(1919) 1946 Makaweli 1967
Steel St. Lawrence River canal size tanker
Built at Ashtabula OH by Great Lakes Engineering Works, Hull 503
Launched Feb 1, 1919
Built as bulk freighter Cowee for U. S. Shipping Board for off-Lakes service during World War I, cabins and machinery aft, and left the Great Lakes upon completion.
Original enrollment:
253.4 x 43.6 x 25.1, 2507 GT, 1495 NT, US 217844. Renamed Makaweli 1922.
Converted to tanker 1937 at San Francisco CA by Bethlehem Shipbuilding Co.
Damaged in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941. Repaired at San Pedro CA and returned to service.
261’ LOA, 253’6” LBP, 43’6” beam, 27’6” depth
1 deck, coal-fired boilers, triple expansion engine, 1350 IHP (converted to oil firing before her return to the Great Lakes)
Sold 1946 to Lakeland Tankers Ltd., Toronto ON, a subsidiary of Cleveland Tankers Inc., Cleveland OH and returned to the Great Lakes. Rebuilt for Great Lakes service at St. Catharines ON by Port Weller Dry Docks Ltd.
Enrolled Canadian at 253.5 x 43.6 x 25.1, 2665 GT, 1551 NT Can 177814 (home port Toronto ON)
Entered Great Lakes service Dec 3, 1946
Sold for scrap 1967 to Italian shipbreakers. Towed with str. Mohawk Deer by Yugoslavian tug Junak for Italy. Mohawk Deer broke loose from the tow on the morning of Nov 5, 1967 in the Gulf of Genoa, stranded off the island of Portofina and broke in two. Tow with Makaweli arrived at La Spezia Italy later that day (Mohawk Deer recovered and towed to La Spezia in December).
She was the last World War I “Laker” to operate on the Great Lakes.
See history in Scanner May 1971 (#15)
Also in Great Lakes Ships We Remember II p. 200
4601
My father-in-law snapped a slide of it in what I assume is the Sault Ste. Marie locks while the family was on vacation the summer of 1965. I have digitally scanned the slide.
In the early 1940’s, a group of deer hunters in the St. Catharines area of Ontario, purchased a life boat from a laker, which I assume was to be scrapped. The life boat was steel , double ended, and quite large. It was converted into a boat to be used to transport deer hunters to there desired destinations in the Georgian bay area of Ontario. I am not sure where the life boat was purchased, but it may have been at the Port weller drydocks. The name on the side of the craft itself is ‘ S S Makaweli’. There are two more lines of printing under the name which are not possible to read, but the last few letters on the second line are ‘…….person,s’. The last line is obscured as well, but the last few letters seem to read ‘…..CU. FT” .
I have no clue who will read this, if anyone, but would sure be interested in a response.
First of all, I have a problem with your early 1940s date. The Makaweli didn’t come to the Lakes under that name until well after the end of World War II. It could have been that this lifeboat was replaced by one more suited to Lakes service when she was refit when she came back or replaced some time later.
At any rate, if she was in any kind of commercial service it might well be that the maximum number of persons and/or the maximum cubic feet of cargo which could be be carried was stenciled inside the boat.
I sailed on the Makaweli on the trip from San Pedro Calif. To Montreal with stops in Panama, Curaçao, and Porto la Cruz, Venezuela on her last trip as a tanker she was destined to be cut in half and lengthened to be made into a laker. At the time I joined her in San Pedro all the housework and crews quarters were aft and when there was no cargo on board the bow was completely out of the water. Matson Navigation were the owners prior to WW11 when the US Navy took her over to transport fuel to Hawaii’i during the War. Somewhere among my collection of photos I have pictures of her in the original configuration as a tanker
I was a fireman and oiler on this vessel when I was 19 years old. She was burning bunker C in two boilers and six burners. Still using steam engines to pump oil to gravity feed the burners. A warn out old girl, they kept reducing the pressure limit on her boilers. Hauling aviation fuel, furnace oil, anything she could pump. . I think that was in around 1963.