Pieces of James Whalen tug donated to Thunder Bay transportation museum
Historic tugboat was scrapped by city, but stack, wheelhouse and other parts will be put on public display
The historic James Whalen tugboat will live on after all.
Earlier this year, Thunder Bay city council voted to completely scrap the vessel at a cost of nearly $600,000.
And while the vessel has now been dismantled, some key pieces have been saved and donated to the Transportation Museum of Thunder Bay.
"We have the wheelhouse with the captains quarters behind it," said Wally Peterson, chair of the museum. "We have the stack, we have the skylight from the engine room, the anchor windlass and the stern fan tail."
The vessel was built in Toronto in 1905, and was a fixture on the Great Lakes for decades, even playing a role in the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway.
The Whalen was brought to Thunder Bay in the 1990s after it was retired from service and then moored at Kam River Heritage Park. About three years ago, however, it was found submerged in the river, and was moved to a dry dock on private land.
Museum's request to preserve tugboat turned down by city
Peterson said the museum did make a formal request to the city to preserve the Whalen, but was turned down. Instead, the museum worked with Port Colborne-based Marine Recycling Corporation, the company hired to scrap the vessel, to get the pieces donated.
"We're going to eventually bring them down, hopefully in July, to the site at Pool 6," Peterson said. "We'll put them on display on the ground and set it up, and then restore the wheelhouse."
"Most of the items don't need too much restoration except for the wheelhouse, and she's completely stripped down to bare metal, so we will be welding up the holes in the floor and the roof, and then fully restoring it as best we can," he said.
Peterson said the Whalen is an "important piece" for the museum, which also owns and displays the Alexander Henry, a former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker.
"The Whalen was, of course, the main ice breaker for the port from 1905 till the Alexander Henry came on site," Peterson said. "So it's all part of the main history of the port."
Korey Dame, marine superintendent with Marine Recycling Corporation, said scrapping the Whalen took about three weeks.
"The first week we were up here, we were just cleaning the vessel out," he said. "We were moving all wood and garbage and getting it down to bare metal."
"Once it's a clean ship, we fire up our torches."
The ship was then cut into pieces and lifted onto trucks and taken to a nearby scrapyard, Dame said.
Dame said the Whalen was a simpler job than the company normally deals with, and not only because it was largely cleaned out when the scrapping started.
"Back home we normally deal with very, very large vessels, the big lakers you see going through here that are 700 feet long by 50 feet wide by 50 feet tall," he said. "So this is just a little dinky toy for us."
"It's the same process back home," he said. "We have bigger cranes and bigger equipment that we use, but it's essentially the exact same. It's just on a smaller scale here, that's all."
