North Star Port

4, 1976, for Escanaba, Michigan, to take on taconite. On its second trip, it took its first load of coal — 32,482 tons of eastern coal at the Norfolk and Western coal dock on Pipe Street in Sandusky, Ohio. Bob Hedine was a young wheelsman in 1976 when he joined the crew of the St. Clair for a few months that summer. "It was a beautiful ship," Hedine recalled. "The biggest quirk was the free- board on it. When you're sailing in bal- last, you can't get her down far enough to keep her from rolling, because she rolled bad. I was in one of the center rooms, so my bunk was longitudinal with the keel. I used to have to tuck my sheets in on the inside and then go around, tuck them in on the outside, real tight, and then get by the head of the bed and slide down into the covers. Otherwise, I'd roll out of bed. That kept me in so I could sleep," Hedine said. Later in its career, Hedine recalled, the high freeboard challenged the crew when loading at other ports on the Great Lakes. "She was built for Superior and St. Clair; that was supposed to be her only run. As time went on, they had to diver- sify a little bit and had to start hauling different cargoes, but getting her into some of them places was pretty tough. When we were trying to haul stone, like out of Calcite (Michigan), they had to take the limits off of their loading equipment to get the ship loader up high enough to start loading us. We'd start aft and we get her down underneath as far as we could, and then we work our way up the deck to get her down and then you could finish your load." THE SYSTEM COMES TO LIFE Testing of the SMET loading system was well underway by early June. On June 8, the steamer John J. Boland tied up to take a partial cargo and put the dock's auto- mated gear through its paces. A few bugs remained in the sensors synchronizing conveyor speeds between the storage yard and the loading dock. A week later, on June 15, the 635-foot Sam Laud took the first full official cargo of low-sulfur Western coal at the SMET dock, clearing the path for the St. Clair. Thursday, June 17, dawned mostly cloudy, mid-60s, rain in the forecast — none of it dampening the spirit of the day as the crew of the St. Clair waited patiently for the speeches to conclude. Detroit Edison's president praised the scope of the project, calling the compo- nents accommodating coal movement halfway across the country "indicative of the engineering ingenuity of man when he sets his mind to solving difficult and complex problems." That afternoon, after the dignitaries circled the terminal yard in a Burlington Northern passenger train and the local mayor was feted with cake for his 30th birthday, the real work began. Following repairs to the St. Clair's stern thruster, loading ran 13 hours through the night — 42,900 short tons of low-sulfur Mon- tana coal, about 12,000 tons more than any vessel had ever carried on the inland lakes. The St. Clair departed Superior about 3 p.m. Friday, June 18, bound for Michigan on its maiden coal run. The vessel would go on to make the 1,360- mile round trip many times over the next four decades. Sadly, the St. Clair ended its career with a disastrous fire while in lay-up in Toledo, Ohio, on Feb. 16, 2019. As the energy market shifted and demand for low-sulfur coal declined, the SMET Ter- minal closed June 30, 2026, when its property lease expired — concluding a 50-year run on the Superior waterfront. Between 1975 and 2025, the facility shipped 571,888,350 short tons of coal and set numerous records. * Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company was the predecessor to Bay Ship; Fischer refers to them interchangeably. DULUTHPORT.COM | 11 PHOTOS / University of Wisconsin-Superior Jim Dan Hill Library Special Archives "She was built for Superior and St. Clair; that was supposed to be her only run." Built for coal, but not necessarily for comfort, the St. Clair had a tendency for rolling when she sailed in ballast.

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