Joseph S. Young

Summary

The Joseph S. Young was a Great Lakes self-unloading freighter that delivered crushed limestone to Beaver Island on August 10, 1976, for the new Beaver Island Township Airport runway. The Beaver Beacon’s “King Sized Visitor” news item describes her as a 579-foot Boland self-unloading freighter that entered Saint James Harbor at 10 a.m., worked a cargo boom at the Beaver Island Ferry Dock, and had unloaded 8,500 tons of stone (about three-quarters of her capacity) by 4 p.m. A letter printed in the same issue independently recalls the same Tuesday docking but gives her length as 476 feet and describes the cargo as gravel rather than crushed limestone; the two figures are not reconciled here.

History

On the morning of Tuesday, August 10, 1976, during the island’s annual Homecoming week, the Joseph S. Young entered Saint James Harbor and worked into the Beaver Island Ferry Dock, swinging out a cargo boom the Beacon put at about 50 feet above the dock. By 4 p.m. she had discharged 8,500 tons of crushed limestone, reported as roughly 36,000 cubic yards and about three-quarters of her total capacity, carried from Port Inland, about 30 miles north of the island. The stone was intended for the new runway then under construction at the Township Airport, with the surplus earmarked for island road improvements.

The same August issue’s “Mail Bag” column, written by a summer visitor, Violet McCafferty Custer, recalling that week’s Homecoming gathering, separately describes “the 476’ ship that so beautifully maneuvered and finally docked to unload her cargo of gravel on Tuesday” (the same day of the week the news item gives for the Young’s visit) and notes that her husband, a retired Great Lakes captain, was especially interested because the ship resembled one he had commanded. Read together, the two accounts describe what is almost certainly the same vessel and visit, with independently reported and unreconciled figures for her length and for the layman’s name given to her cargo.

Significance

The Young’s visit supplied construction material for the Beaver Island Township Airport runway project and was notable enough on the island to draw both a dedicated Beacon news item and a passing mention in a visitor’s personal letter in the same issue — a rare instance in the Beacon’s coverage of an ordinary bulk-freight call being remembered as a local spectacle.

Evidence and limits

No source held here supplies the Joseph S. Young’s official number, gross tonnage, builder, hull material, home port, or beam. Her length is contested between the two accounts printed in the same August 1976 issue: 579 feet in the “King Sized Visitor” news item and 476 feet in the “Mail Bag” letter; this article does not adopt either figure as authoritative. “Boland,” given as the operating company in the news item, is not otherwise verified here, though the Beacon separately records an islander, John Cull, serving in 1955 aboard a different Boland Line vessel, the John J. Boland; no source held here connects that report to the Joseph S. Young. No source establishes the Young’s later movements, ownership history, or ultimate fate.

Sources

See the sources block above.

Added 3 August 2026 · revised 4 August 2026. Recent changes