Roger Blough Fire – June 24, 1971

It was fifty years ago today that the Roger Blough, U. S. Steel’s super ore carrier being built at the American Ship Building Co. in Lorain, caught fire. 

As noted in one Journal report, “Temperatures inside the hull reached 2,500 degrees at times while the fire, confined to the ship’s stern, was being battled by scores of firefighters and shipyard workers from about 10 a.m. Thursday until early Friday afternoon.”

“Tired and nearly exhausted firemen and shipyard workers, many of whom had virtually no sleep since the fire started, were on the job until the bodies of the missing crew were located."

Seven men (including three firemen) went to St. Joseph Hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation. Four shipyard workers lost their lives in the blaze: Clyde Purdue of Vermilion; John Alexander of Lorain; George Adams of Lorain; and Leonard Moore of Elyria.

Here are some of the pages of the Journal covering the tragic fire.

June 24, 1971

June 24, 1971

June 25, 1971

June 25, 1971

June 27, 1971

The Roger Blough Christened – June 5, 1971

Front page of the June 5, 1971 Lorain Journal

Fifty years ago tomorrow, the Roger Blough was christened in the Lorain yards of the American Ship Building Company, where it was built.

Although the ship’s launch was originally planned for July 1971, the well-remembered engine room fire that killed four shipyard workers delayed it by almost a year. Roger Blough eventually had its sea trials in June 1972 (which I wrote about here).

The Journal article notes, “The 858-foot-long Roger Blough is the largest ship ever built on the Great Lakes and it is the first of the new giants that soon will be sailing the lakes.

“The Roger Blough is as long as three football fields and 105 feet wide. Its size allows it to carry three times the amount of cargo a 600-foot-long ship can handle and its special self-loading system allows it to discharge cargo at the rate of 10,000 tons an hour.”

(Note that the photo of Roger Blough’s niece in front of his namesake ship was taken by our pal Gene Patrick.)

I’ll have more on the Roger Blough when it gets closer to the anniversary date of the tragic fire.

Roger Blough Sets Out for Sea Trials – June 1972

Roger Blough ore carrier setting out for sea trials in June 1972
(Courtesy ClevelandMemory.org)

MV Roger Blough – the ore carrier built by American Ship Building in Lorain for U. S. Steel – seems destined to forever be in the news. 

Fire on Roger Blough ore carrier
(Courtesy ClevelandMemory.org)

As many of us remember, it suffered a major engine room fire in June 1971 which killed four shipyard workers. It played a part in the search for the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sunk in November 1975.

But the Roger Blough continues to make headlines.

It got stuck in the ice in Lake Erie in February 1979; it ran aground in Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior in May 2016. And last month, it suffered $20 million in damages due to a fire while it was at its winter storage dock in Wisconsin.

But way back in June 1972, with the tragic fire behind it, the Roger Blough was being towed out of the Lorain shipyard in preparation for sea trials.

Read all about it in the article below, which appeared in the Journal on June 3, 1972.