SULPHITE

Downbound at Mission Point

The steel tug BALLEW (US. 217678) was built in 1919 at Elizabeth, New Jersey by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation for the wartime United States Shipping Board. This was one of the many tugs built during World War I and shortly after to a standard design. In 1924, she was purchased by the Detroit Sulphite Transportation Company and brought to the lakes to tow pulpwood barges from Lake Superior ports to its mill in Detroit, Michigan. In 1926, she was renamed b) SULPHITE.

In 1939, the entire fleet was transferred to Canadian operators, the Driftwood Lands Bc Timber Company Ltd. The SULPHITE would tow the barges DELKOTE, SWEDE-ROPE, and MITSCHFIBRE from Port Arthur/Fort William, Ontario to the mill at Detroit on the Rouge River. One barge would be at the Canadian Lakehead being loaded with pulpwood, another would be unloaded at the mill. The third would be in tow underway between the ports in tow of the tug SULPHITE. She was always busy.

The operation of the tug and barges was sold in 1956 to the Hindman Transportation Company Ltd., of Owen Sound, Ontario, Water transportation for pulpwood was severely restricted in the middle 1960’s and the services of the tug and barges were no longer needed. This came about as a result of the high cost to maintain and operate the floating equipment at a time when rail competition was increasing. Eventually, the railroads won all the pulpwood-hauling business from the Great Lakes. In 1966, the SULPHITE was dismantled at Goderich, Ontario, her parts placed in the hold of the barge MITSCHFIBRE which was then towed to Ashtabula, Ohio in November. There both barge and tug were cut up for scrap. The pilot house nameboard now hangs in the Dossin Marine Museum on Belle Isle, Detroit. It shows both of the tug’s names, BALLEW on one side and SULPHITE on the other.

a) Ballew
b) SULPHITE