.png)
This MCP Boat Blog is presented by the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum, www.masoncountymihistory.org.
Photo by Vans Stevenson, MCP Contributor; Story by Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief
EPWORTH HEIGHTS — One of the largest ships on the Great Lakes passed the Ludington shoreline Tuesday evening just after sunset.
Mason County Press contributor Vans Stevenson photographed the M/V James R. Barker from the Lake Michigan shoreline at Epworth Heights as the 1,004-foot vessel steamed north. The Barker was traveling from Burns Harbor, Ind., to Silver Bay, Minn., on Lake Superior.
The James R. Barker is operated by the Interlake Steamship Company and this year marks 50 years since the vessel entered service in 1976. Built by American Ship Building Co. at Lorain, Ohio, the Barker was the first 1,000-foot-class freighter constructed entirely on the Great Lakes. It has remained with Interlake throughout its career.
The Barker is 1,004 feet long with a beam of 105 feet and a carrying capacity of 63,300 gross tons. Its engines produce 16,000 horsepower. Like most of the modern bulk fleet, it is a self-unloader. Cargo is carried from the holds by three conveyor belts to a 250-foot unloading boom, allowing the ship to discharge a full cargo in about eight hours.
The vessel was named for James R. Barker, longtime chairman of Interlake. Barker led the company when it became privately held in 1987 and remains chairman of Interlake.
For Ludington shipwatchers, the Barker also has a connection to a much more familiar vessel.
The James R. Barker and Ludington’s S.S. Badger are part of the same Interlake maritime family. Interlake Holding Co. acquired Ludington-based companies Lake Michigan Carferry and Pere Marquette Shipping in December 2020. The acquisition included the Badger and the Spartan along with the articulated tug-barge Undaunted-Pere Marquette 41 and resulted in the creation of Interlake Maritime Services, which oversees those operations along with the Interlake Steamship Co.
The Barker is one of Interlake’s large bulk carriers, a fleet that includes the 1,013-foot Paul R. Tregurtha, the 1,004-foot Mesabi Miner, the 826-foot Lee A. Tregurtha and several other familiar Great Lakes vessels. The Mesabi Miner, built in 1977, is the Barker’s sister ship.
Burns Harbor, located on Lake Michigan in northwest Indiana about 50 miles southeast of Chicago, is one of the Great Lakes’ major steelmaking centers. Cleveland-Cliffs operates its Burns Harbor integrated steel mill there. The facility has two blast furnaces and the capacity to produce nearly 5 million net tons of raw steel annually. Its products include hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized steel along with steel plate.
The surrounding Ports of Indiana-Burns Harbor complex is also heavily oriented toward the steel industry, handling steel products as well as limestone, coke, coal and iron ore used by the region’s mills.
At the opposite end of the Barker’s northbound trip is Silver Bay, located along the rugged north shore of Lake Superior.
Silver Bay is home to Cleveland-Cliffs’ Northshore Mining operation. Taconite mined at the Peter Mitchell Mine near Babbitt, Minn., is crushed and then transported about 47 miles by railroad to Silver Bay. There it is further processed, concentrated and formed into iron ore pellets. The finished pellets are stockpiled along the waterfront and loaded aboard Great Lakes freighters for shipment to steel mills farther south.
_____________________
Please Support Local News Coverage
For generations, local newspapers were supported by subscriptions. Today, while Mason County Press and Oceana County Press remain free to everyone, the cost of producing quality local journalism continues to rise.
If you value independent local news coverage, we invite you to help sustain it by subscribing to the MCP/OCP Daily Briefing for $12 a month — about 40 cents a day — or $120 a year.
Your subscription helps support the reporters, photographers and editors who cover local government, schools, community events, sports, breaking news and the stories that matter most to Mason and Oceana counties. In return, you’ll receive the MCP/OCP Daily Briefing each morning with the day’s headlines, along with occasional breaking news and special email editions.
Monthly subscriptions are available for $12 per month.
Click here to subscribe monthly.
Annual subscriptions are available for $120 per year.
Click here to subscribe annually.
If you prefer to pay by check, mail your $120 annual payment to:
Media Group 31, LLC
P.O. Box 21
Scottville, MI 49454
Please include your name, mailing address, email address and telephone number so we can activate your subscription.
Subscription payments must be received before service is activated.
Whether you choose to subscribe or continue enjoying our free content, thank you for reading Mason County Press and Oceana County Press. Your readership—and your support—helps ensure that independent local journalism remains available to everyone in our communities.
This story and original photography are copyrighted © 2026 by Media Group 31, LLC, P.O. Box 21, Scottville, MI 49454. All rights reserved. No portion of this story or its images may be reproduced in any form, including print, broadcast or electronic media, without the express written permission of Media Group 31, LLC.
As a news organization, Media Group 31 maintains published content as part of the public and historical record. Accordingly, stories are not removed after publication. At the editor’s discretion, stories may be updated or corrected as new information becomes available. Updates may be made by revising the original story or by publishing a follow-up story. Media Group 31, LLC reserves the right to modify this policy at any time. Please refer to our Use Policy for additional information.
.jpg)
