The John D Leitch Docked in Owen Sound.

Last weekend Mrs. F.G., saw that a tall ship would be docked in Owen Sound as it took on a new crew, and she thought it would be fun to go and see it, so we did.  But when we pulled up to the dock we found ourselves right beside an enormous lake freighter, the John D Leitch.

This was our view was we drove along the dockside road.  It's a big ship!

The John D. Leitch has a reputation for having an enormous superstructure, and you could see how high it was when we pulled up, like a small 4-story apartment building.

When we pulled up and got out of the car, this was our view.  The ship did appear to be enormous, nearly 800 feet long.  It has apparently been docked here for the winter, and as you can tell, is empty, riding very high in the water.  Based on the comments I've read, this summer's sailing may be its final year of sailing the lakes.

Like many older lake freighters, this one was scraped everywhere from passing through the locks.  Those narrow diagonal plates were added in one of its retrofits.

The stern loomed enormous above the waterline.  It sits so high that you don't even get a glimpse of the enormous unloading gantry that was state of the art when the ship was launched in 1967;

(Source: The Sault News)

I found this image in the Sault News, taken from the side, so you can see the long self-unloading gantry extending back from the bow.  The ship has a conveyor belt running at the lowest point of the hull, so the cargo, usually coal or iron ore, can tumble down and be carried along to the front of the ship.  There it rises in an elevator and gets carried on another conveyor through that gantry, dropping into piles wherever it's docked. That system makes it a self-unloading bulk carrier.

And it made the little ship we had come to see look very tiny indeed.

 

Tomorrow a closer look at the TS Playfair, the sail training vessel sailing out of Hamilton that we came to see.  It's a brigantine, a two-masted, square-rigged sailing vessel, with a complement of 28 people (where they all sleep I can't imagine).  And it did look tiny to me!