Superior was Lead Tug at Launch of the Edmund Fitzgerald

A piece of Great Lakes maritime history will be a fixture in the new Glass City Riverwalk.

The tugboat Superior was the lead tug connected to the freighter S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald when it was launched in June, 1958, at River Rougue, MI. The Fitzgerald is the most famous vessel on the Great Lakes because of its tragic sinking in a Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975.

The 112-year-old Superior has been moored since last year alongside the tug Ohio in front of the SS. Col. James M. Shoonmaker museum ship at the National Museum of the Great Lakes. It will be moved to a new location near the lighthouse and Imagination Station on the downtown Toledo side of the Maumee River as part of the next phase of Riverwalk, which is scheduled to be completed next spring.

Great Lakes Towing donated the Superior to Metroparks Toledo and delivered the vessel May 20, 2024, making the 12-hour trip from Cleveland to Toledo. Metroparks partnered with the museum to preserve the tug as part of the two organizations’ efforts to interpret the vital connections between Toledo and the Great Lakes system.

The 97-foot-long, 22-foot-wide tug was built in 1912 by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company of Wisconsin. It operated under the name Richard Fitzgerald as a light tender for the Chicago River & Indiana Railroad Company and later as a fire tug in Norfolk, VA. Great Lakes Towing acquired the vessel in 1946, and the boat has been inactive since 2019.

>>Photo Gallery

A photo from the collection of Captain Paul LaMarre from the Port of Monroe shows the Superior at the launch of the Fitzgerald. Cpt. LaMarre piloted the tug Nabraska, which towed the Superior to Toledo, and also provided photos of the trip taken from a drone. Additional photos by Scott Carpenter.