SS Chief Wawatam loading a passenger train at Mackinaw City
History
Name
SS Chief Wawatam
Namesake
Chief Wawatam
Operator
Mackinac Transportation Company
Route
Mackinaw City to St. Ignace, Michigan
Builder
Toledo Shipbuilding Company
Cost
$400,000[1]
Yard number
Hull number 119
Launched
August 26, 1911
In service
October 1911
Out of service
1984
Identification
Official Number 209235
IMO number: 5070115
Nickname(s)
the Chief
Fate
Cut down to barge in 1989; scrapped 2009 by Purvis Marine
General characteristics
Tonnage
2,990 tons
Length
338 ft (103.02 m)
Beam
62 ft (18.90 m)
Installed power
Six hand-fired, coal-burning steam boilers,
Propulsion
three triple-expansion steam engines, total 4,500 hp (3.36 MW). Three propellors: one forward, two aft
Capacity
26 freight cars on three tracks
Chief Wawatam (nicknamed the Chief) was a coal-fired steel ship that was based, for most of its 1911–1984 working life, in St. Ignace, Michigan. The vessel was named after a distinguished Ojibwa chief of the 1760s. In initial revenue service, the Chief Wawatam served as a train ferry, passenger ferry and icebreaker that operated year-round at the Straits of Mackinac between St. Ignace and Mackinaw City, Michigan. During the winter months, it sometimes took many hours to cross the five-mile-wide Straits, and Chief Wawatam was fitted with complete passenger hospitality spaces.
Chief Wawatam's work began to change in the 1940s. Its role as an icebreaker stationed in the upper Great Lakes was supplanted in 1944 by USCGC Mackinaw, a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker. The ship's passenger traffic dropped off in the years following World War II. The remaining passenger service ended with the completion of the Mackinac Bridge in 1957 that connected the Upper and Lower peninsulas of the U.S. state of Michigan.
Chief Wawatam then entered upon the final phase of its revenue services, being exclusively used to shuttle railroad freight cars across the Straits. The two railroad docks that were used in Mackinaw City and in St. Ignace survive. USCGC Mackinaw, now a ship museum, is berthed at the railroad dock in Mackinaw City and a wooden statue of its namesake stands nearby at its harbor. The Wawatam Lighthouse guards the railroad dock at St. Ignace.
^"Chief Arrives at Straits". St. Ignace News. St. Ignace, Mich. October 13, 2011. Retrieved February 19, 2021.
ChiefWawatam (nicknamed the Chief) was a coal-fired steel ship that was based, for most of its 1911–1984 working life, in St. Ignace, Michigan. The vessel...
Wawatam (little goose) (fl. 1762 – 1764) was an 18th-century Odawa chief who lived in the northern region of present-day Michigan's Lower Peninsula in...
best known as the owner and operator, from 1911 until 1984, of the SSChiefWawatam, an icebreaking train ferry. The Mackinac Transportation Company (MTC)...
Mackinac Transportation Company, which operated the SSChiefWawatam until 1984. The ChiefWawatam was a front-loading, hand-fired, coal-fed steamer. It...
ferries. The first autos crossed the Straits of Mackinac in 1917 on the SSChiefWawatam. In 1923, the state of Michigan began an auto ferry service that was...
Alang, India in 2004. SSChiefWawatam: A historic icebreaker and the last hand-fired coal steamer on the Great Lakes, ChiefWawatam was cut down to a barge...
Online Archive of California. "Alternative uses of the railcar ferry S.S. ChiefWawatam State of Michigan Dept. of Transportation, State of Michigan Dept...
most well-known coal-fired steamships of the Great Lakes, such as the SSChiefWawatam (built in 1911). In the early 1960s, the American Ship Building Company...
including SS City of Milwaukee, built in 1931. Straits of Mackinac: – Mackinaw City, Michigan, to St. Ignace, Michigan, performed by SSChiefWawatam at the...
it was named Wawatam Lighthouse in honor of a railroad car ferry that had been home-ported in St. Ignace for many decades, SSChiefWawatam. After reassembly...
logging camps and gravel quarries. The railroad was a part owner of the SSChiefWawatam, a rail car ferry that crossed the Straits of Mackinac. Running down...
Taganak (AG-45) SSChiefWawatam The John Kendall steam-powered fire boat moored at Riverside Park Boat Launch in Detroit in July 1969. SS Wauketa, "White...
Online Archive of California. "Alternative uses of the railcar ferry S.S. ChiefWawatam State of Michigan Dept. of Transportation, State of Michigan Dept...
which made it "particularly valuable" to the railroad car ferries SSChiefWawatam and SS Sainte Marie operated between Mackinaw City and St. Ignace. The...
with the Detroit and Mackinac Railway. The DM switched cars onto the SSChiefWawatam, a railroad ferry that provided service across the Straits of Mackinac...
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submarine. In addition to the Cobia, the museum displays the 65-ton ChiefWawatam steam engine and exhibits on shipbuilding and shipwrecks in Wisconsin...
Shipwrecks 18 Jan: Herzogin Cecilie 23 Jan: Argentina Unknown date: HMS Medea Other incidents 4 Jan: ChiefWawatam 1938 1939 1940 December 1938 February 1939...
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