A Classic Laker You’ve Probably Never Seen Before (Plus a few other ships)

For years now I’ve been wanting to get out onto the harbor and take a closeup look at the old J.A.W. Iglehart. I thought I’d found a way to so earlier this year, wait for the harbor to freeze over then walk over to check her out. But as it turned out the harbor never froze solid enough in the center to where I felt safe trying to cross it. Considered renting out a canoe and going for a paddle, but hadn’t quite gotten around to that yet when I received an invitation from Mike (from the @vibewithmike channel) to take a boat ride. Thank you Mike! That was awesome! :) Along with seeing the Iglehart, we also cruised along the port terminal and saw the harbor tugs along with the Maumee/Victory which was refueling while waiting for the Superior Ore Dock to open up, and the Paul R Tregurtha which was having some quick maintenance being done. Then we went down to the Canal and onto the lake, but that’s a separate video, otherwise it would be nearly a half hour long.


Built in 1936, the 501ft long J.A.W. Iglehart could by some definitions be the oldest active laker. Originally constructed as a deep ocean tanker named Pan Amoco, she featured a midship pilothouse and a 15,000 ton carrying capacity, a truly massive freighter for the day (cargo ships were typically very small in that era, while passenger ships were far larger). She remained a civilian vessel during World War 2, but did come under attack by a U-Boat in March of 1943, which she survived undamaged. In 1960 the ship was sold for scrap, but because scrapyards were overbooked due to the disposal of most of the excess WW2 naval fleets, she was towed to Montreal and ultimately into the Lakes to Sturgeon Bay to wait. This proved to be her salvation. She caught the eye of the Huron-Portland Cement Company, who bought her off the scrapyard and towed her to Chicago for conversion into what was at the time the largest self unloading cement ship in the world. Her pilothouse was removed and replaced with a new, bow mounted one and her oil tanks were replaced by cement holds. Work was completed in 1965 and she received the name J.A.W. Iglehart after Joseph Iglehart, a World War 1 vet and major business man of the day. Coincidentally the ship is currently the same age as her namesake when he died. Her arrival marked the end of an era: the last “new” American steamship to enter service on the Great Lakes, every vessel afterwards would be diesel. After a long, 41 year incident free career on the lakes, her ancient steam engines increasingly became an issue in the early 2000s, with the ship taking fewer runs and spending more time laid up, the company started looking into potential replacement vessels. In 2005 the barge Innovation was constructed and the tug Samuel De Champlain (a vessel with a rather colorful history itself) was purchased and rebuilt to power her. With the Iglehart taking fewer and fewer runs, she sailed for the last time in October 2006. When she arrived in Superior however, she did not go into a standard retirement layup or scrapyard. Instead her cargo hold and unloading system have remained active, serving as a ship to shore cement transfer station. Therefore the vessel is more or less kept up and in use, active by some definitions. As fun as it is to imagine, it is incredibly, incredibly unlikely the vessel will ever sail again however. One can always dream though.

As for the other vessels seem in the video, I’ve covered Maumee and Tregurtha’s stories a few times so won’t spend too much time on them other than saying that Maumee is a 1952 AAA class laker (same as the Arthur M Anderson and others) but lost her engines after her company went out of business and ended up being converted to a barge to keep her in service. The Paul R Tregurtha is the largest freshwater vessel in the world and a near weekly visitor to the Twin Ports.

Hope everyone enjoys!