The recent topic on D&S 493 oil conversion has been very interesting and informative. It cements in why this site is a valuble resource. Kelly posted a link to a very interesting video on ocean liner conversions from coal to oil after WW1. (If you have not watched it, I recommend that you do. As well as the same gentlemans video on coal bunkering ships.)

Growing up in Michigan and living close to port towns that have seen many ships, I had always wondered how they filled the bunkers with coal. The GTW, PM/C&O and AA all ran car ferry service across Lake Michigan until the late seventies early eighties. Mackinac transportation operated ferries between Michigan's lower and upper peninsula. All were coal fired upon being built. Most lake boats were built as coal burners, including the last traditional lake boat the Edward L Ryerson, in 1960.

I had always wondered why the great lakes fleets held on to coal firing so long (the last hand bomber, the cement carrier ST Crapo, was converted from coal to oil in 1994?) Most were converted in the 1970s when they were lenthend and/or had self unloading equipment installed.

The car ferries were another story. GT converted all three of their boats to oil in the late fourties. AA converted at least one in the late fifties or early sixties. Their two other main boats were overhauled/modified and repowered with diesels. C&O and Mackinac Transportation stayed with coal until the very end in the 1980s, although the ex C&O SS Badger still burns coal to this day. I can see why for a couple reasons: coal was big business for railroads, it was cheap and it was easy to fill the bunkers. Lift the deck plates, roll a coal hopper over the opening and open the doors. The Badger still does this, but uses a semi trailer. I had wondered if the different unions that the carferries operated under (being both maritime and railroad operations) had an affect on the decisions to either convert from or retain coal firing.

The other interesting point is that until the 1940s almost all ships used scotch marine boilers, which are ideal, and relatively easy, for converting to oil firing. The later boats used water tube boilers and I am not sure how easy it is to convert those to oil firing.

Just some food for thought.
Merry Christmas

A friend of mine was in the US Navy from 1920 to 1946. He spent a lot of that time on the black gang. He was a stoker on a coal fired heavy cruiser in the West Pacific. He was transferred to a destroyer that was one of the first oil burners in the Pacific fleet. He was in heaven, no coal or ash to shovel. Just had to clean the burners once a watch. After having two ships sunk under him he retired as a chief engineer.

CNJ's Jersey City-NY ferry Elizabeth was the road's last coal burner. It had its own dump truck to put coal in the bunker. She remained in service until 1967 when the Aldene Plan shut down the ferry service.

The USN switched its battleships from coal to oil with the Nevada Class, laid down in 1912 and commissioned in 1916. Nevada had direct drive turbine engines with geared cruising turbines while Oklahoma had triple expansion reciprocating engines. The oil burning Nevada could reach the Philippines without refuelling which earlier direct drive turbine BB's could not do. The geared cruising turbines, another first, helped.

During WWI the USN offered to send the Fleet to Europe but the UK requested only coal burning battleships as the Royal Navy had convered to oil and was using all it could get.


Phil Mulligan

The coal-fired Great Lakes freighters had a bunkering hatch located up on the boat deck. Bunker coal was loaded from the same type of loading apparatus that typically loaded coal cargoes. The boats could fuel up at one of the Lake Erie coal loading ports, or there were several coal docks around the Lakes that existed solely for bunkering ships, such at Lime Island and Detour in the St. Marys River. There were also some bunkering vessels that delivered coal to ships in some of the lower lakes ports. As the number of coal burning vessels began to dwindle and many of the bunkering operations shut down, the remaining coal burners had to carry more coal to increase their range between bunkering. You would often see them with coal piled high on the boat deck next to the bunkering hatch, as seen on this 1988 shot aboard the 1916-vintage coal-burner Henry Steinbrenner.



Most of the Great Lakes steamers built in the 1950s and 60s were built as oil burners, including the Ryerson and the ship that set the pattern for the 1950s lakers, the 1949 Wilfred Sykes. There were a few exceptions though, including the John Sherwin and the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald, which were both built as coal burners in 1958.

The Lake Michigan car ferry S.S. Badger is still coal fired. It operates seasonally between Ludington, MI and Manitowoc, WI. Built for built for rail cars; it now hauls vehicles and foot passengers.

In 2015 the ship was modified to retain its ash until it would be removed in its home port of Ludington.

Not quite the last. Several pilot house forward vessels were added to the US side afterwards, such as Interlake's Lee A. Tregurtha. And the ultimate evolution of the classic Great Lakes freighter, the Roger Blough, entered service for US Steel in 1972.

The Ryerson's claims to fame are her unparalleled beauty, she was the last US flagged Laker built from scratch for over a decade (Ships like the Lee A. Tregurtha recycled the stern from WWII era tankers), the status of being the last US flagged "straight decker" in service without self-unloading capabilities, and her long periods sitting at the wall in layup due to her lack of self-unloading gear.

And on the Canadian side, many classically designed vessels were built after the Ryerson as Canadian fleets overhauled their fleets with dozens of classic 730' x 75' freighters like the SS Montrealais (thanks to the massive increase in vessel size making 99% of their existing fleets instantly obsolete with the Seaway opening).

This Canadian building boom lasted through 1974 or so, with those last 5 years or so largely composed of ships with the traditional Great Lakes layout but pushed to the extreme. A good example still with us from this period of evolution before traditional laker design disappeared entirely in the mid 1970's is the John D. Leitch.

The steam turbine propulsion was replaced by a diesel, a boxy squared off transom stern replaced the curves of the cruiser or counter sterns associated with traditional laker design, she was built as a self-unloader instead of the usual straight decker design on the Canadian side, and the pilothouse footprint at the bow was reduced to up cargo capacity (with the structure instead being much higher than her contemporaries).

Coal bunker with an oil tank shoehorned in, on the SS Columbia. There were a few large loading hatches on the main deck.