A few children may have been late for school on Friday morning as they waited for tugboat Molly MI to tow the disabled freighter across the Bart Starr Memorial Bridge (Walnut Street) in downtown Green Bay.
At sunrise on Friday, September 23, the ST Crapo was pulled from her hold with the help of tugs based in Green Bay, Washington and Texas.
With her rudder welded in place, the ST Crapo is guided out of the mouth of the Fox River and into the bay for her open water journey across the Great Lakes to be recycled at the Marine Recycling Corp. in Port Colborne, Ontario, at the northeast end of Lake Erie, near Niagara Falls. Pictures of Chuck Zentmeyer
As Lafarge Holcim expands its shore storage facilities, the ST Crapo has been purchased by Marine Recycling Corp., which will recycle all of the ship’s metal.
For the past 25 years the ST Crapo has been berthed at the LaFargeHolcim Terminal on the Fox River and used as a cement storage vessel.
Launched nearly a century ago on July 7, 1927, as a self-unloading cement carrier, the ST Crapo primarily carried cement from Alpena, Michigan. In the mid-1990s, it was the last coal freighter on the Great Lakes. In 1995 her boilers were converted to oil-fired by Bay Shipbuilding in Sturgeon Bay. With the exception of a trip to Alpena in 2005, the 403ft vessel has not left the port of Green Bay.