As profit forecasts improved later in the decade, U.S. Steel decided to upgrade its increasingly aging Pittsburgh Steamship Company fleet.  In early 1937, Pittsburgh Steamship solicited bids for four new vessels.  The new ships were to be named the William A. Irvin, Governor Miller, John Hulst and Ralph H. Watson. [2]    The American Shipbuilding Company in Lorain, Ohio, and Great Lakes Engineering Works in Detroit won contracts to build two of the vessels apiece.  The price averaged just over $1.3 million for each of the new bulk freighters.  At 611 feet, the four vessels would be among the largest on the Great Lakes. [3]   With 14,000 tons of iron ore carrying capacity, the four new vessels would give Pittsburgh Steamship an added per trip capacity of 56,000 tons.

The first of the four vessels launched was the Irvin, which slid down the ways at Lorain on November 21, 1937.  The new boat was named for William A. Irvin, a 30-year veteran of the industry who had succeeded James Farrell as United States Steel Corporation president in 1932. [4]   Irvin’s wife Gertrude cracked the customary bottle of champagne over her husband’s namesake, and the Irvin rolled gently into the slip.  She spent the winter in Lorain getting outfitted and set out on her maiden voyage on June 25, 1938. [5]

With her rakish lines and high bow, the Irvin was the epitome of what Great Lakes bulk freighters would look like for the next 40 years. [6]   But it was what was below the waterline that set the Irvin and her sisters apart from almost anything afloat in 1938.  The marine engineers who had designed the four vessels had specified a new kind of power plant.  Instead of the triple expansion steam engine that had reigned supreme on the Lakes since the turn of the 20^th century, the Irvin and her mates sported Delaval cross-compound steam turbine engines.  The turbines, which had been pioneered in the steamers Carl D. Bradley and the T.W. Robinson the decade before, were an outgrowth of advances in electric power generation.  Blades in a turbine were spun by the steam from the boilers, and the turbine blades, in turn, were connected to gears which turned the propeller shaft. [7]

The Irvin also pioneered another simpler, but no less elegant, solution to an age-old problem of Great Lakes shipping.  Running the length of the holds in the Irvin and her sisters were tunnels on each side of the vessel.  It was the first time that a vessel had ever boasted tunnels inside the hull, and it was greeted with hallelujahs by Great Lakes’ mariners everywhere.  Now, sailors could go from the stern to the forecastle and vice versa, no matter what the weather.  It was a design element that would be incorporated in every vessel built after 1938. [8]

The Irvin sailed the Great Lakes for 40 years, the first 10 as the unofficial flagship of the Pittsburgh Steamship fleet. [9]   Hers was an uneventful career.  She never figured in any great maritime dramas, and rode out the worst that the Upper Lakes could throw at her in the way of weather. [10]   Year in and year out, from April to December, she hauled iron ore down from Lake Superior to Lake Erie.  All told, she hauled 1,115 cargoes of iron ore, an estimated 15 million tons. [11]

U.S. Steel retired the Irvin in 1978.  As far as longevity went, she was a relative youngster, but she and her sisters were too small to convert to self-unloaders. [12]   The Irvin’s likely destination was the scrap yard, but she returned to Duluth one last time to be renovated and restored as a museum ship in 1986. [13]   Today, she rests in a slip a stone’s throw from the Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge she so often passed under during her long and fruitful career.