SS Keewatin
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| History | |
|---|---|
 Canada
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| Name: | SS Keewatin |
| Owner: | Canadian Pacific Steamship Company |
| Port of registry: | Montreal |
| Builder: | Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Govan, Scotland |
| Launched: | 6 July 1907 |
| Christened: | 1907 |
| Maiden voyage: | 14 September 1907 |
| In service: | 7 October 1908 |
| Out of service: | 29 November 1965 |
| Status: | Museum ship, Port McNicoll, Ontario, Canada |
| General characteristics | |
| Tonnage: | 3,856 gross register tons (GRT) |
| Length: | 336.5 ft (102.6 m) |
| Beam: | 43.8 ft 7.2 in (13.533 m) |
| Depth: | 26 ft 7.2 in (8.108 m) |
| Installed power: | 3,300 h.p. |
| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: | 14 kn (16 mph; 26 km/h) |
| Capacity: | 288 |
| Crew: | 86 |
SS Keewatin is a passenger liner that once sailed between Port Arthur / Fort William (now Thunder Bay) on Lake Superior and Port McNicoll on Georgian Bay (Lake Huron) in Ontario, Canada. She carried passengers between these ports for the Canadian Pacific Railway's Great Lakes steamship service. Keewatin also carried packaged freight goods for the railway at these ports.
Built by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Scotland as Hull No. 453, Keewatin was launched 6 July 1907 and entered service in the following year. The Keewatin sailed to Owen Sound under her own power. She was halved at Levis, Quebec because the canals below Lake Erie, specifically the Welland Canal could not handle ships as long as the Keewatin. The ship was reassembled at Buffalo. <Chicago of the North, A History of Port McNicoll, The PortMcNicoll Historical Society, 1993>
The Keewatin ran continuously for almost 60 seasons, being retired in 1966. Soon after, she was acquired for historic preservation and was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States. Her sister ship, Assiniboia, was also set to be preserved as an attraction, but burned in 1971 and was scrapped.
In the last twenty years of her working life, like many passenger ships of that era on the Great Lakes, Keewatin and sister ship Assiniboia operated under stringent regulations imposed for wooden cabin steamships following the Noronic disaster in 1949. Doomed by their wooden cabins and superstructure, these overnight cruisers lasted through the decline of the passenger trade on the lakes in the post-war years. As passengers opted for more reliable and faster modes of travel, Keewatin and her sister ship were withdrawn from the passenger trade in 1965, continuing in freight–only service until September 1967. Along with South American and Milwaukee Clipper, Keewatin was among the last of the turn-of-the-century style overnight passenger ships of the Great Lakes. Keewatin was eventually moved to Douglas, Michigan, in 1967, where she was a museum ship across the river from the summer retreat Saugatuck, Michigan. In July of 2011 Keewatin was purchased by SKYLINE MARINE and dredged from the Kalamazoo river with a one mile long, 10 foot deep, 50 foot wide excavation and dredged channel and moved to the mouth of the river and Lake Michigan on 4 June. Keewatin, manned with a crew of 10 was towed back to Canada and arrived in Port McNicoll on 23 June 2012. Keewatin has just recently completed major restorations and has been independently appraised at $32,000,000. The "KEE" is open for visits from 24 May until 10 October.
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Wikipedia