.png)
The Undaunted/Pere Marquette 41 in Ludington
By Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief
LUDINGTON — After being gone since March 22, the Undaunted tug and Pere Marquette 41 barge came home early this morning to unload its cargo at the Rieth-Riley dock. The tug boat/barge arrived from Burns Harbor, Indiana. The tug and barge together are 492 feet in length.
The Pere Marquette 41 is the former City of Midland 41 carferry, which was built for the Pere Marquette Railway in 1941, the last carferry built by Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company of Manitowoc, Wis. It became property of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad in 1947 when the C&O acquired the PMRR.
It ended its service as a carferry in 1988, under the ownership of Ludington-based Michigan-Wisconsin Transportation, which was formed in 1983. In 1991 the 41, and its sister ships, the SS Spartan 42 and SS Badger 43, were sold to Ludington native Charles Conrad of Holland, Mich., who formed Lake Michigan Carferry.
The 41 was converted to a self-loading barge in 1997 by Lake Michigan Carferry, which formed Pere Marquette Shipping.
The 143-foot long Undaunted was built in 1943 by Gulfport Bolder to & Welding Works in Port Arthur, Texas as ATA-199 for the U.S. Navy auxiliary fleet. It was given the designation ATA-199 Undaunted. It operated with two Cummins K38_M engines.
In 1963 it was transferred to Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy and renamed Kings Pointer for use as a training vessel. Basic Marine purchased it in 1993 and renamed it Krystal K. The company kept the tug laid-up at its Escanaba yard. In 1998, Pere Marquette Shipping purchased it and renamed it Undaunted. That year, Basic Marine rebuilt the tub, widening it, and also adding a new, raised pilothouse along with a hydraconn coupler system.
In 2020, the tug/barge operation was sold to Interlake Maritime Services of Middleburg Heights, Ohio. IMS also owns Lake Michigan Carferry, which includes the SS Badger and SS Spartan.
A top down view of the unloading
The Undaunted
_____________________________
Please Support Local News
Receive daily MCP and OCP news briefings along with email news alerts for $10 a month. Your contribution will help us to continue to provide you with free local news.
Payment can be made monthly via credit card, bank account, PayPal or Venmo through recurring email invoicing. These payments can be set up for autopay each month.
To sign up, email editor@mediagroup31.com. In the subject line write: Subscription. Please supply your name, email address, mailing address, and phone number (indicate cell phone). We will not share your information with any outside sources. For more than one email address in a household, the cost is $15 per month per email address.
Alternative methods:
- We can send you an invoice for a yearly payment of $120, which you can conveniently pay online or by check. If you are interested in this method, please email editor@mediagroup31.com and we can sign you up. You can also mail a yearly check for $120 to Media Group 31, PO Box 21, Scottville, MI 49454 (please include your email address).
Payment must be made in advance prior to subscription activation.
We appreciate all our readers regardless of whether they choose to continue to access our service for free or with a monthly financial support.
_____
This story and original photography are copyrighted © 2025, all rights reserved by Media Group 31, LLC, PO Box 21, Scottville, MI 49454. No portion of this story or images may be reproduced in any way, including print or broadcast, without expressed written consent.
As the services of Media Group 31, LLC are news services, the information posted within the sites are archivable for public record and historical posterity. For this reason it is the policy and practice of this company to not delete postings. It is the editor’s discretion to update or edit a story when/if new information becomes available. This may be done by editing the posted story or posting a new “follow-up” story. Media Group 31, LLC or any of its agents have the right to make any changes to this policy. Refer to Use Policy for more information.
