The Presque Isle opened up the week on Monday morning, November 9, 2009, arriving Duluth with limestone loaded at Calcite.
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Barges and tug-barge combinations
The J. L. Mauthe was built at River Rouge, Michigan in 1953. After a long and steady career, she entered layup at Fraser Shipyards in Superior in 1993. On the last day of 1996, she was towed from Fraser to the Bay Shipbuilding Company to be converted into a barge called the Pathfinder. At about the same time, Interlake Steamship also built the tug Dorothy Ann. They entered Great Lakes Service in 1999 as the barge/tug combination Dorothy Ann/Pathfinder. They arrived in Duluth to load coal last night (October 21, 2009), their first trip here as a tug barge combination. Below, Captain Gary Schmidt (left) and First Mate Jeremy Mock (right) made sure the Pathfinder and Dorothy Ann had a safe passage through the wind, the rain, the snow and the ice last night.
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Cargo? Scrap metal from Azcon Corporation. This was the 5th trip to the Twin Ports for the tug Undaunted and barge Pere Marquette this year. On the first trip, she loaded taconite rock at the Hallet Dock. The next 3 trips, she loaded scrap at the Hallet Dock and this trip as above. It is hard to believe that the barge started life in 1941 as a ferry, considered by many to be the most luxurious ferry ever built. She had other names in between then and now.
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 The tug Undaunted pulled her barge, the Pere Marquette 41, into the Hallett Dock #5 in West Duluth on Thursday afternoon, May 28th. Both were making their first trip on Lake Superior and they are here to pick up the first cargo of taconite rock to be taken from Duluth. |
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| Reporters, cameras and project members all awaited the vessel as she backed into the dock. |
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| It is a project developed at the UMD Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI) that is finding new ways to use taconite ore from the Iron Range. This rock has a very low level of iron content in it and would not be used to make pellets but it is an ideal material to serve as aggregate in making road surfaces. This rock is going to Chicago for a test run. |
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| Mike McCoshen, Hallett Dock President, is interviewed about the project |
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| Above, Peter Passi of the Duluth News Tribune interviews Ron Johnson from the Duluth Seaway Port Authority |
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| The taconite pile about to be loaded is seen just behind an anxious audience. Behind the pile, the ship loader (blue) is slowly moving into position. |
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 There were two front-end loaders picking up the taconite rock and dropping it in the hopper that fed the conveyor belt up to the barge. Above, foreground, you see one of them picking up a load at the pile while the other one, top right, is about to dump the rock into the hopper.Taconite is moving up the ship loader conveyor and into the vessel’s cargo hold. The hard work begins and for the rest of us, it is time to go home. |
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