Great Lakes passenger steamer, North West

After the 1902 refit

The North West was a steel hull, twin screw passenger steamer launched in 1894 in Cleveland for the Northern Steamship Lines, the shipping subsidiary of the Great Northern Railway. 

It was moved to the company shipyard in Buffalo, New York for completion, the interior luxuriously done in mahogany and brass for the enjoyment of the 350 presumably well-off passengers on board travelling on the upper Great Lakes from Buffalo to Duluth, Minnesota with stops in Detroit and Chicago.

  The ship was capable of a sustained 20 mph, powered by a pair of quadruple expansion steam engines which required 28 boilers burning eight tons of coal per hour to supply steam. The ship cost about $650,000 to construct ($20 million today) and feeding those boilers probably cost too much for profitability.  In 1902, it went in for a major refit, the 28 boilers were replaced with 10 more efficient ones and as a result, one of the three stacks was removed. 

As orginally built, 
from WNYhistory

   It was not a lucky boat, in 1911 it caught fire at the Buffalo pier and sank. In 1918, it was sold, raised and cut in two for transport through the Welland canal- headed for a major refit at Quebec City. While the two halves were being towed down Lake Ontario, the forward portion sank and was lost. In Quebec the ship was fitted with a new bow section, converted to a freighter and renamed the Maplecourt. Canada Steamship Lines operated the ship till 1927 when it ran aground in Georgian Bay, (which indicates it was either built shorter than before or cut in two again to get back up through the Welland canal, I can't find that info.)  The stranded boat was sold to Sin-Mac Lines Ltd. of Montreal, salvaged and put back in service.. Ten years later, it was bought by the United Towing & Salvage Co. Ltd. of Port Arthur, Ontario, to be converted for ocean service. Getting the boat out of the Great Lakes and out on the Atlantic in 1940 required her to be cut in half and stitched back together again. The end of the ship (and its crew) came a year later, when it was torpedoed off Ireland.

As Maplecourt.
Uboat.net