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Willis B. Boyer *
The S.S. Willis B. Boyer
launched in 1911. The ship was the biggest, the
most technically advanced and had the largest
tonnage capacity of all the lake freighters.
The ship is 617 feet long
(more than two football fields laid end to end),
64 feet wide, and has a bulk cargo capacity of
15,000 tons - the ship itself weighs nearly
10,000 tons.
When launched, the ship was
coal-fired and the crew size was 39. In later
years the boat was converted to fuel oil, which
does not have to be shoveled, and the crew
declined to about 28.
The Boyer served from 1911
through the end of the 1980 shipping season,
when she was among several ships retired. She
was the largest of them all in 1911. By 1980,
she was among the smallest in the American
fleet! The largest Great Lakes freighter is
1,017 feet long - 400 feet longer than the
Boyer.
Owners sought ways to recover
some of the value of their retired ships. A
sister of the Boyer was scrapped and became
nearly “10,000 tons of razor blades.”
The S.S. Willis B. Boyer was
saved from that fate by Toledo-A-Float, Inc., a
non-profit organization which brought the ship
to Toledo's International Park, where she has
been permanently docked as a museum ship since
1987. The friends and volunteers of the S.S.
Willis B. Boyer provide several services to
Toledo and the regional community. Among them:
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Preserving the ship for
historical reasons.
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Educational center,
servicing schools from a 25-county area.
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Tourist attraction,
drawing thousands of visitors to the area
annually.
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As a practice site to
local fire departments, the Coast Guard, and
company fire brigades.
Bills are paid by charging
admission, accepting donations (there is a
donation box in the engine room), selling
souvenirs and gift items, various fundraising
events, and by renting portions of the ship or
the entire ship for parties, meetings, and
receptions.
If you have a family event
coming up, this is a great place to celebrate.
If you are a member of a non-profit group
looking for an ideal fundraising site, the S.S.
Willis B. Boyer is ideal for such events.
When the Boyer was first
launched it was christened the S.S. Colonel
James Schoonmaker in honor of the president of
the Shenengo Furnace Company, the original
owners. In later years, the ship became part of
the Cleveland cliffs Shipping Co. fleet.
The S.S. Willis B. Boyer is
permanently docked at International Park - which
is significant. International Park was
originally the primary coal handling facility of
the Port of Toledo. It was in relation to the to
Port of Toledo prior to the port's relocation
and expansion in Maumee Bay.
Following its launching, the
S.S. Willis B. Boyer made its first commercial
trip from what is now International Park,
carrying coal to Sheboygan, WI. So, she has come
home again.
Lake freighters have been the
most efficient means of moving large quantities
of various commodities since early in the 19th
century. Originally, lumber, quarried stone,
sand, salt, grains and building materials and
furnishings were frequent cargos.
Today, these great ships,
some of them over 1,000 feet long, carry corn,
wheat, flax, and other farm products, plus
fertilizer, salt, sand, coal and iron ore to
other U.S. and Canadian ports. Many cargoes are
transferred to ocean going ships at the Port of
Montreal, for instance, and are delivered all
over the world.
The efficiencies achieved
through Great Lakes Shipping has resulted in
enabling farmers in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and
Michigan to market their produces less
expensively than in many other parts of the
world, helping to make them among the most
prosperous farmers in the world.
Many of Ohio's well known
‘North Coast’ vacation and tourist communities
began as busy Great Lakes ports — Port Clinton,
Sandusky, Milan, etc.
While the S. S. Willis B.
Boyer was in service, it visited all five of the
Great Lakes. The ship got as far east as
Montreal, where the water becomes ‘brackish’
that is, where fresh water and salt water
combine, but has never been in salt water.
Great Lakes Ships are fresh
or ‘sweet’ water boats. The water intake systems
do not have desalinization systems, so they
cannot function in salt water without
modification. One result is that the Boyer’s
hull, never exposed to corrosive salt water, is
sound and will be for many years to come.
Preventive maintenance is a
major concern of the shipping companies, since
the overhead involved in a break down during the
shipping season is extremely expensive. Most
ships are taken into dry dock for total
inspection, repair and repainting of the hull
every five years. Preventive maintenance
programs, while constant, are conducted in
earnest when the ships are laid up during the
winter time.
The Great Lakes shipping
season lasts eight to ten months. The length of
the season varies with the weather. When the
Great Lakes freeze over, usually from January to
March, the ships ‘lay up’ in various port
cities. During that time, maintenance and repair
programs are conducted, and the ships are
re-stocked with everything from paper products
and food staples to light bulbs and paint.
The financial impact on the
City of Toledo is estimated at just over $1
million per ship when a company chooses to
winter in Toledo.
Passage of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed by
President Clinton in 1994, has given a boost to
shipping and related business and industries.
For instance, the ship yards and ship repair
firms in Toledo, always busy servicing ships
during winter lay up, dealt almost exclusively
with U.S. flag ships except during emergencies,
and were relatively slow in business terms from
April through November. Today, without the
tariff between the U.S. & Canada, many Canadian
ships are using Toledo facilities for repairs
and jobs are at an all time high in those firms.
Businesses which benefit from the Great Lakes
shipping industry include: ship yards and repair
facilities, railway companies, coal and iron
mining companies in Appalachia, Minnesota and
Ontario, Canada, farmers and grain handling
companies, fuel oil producers, manufacturers of
paints and lubricants, vendors of produce,
appliances, paper products and insurance
underwriters.
*
Source for this text:
http://www.internationalpark.com/boyerhistory.html
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