The Minnesota just keeps on towing

This journal, in the summer of 1999, carried a story about the Great Lakes Towing Company’s 100th anniversary and highlights of the firm’s long and successful history and its many ties to Duluth-Superior.

The Minnesota is one of the 50 craft that comprise the Towing Company’s current fleet. Remarkably, she has been a part of that fleet for 89 of the company’s 100 years, and much of that time she served right here in the Twin Ports.

Like the Minnesota, most of the fleet pre-dates World War I, but that is not to say that these are outdated or inefficient tugs; quite the opposite. Workhorses in every sense the word, they’re powerful and efficient hybrids that incorporate features and improvements accumulated over a century of experience.

The Towing Company introduced its “city class,” Type 1 steel tugs in 1906 and the larger, more powerful, “state class” Type 2 tugs (in Company parlance) a year later. The Company built 46 of the rugged 71-foot state-class vessels, including the Minnesota, in 1911. The new tugs had steam engines originally, most of them old machinery reused from 19th century wooden tugs that Great Lakes Towing had acquired upon its incorporation, in 1899. In the 1950s, the entire fleet was modernized with 1,200-horsepower diesel engines and streamlined deckhouses. They are some of the best-maintained tugs anywhere in the nation.

The Minnesota was brought here when she was new and served many years before being rotated to Conneaut, Ohio, during the 1930s and ’40s. She was brought back to Duluth-Superior in 1989 to resume her important role in her own quiet way and to keep alive Great Lakes Towing Company’s proud tradition here.

It would be easy to miss the little craft as she tools around amidst the thousand-footers that ply the harbor, but next time you see her, give her a tip of the hat. She has earned special recognition.

Pat Labadie, now retired, is the former director of the Lake Superior Maritime Visitors Center in Duluth and himself has earned a tip or two of the hat.