Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw Served Great Lakes For 62 Years
BY FRANK STRAUS

The Mackinaw clearing a path in the North Channel. (Photograph courtesy of John "Jack" Wellington)

When on June 21, 2006, the Coast Guard cutter Mackinaw fired up its engines one last time and cruised through the Straits of Mackinac from its home port of duty, Cheboygan, to its new home, Mackinaw City, its charted track marked the closing of a circle. The Mackinaw sailed both ways through the Round Island Channel, one of the passageways through the Great Lakes, which it had kept open for more than 60 years of public service. After leaving Mackinac Island waters, the boat headed toward the town for which it was named, Mackinaw City, Michigan.

"You know, 'Mac's' been around a long time," her last captain, Joe McGuinness, was telling me. "She was authorized 10 days after Pearl Harbor." Two decks below the bridge, in the crew's mess, was bolted the cutter's service plaque:

Date of authorization:

December 17, 1941 Keel laid: March 20, 1943 Launched: March 4, 1944

Commissioned:

December 20, 1944

"The war effort, particularly steel," Captain McGuinness added. "Get iron ore down to those factories."

When World War II came, the steel mills of Cleveland and Gary were partly cut off from the mines of northern Michigan and Minnesota by up to five months of annual ice. Anything that could chew into this winter barrier at both ends could play a major role, but many of the men of the shipyards were gone to the war. The Toledo shipyard hired women to bolt and weld the steel vessel's plates together.

"She isn't a riveted ship," said McGuinness, "so it wasn't 'Rosie the Riveter.'"

The Mackinaw, despite the other demands of the time, was built in time to help open the St. Marys River and Straits of Mackinac for the spring of 1945. Every week counted. Peace came later in 1945, and the Mackinaw tied up for its first winter. Cheboygan, just southeast of the Straits, would always be her home.

There was no newspaper here on Mackinac Island during the later war years. Aweekly paper, the Mackinac Island News, was reestablished on the Island in the summer of 1947, and the front page of its fifth issue profiled the new, 290foot-long behemoth of public safety: "The Mackinaw - Icebreaker and Rescue Ship."

"She has never encountered ice she couldn't break," announced the Mackinac Island News on August 7, 1947. "Her toughest ice breaking job always comes in Whitefish Bay," the semicircle of water northwest of the Soo, where the winter northwesterlies carry ice floes from all around Lake Superior. Opening Whitefish Bay is a necessity in springtime; it is the traditional bottleneck of the St. Marys channel.

Back in 1947, many of the lighthouses of the upper Great Lakes were manned. After the ice was cleared, the Mackinaw shuttled to many of them, delivering food and fuel. Many visitors still came to Mackinac Island by old-time steamboat, and the Mackinaw tried to help here, too. In that spring of 1947, she had rescued a grounded D & C lake liner, the Greater Detroit.

The work of the Mackinaw demanded many men on duty and on watch at all times. In the summer of 1947, the new vessel's full complement was 118 men and 12 officers. The work of the steel mills had changed, but the mills were still running flat-out in those years of the late 1940s.

"We went from building the Arsenal of Democracy," explains Captain McGuinness, "to building the American Dream." Every American would have a car made of sheet steel.

1950 came, and also the outbreak of the Korean War. In 1952 the steel industry was so strategic that when labor relations broke down into a strike, President Truman believed that it was his duty as Commander in Chief to physically seize control of the mills - he was slapped down by the Supreme Court, and labor peace came anyway. The boats shuttled back and forth past Mackinac Island, and new ones were built. The length of the largest ore boats grew longer, from 600 feet to 1,000, and their cargo capacity multiplied fourfold and more. The Mackinaw, with its beam of almost 75 feet, could blaze a trail through the ice for even the largest vessels.

By the 1960s, the Mackinaw was coming upon its 20th birthday, and its duties were becoming routine. The Coast Guard rotated crew members and officers often, but the boat, like all boats, had developed a workaday character of its own that transcended the changes in the men who trod its steel decks. The men had developed their own language for the cutter's work - the job of opening the channels in spring had become the "cut" or the "push." Dwight Boyer, Great Lakes author, described the work of the Mackinaw in his 1966 book "Great Stories of the Great Lakes."

Time passed over the Great Lakes. The lighthouses were becoming automated, and the Mackinaw was spending more time on new duties of public safety and security. She escorted racing yachts from Chicago and Port Huron to Mackinac. She guided the newly admitted "salties" from the Welland Canal up through the Great Lakes.

The Vietnam War came, and the Coast Guard was asked to tighten its belt. In 1968-69 the service closed its lifesaving station on Mackinac Island - it is now the State Park's Visitor Center - and consolidated its Straits landbased operations in St. Ignace.

In the 1970s came "Operation Taconite," the effort spearheaded by the Lake Carriers Association - the corporations that own or operate the cargo vessels - to keep the Great Lakes ore channel open all year around. The Mackinaw proved, for what it was worth, that with a heavy expenditure of fuel oil and elbow grease, it was possible to keep the St. Marys channel open through all but the toughest of winters. But soon fuel oil was not as cheap as it had been - and the time would come when the steel mills of the lower Lakes, one after another, would fall silent.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, the Mackinaw still turned up for duty every springtime, her "icefighters" ready to break a passageway and escort a shrinking number of ore boats through the Straits of Mackinac and the upper Great Lakes. Women reported for duty on the Mackinaw's diminishing crew. From the 130 officers and men of 1947, she was now down to 75 - eight officers and 67 "enlisted personnel."

Rumors spread throughout the Great Lakes maritime community that it was getting tougher to find replacement parts for the Mackinaw's six Fairbanks-Morse engines. The Lake Carriers' Association began to worry. In testimony before Congress in March 1998, they asked Congress to set aside funds for a replacement icebreaker. The propellers began to turn. By January 2001, the word was out within the Coast Guard - the old Mackinaw would have only five more years of working life, while her successor vessel was being planned and built.

Now, the new Mackinaw, on the Cheboygan riverfront, wore the pennant of a commissioned cutter of the U.S. Coast Guard, while its predecessor churned westward through the Straits. Her old engines throbbed without a cough.

"We felt obligated to retire her in tip-top condition," the captain said.

The cutter motored past the harbor of Mackinac Island one last time. A cannon boomed in salute, and four rifle shots echoed from the walls of old Fort Mackinac.

"I'm in awe of her history," said Captain McGuinness. Then he excused himself, as he and the other officers would be easing the beamy vessel into the Railroad Dock at Mackinaw City.

Slowly the wide vessel approached the narrow slip where she would spend the remainder of her days. A crowd had gathered to welcome the cutter home, and a band played cheerful tunes.