Keewatin (ship)
 The Keewatin as a museum in Port McNicoll, July 2012
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The Keewatin is a passenger ship that entered service in 1908 for the Canadian shipping company Canadian Pacific Steamships . The ship remained in service until 1965 and was then used as a museum ship in Michigan before returning to Canada in 2012, where it can be viewed ever since. The Keewatin is the last existing liner passenger ship of the so-called Edwardian era .
history
The Keewatin was built at Fairfield Shipbuilders in Govan and launched on July 6, 1907. On September 14, 1907, it was taken over by the Canadian shipping company Canadian Pacific Steamships. However, due to the long ferry journey from Scotland to Montreal , the ship was not put into service until October 7, 1908 on the route to Owen Sound .
In 1912 the Keewatin switched to Port McNicoll after the port there had become a kind of hub for passenger shipping on the Great Lakes .
Since the 1930s, the number of passengers on ships on the Great Lakes has decreased. The accident on the Noronic in September 1949 reinforced this trend. The Keewatin was one of the last ships of its kind still in service and was not retired until November 29, 1965 after 47 years of service on the Great Lakes.
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After almost two years lay-in , the ship was acquired by a Michigan-based businessman for 37,000 US dollars in January 1967 and towed to the small town of Douglas in June , where it opened as a museum ship after a renovation in 1968.
The Keewatin spent more than forty years in Douglas before it was sold to a Canadian investor in August 2011th On May 31, 2012, the ship was brought out of Douglas port to be prepared outside of town for the towing voyage to Canada. On June 4, the Keewatin made a stopover in Mackinaw City before reaching its destination Port McNicoll on June 23. The arrival of the ship was celebrated with a festival in the port of the small town. The Keewatin , now a listed building, has been used as a museum ship since then and is the last existing liner passenger ship of the Edwardian era, to which the Mauretania , Olympic and Titanic belonged , among others .
Sister ship
Like the Keewatin , the structurally identical sister ship Assiniboia was one of the last active liner passenger ships on the Great Lakes and should also be converted into a museum ship after its decommissioning in 1965, but burned out completely in 1971 and was then scrapped.