- Boats, they've been around for thousands of years.

Essential for transportation, for commerce, for exploration today, primarily recreation.

Join us on a journey into what it takes to keep and maintain classic wooden boats.

We'll explore the craftsmanship, the history, and the stories from those who keep these vintage vessels on the water.

- Vintage vessels is made possible in part by -Kozmiuk wooden boats.

Custom wooden boat builder of ore sail and power boats traditionally built with old world craftsmanship.

Born from knowledge passed down through generations.

Custom built and restoration service at kozmiukwoodenboats.com The Grundy Insurance Classic Boat program was born from their family sailing tradition, offering vessels full agreed value coverage, protection from uninsured boaters, marine environmental damage, and search and rescue.

online@grundy.com Pettit Paint Captain's Varnish, available in pints, courts, gallons and aerosol.

This marine grade spray on varnish is made to protect wood from ultraviolet light drying to an amber color.

More information is available online at pettitpaint.com ACBS celebrating 50 years of vintage boating in 2025.

Chapter locations across North America can be found at acbs.org Closed captioning support is provided by Peter Henkel incorporated.

online at chris-craft-parts.com In today's episode, we visit the oldest steamship in Canada, the RMS Segwun It's in dry dock for its Transport Canada inspection.

All right here, on Vintage Vessels of the water.

- My name is John Miller.

I'm the president of Muskoka Steamships and Discovery Center, and we're here in Port Carling for our five year transport Canada inspection of the ships.

So what we do is we drain these locks and we go underneath the ships and inspect everything underneath the water lines.

So we pull the shafts and the props off the shafts, drop the rudders, inspect the hull power wash and paint the hulls, inspect the shafts, the props and the rudders.

And if there's any work to be done, we do that.

We actually are ordering, we've ordered strut bearings this year, so I'm just on my way to pick them up.

We're gonna put them back in to the struts and then assemble everything tomorrow morning.

So we've been here, I believe, almost two weeks now.

We hope to be wrapped up in the next couple of days.

And then we're going to switch out Segwun for our sister ship, which is Winona.

She's just docked on the Lake Rosseau side of the locks right now.

And we'll be able to start Winona hopefully by Saturday.

The RMS Segwun was built in 1887 for our company.

Our company began in 1866 in Gravenhurst.

We had 22 steam ships sail for our company up to 14 at one time at one point back in the twenties and thirties.

But Segund is the last remaining steam ship from that company.

The RMS stands for Royal Mail Ship.

She's one of the, she is the oldest royal mail ship in the world, which means that we can still carry mail.

That was part of her, part of her job as a, as a working vessel back in over a hundred years ago.

She would carry mail, freight, groceries, whatever needed to be, to be carried to various ports on the three lakes.

And really that's how tourism opened up in Muskoka as well.

People would come up on the steam train to Gravenhurst, they would board Segwun or another ship and go to various points of points of call in the lakes Winona was launched in 2002.

We started building her around year 2000, so she's relatively new.

She looks like a turn of the century steamer, but she's got all modern amenities such as air conditioning, an elevator for all access for passengers.

She's got caterpillar engines, so she's powered by diesel and, and she's all steel as opposed to Segwun behind me, which is wood from the water line up.

So, so together they complimented each other quite nicely.

We do have a third vessel that we are currently completing.

It's a 1915 steam private yacht.

We've removed the steam engine from her and we are electrifying her.

So her name is Wanda three.

She's a 94 foot yacht and she'll be quite something in the summer of 2024 once we relaunch her.

- As soon as you've got those things in and they're ready to go.

So that's it's, they have to expand and then they do their whatever.

I will put both of those shafts in.

Hi, I'm the chief engineer on the Segwun I was here 42 years ago and I was one of the first chief engineers on the Segwun and I've come back to help the Segwun go for the next 40 or 50 years.

Bottom line is the Segwun is a steam ship a built in 1887.

The hull was original and it is the original hull, although it was new steel, was put on it in the seventies.

She was restored in between about 1973 and 1981, and she's been sailing on Lake Muskoka ever since.

We are currently in dry dock.

We have to do that every five years.

And in this case, because of Covid, it's been a little longer.

Anyway, essentially what you need to do in a dry dock is do the maintenance on the parts of the ship underwater.

In other words, the shafts, the propellers, the rudders that you wouldn't have access to in normal situations at a dock.

We are currently in the locks at Port Carling.

This is the only place we can actually do it.

We basically seal the ends of both the locks and we drain them and we work in the conditions that you'll see down below.

The locks don't perfectly seal, so there's always some water leaking and we have to pump that out so that we can work during the, the, this time.

We also have the regulators come, whether it's Transport Canada or, or currently arena, which is a classification society come and inspect all the equipment that we take off to make sure that it's up to standards and, and make sure that they were, we're following the Canadian regulations.

So this is Edwin's original anchor from 1887.

It's a type that you will not see anymore, but it is, it's original and you can see the chain that goes over the side.

Unfortunately, the reality here is, is that again, it, it's very different from modern practice, which means you actually have to drop the, the, the anchor here, that's the smo and basically she's got the same thing going to an anchor that would be aboard if we ever have to pick it up.

This is the capstone and you have actual, they go into here and you turn it so that you can lift that off the bottom.

As far as I know, we've never actually dropped the anchor.

It is rather rocky and hopefully we'd never put ourselves in a position that we do have to anchor.

So this is the, the top of the boiler.

The boiler is a coal fired Scotch Marine boiler.

It was built in St. Catherine's in 1923.

So it's one of the younger things on this boat.

It's only a hundred years old.

In here.

We have the safety valve, which is the most important things on, on the, the boiler.

They relieve pressure if it's an over pressure situation.

So it never has a situation where it would ever blow up from pressure.

Anyway, it should.

Now you're in the fire hole of the seg.

This is the scotch Marine boiler.

You have coal in the coal bunker here and that we carry about 16 tons of coal.

Some of that is ballast, but normally we shovel coal into the firebox here.

Firebox is a long tube and you can see the end of the, there is a, a fire in there and what it does is it goes the air.

We've got natural draft and you can see if you go right up here, you can see the top of the funnel and it has natural draft one.

If you see on, on old steamships, they always have a very tall stack and funnel.

And that is to draw the air, which allows the, the, the boiler to work.

'cause it requires the air to come up and out.

The people will see, see smoke because she's a a coal burner.

But that's actually the draft that causes the, the, the boiler to actually work.

The key, the key to the the success of, of the segwin is that when we fire the boiler, it usually takes about four days and we, it's a very, it's just a very large amount of water.

We very, very gradually keep it because of the, we want to prevent thermal shock on the boiler.

And, but the success of it is that we do that and say the end of June, it comes up, it takes us about four days and we don't let this boiler cool down until we, at the end of the season, which would be normally about the end of, of middle to end of September.

Then it would take a number of days to, to cool down and it just allows a well a hundred year old boiler to, to continue to be relatively well, not relatively to keep it safe.

And, and that's definitely been the, the success of, of the, the boiler here.

Right.

One thing you also see here, and I'm sorry it's, it's a little dirty because we take things apart.

You've got a c-section there, which is where the water comes in from outside the, the hull.

And that provides water for, well, the boiler for all the various systems on board.

So one of the, the needs for a boiler is to make sure that you always have the ability to put water in the boiler because if you didn't have water, all the steel would literally melt.

So these are the main engines.

Segund was built in 1887.

This is what she looked like.

She was a paddle steamer and there was just a single engine that went up, up and down that it went up and down here.

And that in turn was connected via this cross beam to another connecting rod, which in turn created a crank action on a prop or on a paddle wheeler.

And she was a paddle wheeler until the twenties that cross beam cracked and they couldn't get a, a replacement for it.

She sat engraving hers for a couple of years.

They didn't know whether they were gonna scrap it or not, but they decided that the economics were good.

So they, they rebuilt her and they rebuilt her as a propeller steamer.

So, and here are the engines that they use to, to drive those propellers.

They're both used.

Doty engineering works in, in Godrich, the captain, there is no bridge control here on, on this engine or these engines.

It basically is, is exactly as it was in the 18 hundreds and the 19 hundreds.

You have a situation where the captain there, there'll be a, a telegraph up on the bridge.

He asks what he would like to do in terms of full half slow stop.

He rings it, you can hear it both there, there are little bells in here and it, it works on the inner, the one from the wheelhouse, it's a chain and it goes into the inner sphere.

So it, it will say what is there, the engineer in turn will match that and then he will do what is required on the, between the throttle and the valve.

So this is the reverse gear.

So that's ahead and that's a stern and between throwing the, the links and the, and opening the throttles, and these are the two throttle handles.

The ship will go either a stern or or ahead.

Okay, you're now into the lower engine room and the steam exhaust from the engines, it goes into the air pump.

Over here you can see the condenser.

So this is the steam that is coming from the engines, goes through a feed water heater, which is right here and then is condensed here with water that's coming through this.

And I'll show you the, the pipe on the other side comes through the gen, the condenser and is then by the action of this steam lever going up and down.

It essentially is pumped over the side.

And that valve that you saw up above that is the valve that, that actually allows that to do that.

From a steam engine point of view, again, as I showed you up top, there's a slide valve.

The slide valve is based on the position of the valve gear, which is driven by an eccentric.

And the person that that figured this out in 19 or 1829 was a gentleman called Robert Stevenson, and that is called Stevenson Link Val Gere.

And well, 150 years later it's still around.

There are, there are ships out there that are literally a hundred years later they were still using that valve gear.

It's very, very robust and and simple.

That's the key.

In this case, you have two pistons driving the cranks and there's the cranks on the bottom and there's your, your the top of your cylinder.

And essentially this creates a motion that turns the, the crank and that drives the propeller shaft.

And in turn that drives the propellers that drives the ship out of the water.

These are, are sort of taken apart, but these are our two feed pumps.

They, again, they are, well, we don't know how old they are, but basically the, the idea is that the steam, these are duplex pumps and the idea is that no matter where you are in the position that you will be able to start those pumps.

And, and so they're quite reliable.

But basically steam comes in here, series of valves create pressure for that.

That in turn brings in water from the, the, the lake.

It comes into the bottom through a series of valves.

And these just lift, but it's a one way trip.

So as the water comes in, it can lift, it'll lift the, but it can't go anywhere and the piston pushes it out.

And so by the time it goes into the, the boiler for, it's about five PSI just, just over the, the boiler pressure, the boiler, the maximum boiler pressure on right now we, we have it set at 140 PSI, it was originally 160, but just because of our old age, we, we decreased a little bit.

But, so what this will do is that pump will put out just over whatever the boiler pressure is to put the water in the boiler.

What you're seeing here is the packing for the stern tube, and that is the stern tube here.

So this is where the bearing is for that supports the propeller shaft going out of the, the hull.

So this comes in it, it creates pressure on that packing and the, it is designed to have a little bit of drip, but that's all.

So, and, and we, we do that by the packing.

The tank here is for the, the forward one is for engine oil.

So steam engines need lubrication for their bearings, but unique for steam engines is the fact that because of the steam there is condensation and or there's water, hot water and you don't want a situation where the oil itself is just pushed away by the water.

You actually need a kind of oil that that absorbs the, the, the, or the, the steam is, is, is is a positive thing in, in the oil these days, it's very hard to get, but it's what we use is rock drilling oil that has been actually designed off the steam stuff.

That's the modern equivalent.

The other type of oil is much heavier and that's what we use in the various valves and in the steam side of of things, it's, it's, it's heavy.

It's, it's essentially goes in by drops.

Probably the thing that is, is most useful is the fact that that's our, well that's the tiller for the steering gear steering The steering gear itself you'll see on, on the outside.

But basically we've removed it all so that every five years we can make sure that the steering gear and, and the, the, the steel shafting for it is in good shape.

So we've taken it apart.

Here is the, this is our bilge pump or emergency build pump.

And these are the actual, if you had a cow or a horse, that's what you can tie them to.

So what what he's doing is he's grinding off the rough from areas where we're on the, the chip is well, well over a hundred years old.

But the reality is from the actual point of the hull, much of the plating, if not all of the plating was done, replaced and re riveted in the, in the seventies by calling with shipyard.

Things have changed over the years in terms of the quality of water and I'm not really sure why ship has actually not been out of the water because of covid in on a longer usual and what we saw a full pile of rustles.

Not sure that's a function of bacteria.

I'm not sure what what it's, but I frankly have never seen it on a ship in the great, I was gonna say the great legs, but in the fresh water.

And anyway, so what what we're doing is, is grinding it off make, making sure that because the hull is only so thick and some of these are, are quite deep, so we're making sure that we're rewilding or at least repairing the areas that we're finding Here.

You can see a good example of how, how those pits are, are involved in all This large piece of steel is the rudder and that's what allows the ship to go side to side.

What we're doing here is we're looking at the, the bearing at the, the top and we'll be machining that, just making sure that things are good for the next five years.

And this is the pintle bearing at the bottom.

And if you'll notice it's worn and it's worn like this, which is sort of unusual anyway, the intention there is to sleeve that so that it becomes perfectly perpendicular so that there's no chance that you have a problem with, with the rudder, as I said, there's no power on the rudder.

It's strictly a, a hydraulic force.

So if that ever caught, it'd be very difficult to move.

As you can see, we have two shafts that are out.

They're staying the steel, those are both relatively new.

There are strut bearings here.

If you come back tomorrow or the next day, there'll be new strut bearings in there.

The idea is that the, the shaft is supported right from the engine through the strut bearing.

And then the, the propeller blades are just on the other side of that.

When we're fitted two brass propellers, they're, they're four bladed.

You'll notice that the, the, the way they are pitched, they are very aggressive.

So there's a lot of thrust goes through those propellers much, much more so that if you saw the propellers on the Wanda, they are much closer to, shall we say, being gentle and with the water.

These are very aggressive and part of the issue here is the amount of cavitation that that is happening on the hole.

You can see right there, there there'll be a bronze bushing goes in here and they'll be packing and cleaning up of that bushing up there so that the, this is where the rudder tip Basically the, the locks themselves are not designed to do what we're doing.

So, but the locks have to have some way of being repaired if the lock gates themselves fail.

So on either side of the locks, there is a series of, well, there are indents into the steel or into the concrete that allow steel beams to be placed.

And the idea is that those steel beams and then we can see them outside will prevent water coming in.

Unfortunately, it's not perfect and so you need big pumps to, to make sure that, to keep the water out.

But what happens is before the ship comes in, all these beams along the bottom here are pre-positioned and you can see there's actual places on the bottom so that they, they always can go into the, the same spot and that's done by divers and a crane.

So once she's in and she comes in and, and we just do it by hand and bring her in, the divers then have to come in and put the blocks in in regards to her not, you know, she'll float, but she'll fall over if you don't have those things in.

So those, those are hammered in The biggest issue isn't putting her in that that can happen.

I mean they, they pump her out in about a couple hours, but the biggest issue is ensuring that she's not gonna come over.

But overall the biggest issue is making sure that the water is going to stay out.

They've got big hydraulic pumps and, and for the first couple of days they're pretty wet down there.

They've done it before and, and it's actually using the best example of, of experience and, and you know, this was not designed as a dry dock, so you, you use the steel beams to, to provide what a, a normal dry dock would be in terms of reinforcement and, and the ability to put a, a big ship on top of it.

- Vintage vessels is made possible in part by -Kozmiuk wooden boats.

Custom wooden boat builder of ore sail and power boats traditionally built with old world craftsmanship.

Born from knowledge passed down through generations.

Custom built and restoration service at kozmiukwoodenboats.com The Grundy Insurance Classic Boat program was born from their family sailing tradition, offering vessels full agreed value coverage, protection from uninsured boaters, marine environmental damage, and search and rescue.

online@grundy.com Pettit Paint Captain's Varnish, available in pints, courts, gallons and aerosol.

This marine grade spray on varnish is made to protect wood from ultraviolet light drying to an amber color.

More information is available online at pettitpaint.com ACBS celebrating 50 years of vintage boating in 2025.

Chapter locations across North America can be found at acbs.org Closed captioning support is provided by Peter Henkel incorporated.

online at chris-craft-parts.com