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.

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

American Ship Building Article – May 18, 1963

Yesterday in a comment left on the blog, my old Masson School classmate Mike Kozlowski mentioned that his father worked at American Ship Building. So this article from the May 18, 1963 Journal of sixty years ago today might be of interest to him.

It's a pretty well-written history of American Ship Building, featured as part of the "Perspective" series of articles presented by the newspaper. It covers the beginnings of the company in 1899 and proceeds through the decades, identifying the company's accomplishments as well as notable ships.

A nice sidebar by Ralph E. Neumeyer looks specifically at the history shipbuilding on the banks of the Black River in Lorain. It notes, "A rough count would show about 300 wooden steam and sailing vessels built prior to the American Shipbuilding Co. arrival in 1899, and a similar number of ships of all types in the next 60 years.

A U. S. Great Lakes registry chart reveals that at the time of the 1963 article, 85 vessels of the Great Lakes ore fleet were built in the Lorain Yards

****

I devoted several blog posts to the Roger Blough.

Pat's West Side Lorain Memories

I received an email last month from a fellow Class of 1977 Admiral King Marching Band buddy, Pat Derrer Resor. (That's her at left holding her marching french horn. I'm the guy with a trombone sitting behind her on the left side of the photo.)

After seeing some of the early morning timestamps on my posts, Pat was concerned that I was staying up all hours of the night trying to come up with blog content. So, she volunteered some of her reminisces about growing up on W. 20th Street just west of Oberlin Avenue in the 60s and 70s to fill some space.

"I grew up on the west side of Lorain, close to the neighborhood where the author Toni Morrison writes about," said Pat. "I attended Barrett kindergarten near Central Park. The child that sat next to me in the Halloween group photo there was also my prom date thirteen plus years later."

(Incidentally, her prom date – my high school pal Jerry – is the guy holding a trombone sitting next to me. I guess Jerry was destined to forever be photographed sitting near Pat.)

Former Houff Pharmacy building –
currently for sale

Pat continued. "I was often sent to Houff Pharmacy (at 18th and Oberlin) to get a prescription. I did not have to cross many busy streets."

Sadly, the pharmacy is long closed and the building is currently for sale.

Businesses seemed to dominate Pat's memories. "Lawson’s and Lorain Creamery were close to home, " she said. "There also was a Texaco station on the corner of 21st and Oberlin Ave. at one time."

"When I walked to Harrison Elementary School (at 20th and Hamilton), I would often stop to pet the dog that lived behind the Bristow Myers Travel Bureau. I also had to regularly walk near the Dombrowski Funeral Home."

Former Bristow Myers Travel Bureau

"Hupp Heating and Air was on the northeast corner of 19th and Oberlin Ave. There was also a Nazarene church on the same corner before the congregation moved to Amherst."

Pat was able to witness one well-remembered Lorain historical event. "My grandfather took us to the river to watch the Roger Blough burn (in June 1971)," she said. "He said it was history being made."

Pat has memories of good Lorain food too. As she noted, "Sometimes, we would even get to eat at the Roman Room Restaurant." She added, "A major treat was donuts from Bob’s."

Pat did venture out of her neighborhood a little farther south down Oberlin Avenue once in a while. "The Meister Rd. shopping center had a Grant’s department store that gave out Green Stamps when purchases were made," she remembered.

Dombrowski-Riddle Funeral Home
(one of the few businesses in Pat's
old neighborhood that's still in operation)

It sounds like Pat has some nice memories of her old neighborhood, as well as the stores and businesses that played such a big part of Lorain's personality back then.

She summed it up very simply. "All of this in my very narrow view of the world growing up. We could even sit on the back steps and watch the fireworks from George Daniel Stadium without even leaving home."

Thanks for sharing your memories, Pat!