SS Chief Wawatam
Steel ship based in Michigan / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Chief Wawatam (nicknamed the Chief) was a coal-fired steel ship that was based, for most of its 1911–1984 working life, in St. Ignace, Michigan. The vessel was named after a distinguished Ojibwa chief of the 1760s. In initial revenue service, the Chief Wawatam served as a train ferry, passenger ferry and icebreaker that operated year-round at the Straits of Mackinac between St. Ignace and Mackinaw City, Michigan. During the winter months, it sometimes took many hours to cross the five-mile-wide Straits, and Chief Wawatam was fitted with complete passenger hospitality spaces.
SS Chief Wawatam loading a passenger train at Mackinaw City | |
History | |
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Name | SS Chief Wawatam |
Namesake | Chief Wawatam |
Operator | Mackinac Transportation Company |
Route | Mackinaw City to St. Ignace, Michigan |
Builder | Toledo Shipbuilding Company |
Cost | $400,000[1] |
Yard number | Hull number 119 |
Launched | August 26, 1911 |
In service | October 1911 |
Out of service | 1984 |
Identification |
|
Nickname(s) | the Chief |
Fate | Cut down to barge in 1989; scrapped 2009 by Purvis Marine |
General characteristics | |
Tonnage | 2,990 tons |
Length | 338 ft (103.02 m) |
Beam | 62 ft (18.90 m) |
Installed power | Six hand-fired, coal-burning steam boilers, |
Propulsion | three triple-expansion steam engines, total 4,500 hp (3.36 MW). Three propellors: one forward, two aft |
Capacity | 26 freight cars on three tracks |
Chief Wawatam's work began to change in the 1940s. Its role as an icebreaker stationed in the upper Great Lakes was supplanted in 1944 by USCGC Mackinaw, a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker. The ship's passenger traffic dropped off in the years following World War II. The remaining passenger service ended with the completion of the Mackinac Bridge in 1957 that connected the Upper and Lower peninsulas of the U.S. state of Michigan.
Chief Wawatam then entered upon the final phase of its revenue services, being exclusively used to shuttle railroad freight cars across the Straits. The two railroad docks that were used in Mackinaw City and in St. Ignace survive. USCGC Mackinaw, now a ship museum, is berthed at the railroad dock in Mackinaw City and a wooden statue of its namesake stands nearby at its harbor. The Wawatam Lighthouse guards the railroad dock at St. Ignace.