September 14, 2005
The last watch on the Algobay
On the way to Cherry Beach, or I guess to the ferry terminal, you can see the good ship Algobay tied up at the dock. She’s just to the east of the bridge. No need to hurry to see Algobay, if you want to check her out - she’ll be where she is for a while. You won’t miss her, either – she’s the biggest thing around.
Algobay is a problem for her owners, who may or may not eventually scrap her. Pro: she’s wrecked inside from salt water corrosion to the point that her internal bulkheads collapsed on the Soo a number of years ago; con: she was built to last 30 years, and was only launched in 1978. Someone in a corner office will eventually make a decision, at some point, or then again perhaps not.
Really, she sounds like the Midland, from the Stan Rogers song (They dragged her down, dead, from Tobermory/Too cheap to spare her one last head of steam), poor thing.
In the meantime, as far as I can tell from the boatnerd.com site, she hasn’t budged from the Cherry St. dock since Christmas Day, 2002. Here she is on New Year’s Eve, 2002. Actually, I think she's been around long enough to make it on to satellite images of the city - the ship in the GoogleMaps image looks about right.
Here’s the moral: If you’re a shipowner, and you want somewhere on the Great Lakes to park a worn-out ship while you spend several years getting around to deciding whether it’s more economical to repair her or turn her into razor blades, Toronto will do just fine – it’s much better than taking up valuable space in a real port like, oh, Nanticoke. Toronto’s port is so moribund that a worn-out 34,000-ton ship can just be abandoned to snooze at the dock for any number of years without fear of getting in the way of any worthwhile project.
This is the thriving harbour that we need a federally run harbour commission for, apparently. What do they do all day? (Algobay's still there, sir. A bit rusty.' 'Good work, Smithers - time for lunch.')
When men with torches come for her, let angels come for the waterfront, I guess.
Posted by Patrick at September 14, 2005 11:43 PM