Sonny Moran
Sonny Moran's mother was dying of cancer and on her journey to say goodbye. She showed Sonny a gentleman in an officer's uniform whom she called Uncle Jack standing on the deck of a ship.
This gentleman was in fact John Dick, a former first officer and captain for four years of North America's first self-propelled vessel made of concrete - The CGS Concretia.
Floating Tombstone available at:
Amazon Web site:
http://www.amazon.com/Floating-Tombstone-Mysterious-Disappearance-ebook/dp/B004L62EGW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC&s=digital-text&qid=1296957774&sr=1-11
OR
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36049
Ottawa Valley town was home port for North America's first concrete ship
Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
North America's first selfpropelled ship made of concrete - yes concrete - the Canadian Government Ship (CGS) Concretia, is brought to life in a new ebook by Ottawa South writer Sonny Moran. Floating Tombstone - The Mysterious Disappearance of North America's First Concrete Ship tells the tale of the unusual vessel that steamed through the waters of the mighty St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario as a lighthouse/ buoy supply vessel based in the Ottawa Valley town of Prescott.
Due to a shortage of wood and steel during the First World War, the shipbuilding industry turned to concrete as a viable alternative. The Department of Marine and Fisheries, the forerunner of today's Canadian Coast Guard, operated the Concretia with a 14-member crew during the 1920s and into 1930.
"Canadians stepped up to the plate and displayed ingenuity and innovation during a period of war when it mattered most," said author Sonny Moran.
Mr. Moran is uniquely qualified to write the ebook because his great-uncle John Dick was the first officer and captain of the Concretia for four years.
The Concretia was designed and built between 1908 and 1917 by Charles Michael Morseen, president of Atlas Construction Co. Ltd. of Montreal, and Professor E. Brown, vice-dean of applied mechanics and hydraulics at McGill University.
The Concretia also had a sister ship, the Parmanencia also of ferro cement construction, built in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1920. The vessel sailed with nine crewmen, weighed 292 tons and was owned by Mr. W.N. MacDonald of Sydney.
On its last voyage the Parmanencia was carrying 188 tons of herring as it left the island of Saint-Pierre heading to Boston. During a storm the Parmanencia was lost off Saint-Pierre, south of Newfoundland and approximately 800 miles northeast of Boston.
The Government of Canada sold the Concretia in 1933. Eventually, the Concretia was scuttled in Kingston in 1954, but not before the engines were removed and placed into a ship called the Salvage Queen, owned by the Canadian Dredge and Dock Co.
The 132-foot-long concrete boat was purchased in 1978 by three Canadians who wanted to use the massive sailboat as their means to sail the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The adventurers transformed the Concretia into a three-masted Tall Ship called the Onaygorah. The Onaygorah was named after a Cataraqui Aboriginal word meaning "The one which keeps the history."
Topside, the vessel boasted 13 working sails totaling 6,000 square feet on three 85-foot masts. It is believed the Onaygorah became the largest pleasure craft registered in Canada at the time of her refit.
The concrete Tall Ship sailed out of Kingston in 1981 on a fiveyear voyage to study the marine biology in the warm South Pacific waters around the island of Fiji.
The ship met its fate en route. "Sailors who crewed on concrete ships often referred to them as 'Floating Tombstones,' " said Sonny Moran. "If a concrete ship's hull was breached and water began pouring in the vessel tended to sink fast due to its considerable weight."
Floating Tombstone - The Mysterious Disappearance of North America's First Concrete Ship can be purchased at www. Amazon.com Kindle site and www.smashwords.com
To learn more visit http: / /captainsofconcrete.web. officelive.com/info.aspx
© Ottawa Citizen 2011
CAPTAIN TOM
By Tom Van Dusen
Ottawa Sun
He must have been rugged, brave, dashing, charming, debonair. He must have wowed the ladies and the gents alike with tales of naval daring-do over cocktails or whatever they were imbibing in St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes ports in the early 1900s.
If there was a kitten trapped in a tree, there’s no doubt he would have been the first man to the rescue. And he would have been the last man out of a burning house after making sure all occupants were safe.
We’re talking about Captain Thomas Van Dusen, not my heroic alter ego in tights and a cape, but a real life character briefly described in a new book by Ottawa writer Sonny Moran who has now devoted two tomes to early concrete ships.
Who would of thought there’d be so much to say on that particular topic! Well, it seems there is, first in “Captains of Concrete”, and now in “Floating Tombstone – The Mysterious Disappearance of North America’s First Concrete Ship.”
In the most recent volume about the “CGS Concretia”, Moran touches on the untimely fate of Captain Tom whose family connection is unknown, at least by me. Despite identical spelling of the name, as far as I know, the ties are remote, probably dating back to when the Van Dusens arrived in New Amsterdam and fanned out across North America, many of them entering Canada as United Empire Loyalists.
Out gallivanting on a cruise – presumably not on a concrete ship - my 85-year-old mother isn’t around to ask what she might know if anything about Captain Tom; and my dad at 89 is beyond remembering.
As Moran relates, poor Captain Tom came to an untimely, watery end. On a Lake Ontario coal run to Oswego and Picton, Van Dusen was in charge of the three-masted wooden schooner “Oliver Mowat” when she was rammed by the 1700-ton steel steamer “Keywest” Sept. 1, 1921.
As you might imagine, the “Oliver Mowat” came out the worse in that collision, going under with three out of five crew members drowned: Van Dusen, first mate Jacob Gurley and steward Carrioe McGulgan. The “Keywest” captain and mate were later jailed for mounting a poor lookout.
Since neither boat was of concrete construction, why would Moran take an interest? Because two of the three “Oliver Mowat” masts remained protruding from the water, posing a navigation hazard and the “Concretia” was tasked to remove them.
Unlike myself and possible lineage links with Captain Tom, Moran knows for sure he’s a descendent of Captain John Dick who ruled the “Concretia” during four years she was stationed at the former Dominion Lighthouse Depot in Prescott.
That’s one reason Moran became fascinated by the Canadian Government Ship “Concretia” and by concrete hull construction in general. The other is that he admires the ingenuity Canadians demonstrated when faced with wartime ship building challenges such as a shortage of wood and steel.
She was the first reinforced concrete-hulled vessel in North America when constructed by the Montreal Shipbuilding Company in 1917 as a secret WWI project. Based in Prescott in the 1920s, she was used primarily as a lighthouse and buoy supply ship for the Department of Fisheries.
When the “Concretia” finished her government service career, her sturdy hull was sunk in Kingston as part of a wharf. Amazingly, the hull was refloated in 1979 by a consortium of investors which refitted her into the barquentine “Onaygorah”.
The first Moran book outlines concrete ship construction and details the creation of the “Concretia”. The new book focuses on her ultimate fate.
It also discusses how the federal National Research Council has developed a stronger form of concrete expected to last longer and reduce costs in applications such as hull construction.
In explaining the new book’s title, the author said sailors who crewed on concrete ships often referred to them as floating tombstones because they could sink in three minutes if their hulls were breached.
Of course, as Captain Tom and his crew members illustrated, you weren’t much better off on a breached conventional ship.
Captain Tom… I salute you and your kind!
-30-