purchase a 70- foot diesel boat, the Islander, to be more competitive in the shoulder seasons, when The Straits of Mackinac's huge passenger capacity wasn't needed. The Islander showed the economy Arnold already realized by retiring the S.S. Algomah II in 1962 and selling it for sightseeing in Cleveland. Arnold now had an all-diesel fleet. Each ship had smaller crew requirements and operated much more efficiently than the handfired, coal burning Straits. Along with the Chief Wawatam, The Straits of Mackinac was the only steamboat left in the area and the only one still carrying passengers. But the bonds sold to finance the Islander were coming due, and the company found it had no money to meet the obligations. The $200- per-hour cost to run the steamer, with her crew of 18 to 22, ate too far into the company's pocketbook.

But even the best plans can be at the whim of the weather. Just days out, the Hoshin and her charges encountered a winter storm with high winds and 30-foot waves. Sometime during the night of December 2, 1987, the Gulf Kanayak began taking water, and despite several efforts, there was no chance to save her. The former Michigan State Ferry Vacationland sank in the darkness of the Pacific Ocean on the evening of December 3, 1987. Today she rests somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 feet below the surface. (Marine Power and Equipment)

Despite heavy sentiment all around, the owners decided their venerable flagship had to go. A farewell trip to Mackinac Island was scheduled for Labor Day 1968. There wasn't a dry eye on board as the old steamer sailed to the island and back for the final time. At her last island departure, 6 p.m., September 2, 1968, crowds lined the pier. Competing boats blew farewell salutes. The cannon was fired from Fort Mackinac. The Straits of Mackinac answered with her own horn as she backed away. Then she was gone. She was laid up in Cheboygan and offered for sale.

The first potential buyers, from Rochester, New York, and Cleveland, Ohio, wanted to use her as a floating nightclub. The Ohioan even put down a deposit, but the deal fell through and his deposit was returned. There were other nibbles. But in the end, Peterson Builders, a shipyard in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, purchased The Straits with plans to use her as a floating dormitory for Navy personnel during a shipbuilding contract. On November 11, 1968, with more whistle and horn salutes, the tug Roen towed The Straits of Mackinac stern-first from the Cheboygan River, never to return. Before she left, Capt. Robarge removed her binnacle as a souvenir. Today it rests in the basement of his daughter's home near Cheboygan. Many of her crew rode the last trip out to handle lines and experience her for the last time.

Straits Transit ordered a replacement vessel, named Straits of Mackinac II, which only required a four-man crew, but the company owners were all aging. Without their flagship, their hearts were no longer in the firm. As the former Michigan State Ferry men retired, new people tried to carry on with a succession of smaller, faster vessels. In the face of increasing competition, Straits Transit stock was sold. The firm ceased to exist as a separate entity in March 1977, when Arnold Transit purchased majority shares in the company.

The Straits had been towed to Peterson's yard just east of Sturgeon Bay and moored at the east end as a dormitory. After the Navy contract, she was used for storage, with materials and parts piled on her deck and in a few upper compartments. Under Straits Transit ownership, she was always immaculately maintained as a labor of love. At the shipyard, weather and time took their toll.

In the mid-1970s, Peterson workers disassembled parts of the superstructure, which had deteriorated and were dangerous to people working on board. By the early 1980s, the entire superstructure was gone. Surprisingly, most of the area below decks, including the galley, crew quarters, and engine and boiler rooms, were still intact and in relatively pristine condition. The built-in mahogany galley sideboard still held a few of the ship's utensils. Delicate glass shades still graced hanging lights in the engine room.

In 1994, a ferryboat fan bought the remains and had them towed to a marina in Kewaunee, Wisconsin, with plans to rebuild her superstructure and restore her to operation. But good intentions couldn't make up for lack of money, and the project stalled soon after it began. Then the ship's owner died unexpectedly, throwing her ownership into limbo. The Straits, minus her superstructure, but still restorable, if only for her antique machinery below decks, was left to rust on a mud bank near the old Kewaunee ferry dock. Weeds began to grow on her guards. She became a sorry sight.

A EUROPEAN FAREWELL

The former ferries City of Cheboygan and City of Munising, now known as the Edward H. Anderson and, usually for simplicity, just the No. 2, although the name City of Munising was still officially on her bow, were also relatively intact, but without their boilers and power plants at Edward Anderson's base on Washington Island. In the mid-1960s, he had harvested more than 200,000 bushels of potatoes from his own acreage and shipped them by "potato barge" to market through Benton Harbor to Chicago.

But market forces changed in the late 1960s. Anderson's health declined and he was forced, for economic reasons, to close his potato brokerage in 1970. While the ferry barges appeared successful when carrying product to his own distribution system, they didn't work as well taking potatoes to market for others. Apparently, after 1970, the ships remained idle, and the Anderson farms went into decline.

Anderson made a half-hearted effort to revive the island's potato industry by converting his production to frozen French fries, but the effort was unsuccessful. With the price of scrap steel peaking in early 1972, he decided to sell his flotilla. Both ships were towed to Canada, then filled with scrap metal and taken out the St. Lawrence Seaway that summer. They were scrapped in Italy that fall. Anderson later closed his island potato venture entirely. He died in 1978.

A QUEEN TO THE GRAVE

Laid up at Deas Dock since 1977, the Sunshine Coast Queen continued to attract interest, but no serious buyers. In 1982, Washington's Hood Canal Floating Bridge sank in a storm and was replaced during reconstruction by ferries. Washington State Ferries briefly considered reflagging the ferry in the United States and employing her on that service. They applied for, and received an emergency exemption to the Jones Act to let her return to the U.S., but later decided it was too short a run for that large a ship.

They also considered using her on an international route between Anacortes, Washington, and Sidney, British Columbia, through the San Juan Islands. WSF personnel were concerned, however, that her heavy hull and powerful engines might do too much damage to lightly maintained, fragile island terminals. They were also concerned about poor visibility over the extended bow from her "Great Lakes" pilothouse. Each of their ferries had a notch cut into the passenger deck so the officer on the bridge had a direct bow view on every landing.

Instead, Washington ordered six new, 100-car, computer controlled ferries, ultimately called the Issaquah class, from Seattle's Marine Power and Equipment. Those ships would give Washington State Ferries headaches for the next decade.

In Michigan, the Chief Wawatam was becoming more ex- pensive to operate. The Mackinac Transportation Company closed and she was taken over by the newly formed Eastern Upper Peninsula Transportation Authority. Shippers clamored for more economical service, and the Authority investigated converting the old Vacationland to carry rail cars at the Straits, to take the Chief's place as the icebreaker. The Authority even made a preliminary offer of $1,587,000 million to the BC Government, and applied for and received a onetime permit to transit the Seaway with her widened guards that exceeded the waterway's width regulations. But the offer was withdrawn and the plans were dropped when engineers learned her 146-inch car deck clearance was not high enough for modern "high cube" railroad cars.

Meanwhile, BC Ferries experienced an equipment crunch and explored ways to return the Sunshine Coast Queen to economical operation. Cove and Dixon, Inc., a marine architectural firm in North Vancouver, was commissioned to design several plans to rebuild her with new engines, new rudders, or even Cort nozzles. Various configurations showed her as a double-decker and even a single ender. They explored removing most of her superstructure and using her as a truck and oversized vehicle ferry. But there was no bypassing her broad, heavy, riveted and welded hull, and, ultimately, all those plans were also dropped.

Instead, the government offered her on bids in April 1981. Six were received, including one for only $100, but just two were serious. The lower of the two was from Rivtow Straits, Ltd. of Vancouver, which wanted to convert the ferry into a log barge.

The higher, winning bid for $1.3 million came from the Quesnel Redi-Mix Company of Quesnel, BC. Tom Scuffi, Quesnels secretary/manager, said the company bought the ship as an investment and wanted to charter her for use in the Canadian Arctic.

"We were looking around for a tug and barge when the ferry became available," he said. "She's a unique boat, not just an icebreaker, but a double-ended icebreaker. We will probably negotiate a contract with an oil company doing arctic exploration work."

She was towed to a North Vancouver drydock for a refit in May, 1981, and then transferred to the Frasier River docks of the train ferry Alaska, which had also been purchased by the firm.

Titles were transferred to a new company, owned by many of the same principals. Canarctic Ventures, took control of both ships and began converting them for arctic use by Gulf Canada Resources, the Canadian oil exploration arm of the large multi-national petroleum company. Gulf Canada was in an oil exploration frenzy, owing to an Arab oil embargo which had dramatically increased gasoline prices worldwide, and the company signed a purchase option for the vessels. As an inducement, Canarctic president Barry Ferguson renamed the Alaska, Gulf Kanalak, and the Sunshine Coast Queen became the Gulf Kanayak. The latter was tied up outboard of the former, which was already under conversion in the ferry slip.

For access to the Gulf Kanayak, workers cut a wide doorway through her port stern side, slightly aft of where the original side-loading door had been. In line with one on the Kanalak, it allowed access so work could proceed on both vessels simultaneously. Crews removed furnishings, amenities, and even unneeded railings and stairways, which might collect ice in the frozen north. Parts were ordered to rebuild the Kanayak's Nordberg engines, and Bruce Dahling, an engineer from Port Coquitlam, BC, was hired to do the work. Ferguson asked him to do the starboard pair first, so instead of doing just one engine room, that's what he did. Parts to do the other pair were stored on the car deck until needed.

Work on the former Alaska was finished in 1984 and she was sent north. But by that time, the oil embargo had ended and the world was once again facing an oil glut. Prices fell overnight, and Gulf Canada declined the option on the former Suzy Q. Canarctic tried to market the ship to other buyers, and had the name "Canarctic Explorer" painted across her stern doors. But Ferguson's asking price of $2 to $3 million was way out of line for the stripped, laid-up vessel. With no money coming in, work on the ferry stopped. The Kanayak was moved into the ferry slip, the hole in her side was plated over, and with watchmen in a shack onshore for protection, the rest of the workmen were laid off. Soon, the watchman was also discharged.

With no protection, vandals systematically stripped souvenirs, including pilothouse equipment, gauges, and anything else that wasn't nailed down. Windows were smashed and rust began to show through the once shiny paint.

With moorage fees of $3,000 a month, Canarctic Ventures faced financial ruin. The company was reorganized as Consolidated Canarctic Industries in February 1985. Finally, in December, Ferguson sold the ferry to a group of three American investors, James Detro, Steven Johnson, and Doug Sapp, who hoped to realize a profit from their purchase. With Ferguson remaining as their agent in BC, they formed a numbered corporation, "301073 BC Limited." Ferguson wanted to convert her to a gambling cruise ship to Alaska, with Middle-Eastern backing. Others tried to revive the notion of a trailer ferry on the Great Lakes.

The most promising offer came from a Mexican firm that proposed using the Gulf Kanayak as a ferry to Baja, across the Gulf of California. Ferguson sent what drawings and photos he had of the ship, including several hours of film and video for their consideration. But the plans were derailed. Several of their investors were killed, and the reference materials were all lost when the company offices were destroyed in a huge 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

With vandalism and tie-up fees mounting, in October 1986, the ferry was moved away from shore, to the Chief Dan George buoy, off Dollarton, above Vancouver's Second Narrows Bridge. But the vandalism continued, and moorage payments sent to Ferguson by the owners mysteriously disappeared. When the ship's legal problems and fines got to be too much, and when the owners were summoned to Federal Court in Ottawa, they'd had enough.

In September 1987, they sold the ship to Chenco, a Puyallup, Washington, firm owned by Shou "Jimmy" Chen, a salvage dealer working for the Communist Chinese government. Chen paid $300,000, and the Gulf Kanayak was towed to Nanaimo, BC, where over the next three weeks, fuel, oil, and other materials were removed. She was then taken to the Seattle Duamish River yard of Marine Power and Equipment, where she was prepared for a long ocean voyage under tow.

Windows and porthole openings were plated over. Her bow and stern doors were welded tightly shut and braced to the car deck. Her winches, and some other mechanical equipment were removed for resale. Meanwhile, trying to stay out of the way of the shipyard workers, Chen and some of his own workers remove what gauges and pilothouse equipment had not already been stolen or damaged by vandals, to be sold at Chenco's retail store as nautical restaurant décor. The entire project was kept quietly under wraps for fear of public concern about doing business with the Chinese Communists.

With arrangements finalized by Seattle attorney Jonathan Platt, on Thanksgiving morning, November 26, 1987, the Gulf Kanayak was towed down the Duamish to Puget Sound. There she joined a former WWII freighter, Rose Knott, in a tow behind the Japanese oceangoing tug, Hoshin No. 8, under command of Captain Tatsuo Oda. The tow, guided by Puget Sound Pilot Denny Stensager, left about 8:30 a.m. and, by 3:30 the next morning, Stensager was dropped of at the end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, off the Washington coast, and the tow entered the Pacific.

At first, Hoshin made about five knots, towing the Rose Knott first and then on a longer bridal, the Gulf Kanayak.

The former ferry was towed stern first, about 300 feet behind the freighter. Jimmy Chen projected the tow would reach its destination, the scrap yard at Nantong, China, sometime between Christmas and the New Year. But a deteriorating weather forecast by a private firm hired by Chenco forced Oda to alter course. The meteorologists suggested going southward toward Oregon, and a point about 300 miles off the Columbia River Bar.

At only five knots, the tow was too slow to escape and was caught in the full fury of the early-winter storm. 80 mile per hour winds whipped seas to 30 feet. The Hoshin and its tow were slammed mercilessly. That night, indicator lights showed the Gulf Kanayak had begun taking on water.

At daybreak, the crew could see the doors on the leading end had been damaged, and swept away. Capt. Oda elected to return to port for repairs. But seas were running too high across the Columbia Bar, so he altered course back toward the safety of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Port Angeles, Wash- 0ington. All morning the ferry continued to settle by the forward end, and just before midday, both towing eye pads gave way, casting the ferry adrift.

Oda summoned a second tug, Marine Power and Equipment's Marine Challenger, to assist, and slowly circled his escaped tow. By morning on December 2, the seas had calmed enough to try to board the Gulf Kanayak to start her pumps, but in the storm, the Jacobs ladder had been swept away. It was still too rough for the workboat to approach the permanent ladders. The crew also could not recover the emergency towing pennant. Apparently, no one had remembered to launch it before leaving Seattle.

The Marine Challenger arrived on the morning of December 3 and took the Rose Knott in tow. But the weather was still too bad to try to recover the slowly-sinking ferry. As the Hoshin waited for conditions to improve, the crew could do little but watch as waves lapped up the car deck and the ferry continued to slowly settle by the stern.

Throughout the day, the ferry continued to drift toward the northeast. As the stern dipped lower, one by one, more watertight compartments were breached. As darkness fell, the watch continued from a safe distance, by radar. At 10:40 p.m., the blip on the screen disappeared.

In daylight the next morning, the Hoshin initiated a search, but there was nothing to be found and the crew assumed the ferry had simply slipped beneath the waves. Captain Oda and his crew were summoned back to Seattle for an official inquiry, but no verifiable cause for the sinking was ever determined.

Perhaps the seas stove in her end doors, forcing the bracing down through the car deck, or even the skin of her hull, allowing water to enter the compartments below decks. Upon reaching Port Angeles, the Marine Challenger crew discovered that something had struck and freed the Rose Knott's rudder, which had been welded amidships for the tow. There was also damage to the railing at the top of her fantail. Its possible that, given the short distance between the two ships, they collided during the night, smashing in the ferry's car deck doors.

Adjusters also speculated water may have begun entering the hull through the propeller shaft bushings on the stern of the ship. As she was towed backwards, the propellers had been allowed to windmill, and the packing might have given way.

Most likely, no one will ever know. The pride of the Michigan State Ferry fleet rests somewhere on the bottom of the Pacific, about 8,000 feet below the surface, about 100 miles off the coasts of Washington and Oregon.

Only a deep-diving submersible could reach her. So far, no one has gone looking.

Next week: Conclusions! The final chapter.

Copyright 2008 by Les Bagley. All rights reserved.

If you have memories, stories or photos of Michigan State Ferries you'd like to share, the author would love to hear from you. You can contact him through the newspaper office or via e-mail at Les@divco.org.