06/02/2026
Coming into Duluth with a plethora of salutes for their 1st visit of the season! The Aerial Lift Bridge played along well! Arriving the Twin Ports May 1 at 14:20 in the Mid-afternoon with a cargo of Dolomite for the the Hallett 5 dock up river on the Duluth side of the upper harbor. They spent 14.5 hours dumping the stone at the dock, finishing up and departing Hallett 5 May 2 at 06:00 in the morning. Next stop on their card was the CN ore dock, right next door, arriving there at 06:29. This load took a little longer than I bet they wanted, 34.9 hours later May 03 at 17:24 they finished the load and departed the CN dock. The Defiance/Ashtabula sailed out of Duluth at 18:13, topping off their stay in Port at 51.9 hours. Off they sailed to deliver the Iron Ore Pellets to Cleveland OH.
The tug Defiance (US 646729) and barge Ashtabula (US 626730) were specifically designed to operate together as a self-unloading bulk carrier and have spent their entire career doing so. The pair were originally built for subsidiaries of Beker Industries of Greenwich, Connecticut. Beker Industries was a conglomerate primarily in the business of phosphate mining and distribution from mines near Tampa Bay in Florida. After a long career on the ocean, the pair have returned to the Lakes where they were built.
The barge was launched as hull 728 on April 22, 1982 by Bay Shipbuilding of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. It was christened. The namesake is assumed to be Erol Y. Beker, the founder and president of Beker Industries and Beker Phosphate Corporation.
The tug was constructed by the Marinette Marine Corporation of Marinette, Wisconsin and launched as construction number 8271. It was delivered to Sturgeon Bay one day after the barge was launched, on April 23, 1982. The tug was christened April T. Beker. The assumed namesake is April Beker, wife of Erol Y. Beker. The tug is equipped with a second elevated pilot house and is powered by two EMD 20 cylinder 645-E7B engines which produce a total of 7200 horsepower.
The pair were built under Title XI of the Merchant Marine Act of 1970. This program allowed U.S. shipping companies to construct new vessels or to modernize their existing fleet by government guaranteed financing and tax deferred benefits. The barge incorporated many of the typical characteristics of a Great Lakes self-unloader. This includes belt conveyors below the hopper-shaped hold and a bow mounted unloading boom. However being designed for ocean use, there are some visual differences from typical Great Lakes designs. First, the barge has a deep hull, designed to be loaded to a 36 foot draft. Second, the unloading boom was very short, intended to unload into dockside hoppers. And third, the hatch covers are large corrugated covers, considerably larger and heavier than hatch covers typical to the Great Lakes. The hatch crane is quite tall to allow for clearance to pass over multiple hatch covers stacked in one location.
As built, the pair would not meet the modern day definition of an Articulated Tug Barge (ATB). Instead of a rigid physical connection between the two, the bow of the tug was protected by heavy rubber fendering. When in the deep notch of the barge, wing wires were run from the stern of the tug to the barge to hold the tug in the notch. The tug is also equipped with a towing winch to tow the barge on the wire when necessary. In 2007 the pair was retrofitted with a Bludworth connection system and now meet the common definition of an ATB.
Upon entering service, the pair worked mostly on a route between Tampa Bay and the Lower Mississippi River. Phosphate was carried westbound and coal was backhauled eastbound for power plants run by Tampa Electric (TECO). Beker Industries filed for bankruptcy in 1985 and the pair was eventually taken over by the TECO subsidiary Gulfcoast Transit Company. In November 1987 the barge was renamed Mary Turner and the tug renamed Beverly Anderson. Gulfcoast Transit Company became TECO Ocean Shipping in 2002. In 2007 TECO sold off its shipping and marine terminal business to United Marine Group (UMG). The pair were now operated by the UMG subsidiary U.S. United Ocean Services. Throughout these corporate changes the pair retained their Mary Turner/Beverly Anderson names. It is believed that they mostly traded on the same Tampa/Mississippi River route.
Written by Tom Hynes
