Howard

3D ModelNoAI

The 118 ft tug Howard was built in 1864 as a Civil War gunboat named the Admiral D.D. Porter. After the war it operated as a commercial towboat changing owners multiple times until 1921. It had a major rebuild in 1889 when its single expansion steam engine was replaced with a steeple compound engine, and in 1892 its boiler was replaced with a new Scotch boiler. In 1921 under ownership of the Davidson Steamship Company of Duluth it stranded in the fog near the southern tip of Victoria Island near Thunder Bay, ON. The crew escaped unharmed, but the vessel was never recovered. Today it is a dive site which is sometimes buoyed by SOS in Canadian waters 20 miles from Grand Portage, MN. Although there are many steeple compound engines on shipwrecks of the lower lakes, it may be the only example on Lake Superior. The diving depths range from 50 to 120 ft. The model was created from 1,370 30-megapixel images shot in the 2024 season by Ken Merryman with assistance from Rob Farrow, David Zaroski, and Gary Myhrman.