Canadian Pacific Railway's Great Lakes steamship S.S. Keewatin - Date unknown Darren Calabrese.

16 June 2012

Aboard the 105-Year-Old Steamship S.S. Keewatin

Saugatuck Michigan USA - I don't believe in ghosts, at least that's what I kept saying to myself last Tuesday night. I was sleeping in a dilapidated passenger's cabin on the promenade deck of a 105-year-old Canadian Pacific Railway's Great Lakes steamship called the S.S. Keewatin.
 
Apparently only a handful of people have ever stayed the night on the weathered Keewatin in nearly half a century and I found out why. Although my imagination got the best of me for the first half an hour spent zipped-up in my sleeping bag in the pitch dark waiting for ghosts, reason soon took over and I wasn't as rattled by the groans and creaks heard throughout the ship. The size of the cabins and the stink of 50 years of inactivity, however, were at the forefront of my mind the entire night. I was lucky if I got three hours of sleep.
 
Now, how, and why, did I find myself on the ship? Well, I'll share the terse and succinct e-mail from reporter and travel mate Joe O'Connor that I received just days before leaving. The e-mail read, "Flying to the Soo, hopping down to the States (bring your passport!!) to hook up with a grand old Great Lakes Steamship (last of its kind) that's being repatriated to Canada after umpteen years... Moored. Photos. Fun. Bring a sleeping bag."
 
That's all I needed to know!
 
So, for a bit more background, the SS Keewatin is a historic passenger liner that is 5 years older than the Titanic and was built in Scotland in 1905 for the Canadian Pacific Railway. She was one in a fleet of five ships designed specifically to connect Eastern Canada with Western Canada by using the Great Lakes.
 
It's a beautiful ship that is pretty rough around the edges, but continues to hold incredible beauty. I spent two days, from sunrise to sunset, poking around every inch of the ship, imaging how lively the ships decks must have been. It sounds cliche, but time really seems to have stood still in the Keewatin's halls and salons. The great staircase, the ornate carpets, and the engine room are historical marvels preserved in time.
 
While trying to decide how to tell the story of the Keewatin, I just wandered while shooting pictures of the still and peaceful scenes throughout the ship. Eventually, it began to feel as if a passenger, employee, or officer, had just recently left each room. As if someone had left the sheets unmade in the bunk, or a passenger had only moments ago left a chair on the main deck as the sun shone through a porthole. I felt that was going to be how best to tell her story, simple and quiet portraits of the things still living within the Keewatin.
 
I hope, when looking at the photos, you can imagine the decks as alive as they were when she sailed up and down the Great Lakes over a century ago.
 
Darren Calabrese.