DACK

Freight-Passenger-Commercial Fishing Vessels of Lake Nipigon

As remembered by Adolph King, Rossport, Ontario  1974

Nipigon Museum Archives

A firm of "Toronto Fish Buyers" purchased a 50 foot tug named "Dack" from Fort William, Ontario.

They shipped the vessel to Lake Nipigon in 1925 to enter the freighting of fish and also for visiting the various Indian Reserves for the purpose of buying "Sturgeon".

The tug "Dack" had trouble with both the engine and the boiler for the first two years.

The writer was hired to go to Lake Nipigon and install a more suitable engine in the vessel as well as re-tube the upright boiler. The writer served as engineer in this vessel which after repair of machinery was able to freight and trade the full length of  Lake Nipigon.

The writer left this vessel at the end of the 1926 season.

The tug "Dack" carried on various work on Lake Nipigon approximately seven or eight years, finally going out of service somewhere in the northerly end of Lake Nipigon. The writer is told that the boiler and the engine are still with the bones of the tug "Dack".

That is the list known to the writer of the old time craft and crews which had to make their way without the aid of modern instruments. Plus vessels of all steel construction which had sturdy, safe and comfortable crew quarters to compare with the old wooden craft and especially the fishing vessels with the odor of fish soaked into their not too solid wood structure, with most craft leaking enough to circulate all the water in Lake Nipigon into their bilge and out again every few days.

Fishing tugs, Lake Nipigon