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| I suppose if you only have one boat coming in for the day, it might as well be the biggest boat on the Great Lakes, and that is what we have today. The Paul R. Tregurtha will be here to load coal for the Detroit Edison power plant in St. Clair, Michigan. That happens about once a week during the shipping season. The steamship Reserve used to come here, not as often, but still fairly regularly. It was back in the Twin Ports yesterday, but everything behind the self unloader has been removed, replaced by a notch for a tug. The Reserve is now a barge named the James L. Kuber. After discharging limestone in the port, the barge, pushed by the tug Victory, departed on Friday afternoon (above) for Silver Bay to load iron ore pellets. |
| *submitted to the Duluth News Tribune for publication on 04-19-2008 |
At sunrise Wednesday October 21, this ship was in front of Knife River and traveled to Two Harbors and back until dusk, when it was in front of the Duluth channel. On Thursday morning it was at the CN ore docks, where it remained until Friday evening October 23., with its boom extended. It departed sometime Friday night, presumably loaded. Coverage on this neat ship was sorely lacking; when it was first in front of Knife River it was not on any arrivals list, and the Duluth Tribune never did mention it. I wonder why? Bill at knife River.
http://duluthshippingnews.com/tag/james-l-kuber/
Did you see these articles?
This combined tug and redesigned ship used to be my favorite ship, the Reserve. I saw her come in to Munising once and it was so impressive. That whole vacation was so special that year I actually thought I might be going to die or something. I was so upset when I saw that she had been unmade like this. Anyway they take out the motors, remove the superstructure and put in a notch for a tug, so basically the ship becomes a barge. Reason- money of course. (The Reserve actually had curtains on her back windows- always wondered who arranged that.)
If you check boatnerd.com under Port Reports for Oct. 25 you will see mentions for the Kuber under Stoneport, Mi and Toledo, oh.
They’re called ITBs – Integrated Tug Barge combinations.