Duluth-built
Maple still cutters a fine image
A
handsome little ship winters quietly at Cheboygan, Mich., just
upriver from the famous icebreaker Mackinaw. The little
vessel is a museum ship, as Mackinaw, too, is slated
to become in a few years. Both veterans served the Coast Guard
for decades, and both have earned their places as Great Lakes
icons. The smaller vessel is the cutter Maple.
The 122-foot Maple has been a museum ship for the
past six years, berthing during the tourist season at a downtown
St. Ignace pier where historic Mackinac Island ferries used
to dock. She
attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year, hosted by
the Great Lakes Center for Marine History, a non-profit
The Maple was launched with flying colors in spring 1939 as downtown Duluth watched with pride. Today the old cutter, her exterior restored, stands tall in St. Ignace. |
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The
Maple was built for the U.S. Lighthouse Service in
1938, just months before the service was absorbed by the Coast
Guard. She was a steel buoy tender with what had by that time
become the traditional Lighthouse Service silhouette. She had
one deck and a raised forecastle, with her houses located aft
of amidships and a conspicuous crane serving her open buoy
deck. The basic design had been adopted back in the 1870s,
but individual tenders in succeeding years varied according
to the waters they served.
Maple was stationed at Buffalo early in her
life. Later she worked on the St. Lawrence River, berthing
at Ogdensburg, New York. She had the distinction of hosting
U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II of
England during dedication ceremonies for the St. Lawrence Seaway
in June, 1959.
Maple is a product of Duluth’s Marine Iron &
Shipbuilding Company, laid down in the fall of 1938 and launched
early the next year. Marine Iron Works had been serving the
Great Lakes maritime industry for nearly 60 years even at that
time, but its proudest days were yet to come.
While the Maple was still under construction nearby,
the company’s skilled naval architects were called upon
to design a whole new generation of tenders for the reorganized
Coast Guard. During 1939 and 1940 they developed the plans
for the multi-purpose “C-Frame” 180-foot cutters
that would serve the Coast Guard through the remainder of the
20th century. With modified and strengthened hulls, the new
cutters combined traditional aids-to-navigation and logistical
support capabilities with ice-breaking and search-and-rescue
functions.
When World War II erupted, the Coast Guard awarded Marine Iron
Works the contract to construct 38 of the new ships; they ultimately
split the contract with neighboring Zenith Dredge Company.
The cutters Woodrush and Sundew were among
the new vessels built in the two adjacent shipyards.
Maple served the Coast Guard on the lower lakes until
1973, when she was decommissioned at Buffalo. After briefly
serving the University of Michigan as a research platform,
she was laid up at Grand Haven, Mich. In June 1974 she was
transferred to the Environmental Protection Agency
for use in water quality monitoring and research. Renamed Roger
R. Simon, she operated out of Milwaukee for the next 18
years. She was retired in 1992. Acquired by her present owners
in 1994, the venerable ship was restored to its original name
and appearance and taken to St. Ignace for public display.
Only a handful of the 400-some vessels that were built in Twin
Ports shipyards survive, and Maple is not the best-known
of them, but she does us proud.
Historian Pat Labadie, former director of the Corps of Engineers
Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center in Duluth, lives near
Superior.