Name MV Roger Blough Laid down September 3, 1968 Length 254 m Launched 5 June 1972 | Yard number 900 In service June 15, 1972 Construction started 3 September 1968 | |
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Identification Call signWDH7559
IMO number 7222138 Status in active service, as of 2016 Builder American Ship Building Company | ||
MV Roger Blough is a ship built in 1972 by American Ship Building Company in Lorain, Ohio. She serves as a lake freighter on the Great Lakes. As of 2016, the ship was owned by Great Lakes Fleet, Inc and operated by Keystone Shipping Company. The ship was named for former chairman of U.S. Steel, Roger Blough.
Service history
The ship's launch was originally planned for July 1971. However, on June 24, 1971, the ship suffered a major engine room fire which killed four and caused serious damage. Sea trials and delivery were delayed by a year to June 1972.
Roger Blough assisted in the search for SS Edmund Fitzgerald. On November 11, 1975, the morning after the sinking, the crew of Roger Blough recovered a 25-person life raft from Edmund Fitzgerald.
She was stuck in the ice in Lake Erie near Conneaut, Ohio for eight days in February 1979 and then was laid up from 1981 to 1987 due to the economy and the capacity of the newer 1,000 feet (300 m) lake freighters.
On May 27, 2016, Roger Blough ran aground on Gros Cap Reef in Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior with some minor flooding reported. She remained aground on May 29, 2016 near Gros Cap Reefs Light with the United States Coast Guard vessel USCGC Mobile Bay on station monitoring the situation and enforcing a 500-yard (460 m) safety zone around the vessel. At 5:45 AM on June 3, Roger Blough began offloading some of its taconite cargo to SS Philip R. Clarke to lift the ship off the reef. The vessel was refloated off the reef at 10:45 AM, June 4, and anchored at Waiska Bay for further evaluation or repairs. Lightering operations were completed at Waiska Bay on June 7, 2016 with SS Philip R. Clarke and SS Arthur M. Anderson receiving the remainder of the taconite cargo.
Starting off on June 11, 2016, Roger Blough was escorted by the tug Candace Elise to Bay Shipbuilding, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin for repairs.