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service between Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit.
The SOUTH AMERICAN was 330 feet long with a 47-foot beam. She carried 750 passengers and had a crew of over 200. The photographs included here give a good idea of her general layout. Eight times around the main deck was a mile. The topmost deck, which was immediately aft of the bridge and forward of the funnels, was the sundeck, fairly ample and extremely popular. There was a cozy little bar called the Binnacle as well as a larger drinking establishment, I think, called the Club Georgian. We had two cabins, each with an upper and lower bunk. Willie and Bab had one and Rog and I the other. The engine room was immaculate, painted cream with nickel trim. The vertical, quadruple-expansion engine turned the screw at 125 rpm, which produced 16 mph. She was an oil burner and very clean. I was impressed to hear that when we'd stopped at Sarnia one morning, we'd taken on 50,000 gallons of fuel oil. I don't know how seaworthy she really was because we never had any weather that would have been a challenge to a 26-foot cruiser, nor on two subsequent trips on the SOUTH AMERICAN was the weather ever rough. For navigation, however, she was equipped with magnetic, gyroscopic and radio compasses. Captain Anderson was in his 70s, a man of few words, but with the reputation of being an excellent skipper.

The morning of July 4th, a Saturday, we drove up to Buffalo in the Plymouth, which we left in a downtown garage, and in due course boarded the SOUTH AMERICAN, which sailed in the early afternoon. However, being docked in a narrow channel where a big, red freighter had squeezed by us, our voyage had seemed to start right then as we stood on deck and drank in the whole nautical scene. Soon a pair of green-red-and-white tugs, spick and span, maneuvered us out into the channel and then left us on our own. Shortly we were out in Buffalo Harbor and headed for the open waters of the lake. It was a magnificent day. The long afternoon cruise up Lake Erie was beautiful, with the little wave crests flashing like millions of diamonds in the sun. The western horizon was outlined by a band of glowing white haze. The south shore was a vista of dim hills that were almost part of the sky. The cool clean breeze slapped around our ears as we pushed on up the lake, our bow churning white wash along our white plates. A red-and-white tug steamed by with four square, black barges strung out far behind it like a seagoing freight train. A red ore carrier passed us headed east, long and deep in the water except for the towering bow and stern. After the sunset, when the great egg-shaped ball of fire submerged into the western waters of the lake, the shore lights made a long, thin pattern across the southern sky. Occasionally the sky would be lighted briefly by Fourth of July fireworks bursting in multi-colored displays. After dark, there were faint suggestions of white light fleeting across the distant sky -- searchlights at

Transcription Notes:
Reviewed - typo fixed