The Marquette and Bessemer

The Marquette and Bessemer No. 2 (I) at Port Stanley Harbour, c. 1907
Elgin County Archives

The Marquette and Bessemer No. 2 (I) was one of the largest of the Great Lakes car ferries; ships which between the 1890s and the 1950s hauled rail cars full of coal from the US to Ontario to heat homes, generate electricity and fuel locomotives. The Marquette and Bessemer No. 2 which ran between Port Stanley and Conneaut, Ohio, was 350 feet long and had a capacity of 32 hopper cars. After only 4 years in service the fully-loaded ship floundered during a storm on the lake somewhere between the two ports on December 7, 1909. Five days later one of the vessel’s life boats was found near Erie, Pennsylvania containing the frozen bodies of nine of the 32 crew. The loss of the entire crew along with the boat’s only passenger makes it one of the worst car ferry disasters ever on the Great Lakes. The wreck has never been found. A second vessel of the same name was launched in 1910 and continued to haul coal until 1932. The car ferries were replaced by self-unloading vessels.