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No longer a guilty pleasure: more environmentally friendly Badger sets sail in Ludington

Tom Carr
The view from the pilothouse as the Badger sets sail.

The largest coal-fired passenger ship still operating in the United States is the S.S. Badger in Lake Michigan. It’s a beloved 1950s car ferry that sails between Ludington and Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

For years it was the subject of an environmental controversy because it was polluting the lake.

This year, that’s changed.

A mid-century experience

Captain Jeff Curtis tells the city of Ludington the Badger is leaving the port with a blast of the horn. He then gives orders to the boiler room crew with a bell and talks to the helmsman at the wheel. The bell is connected to a communication device called a Chadburn.

Curtis says the Badger, which has been sailing since 1953, is the only ship on the Great Lakes that still uses one.

“We are still working as if we were in mid-century here, so we have engine-order telegraphs to communicate our needs to the engineers down in the engine room,” Captain Curtis says.

Credit Tom Carr
Captain Jeff Curtis (left).

  The pilothouse has a lot more brass and fewer computers than more modern ships, and it hearkens back to when seven railroad car ferries operated out of Ludington.

Nostalgia is part of the lure for former Michigander Bryce Goddard of Cleveland, Tennessee. She braved a chilly, but sunny morning to sit out on the deck and watch the Michigan shoreline fade away.

“I keep waiting for this shoreline to disappear, but it just lasts forever, which I’m glad of,” she says, bundled up and sitting in a deck chair. “That’s my last view of Michigan for a long time, probably, but . . . it’s gorgeous.”

Staying entertained onboard

Inside, passengers play bingo, watch a movie or TV, take a nap, read a book, or use the wi-fi. The crowd is kind of thin on this trip. But when schools let out, the arcade and play room will be full.

David Flaspohler of Hancock likes the smell of the ship.

“I think it’s the coal boilers or something,” he says. “There’s a certain smell this ship has. Must be something about the mechanism of the ship or the lubricants they use in these old boats.”

This trip almost wasn’t possible

After decades of letting the Badger dump coal ash straight into the lake, the Environmental Protection Agency issued an ultimatum: Clean up your act or be grounded for good.

Finally, this off-season, the boat’s owner, Lake Michigan Carferry, installed a $2 million solution. It’s a set of blue pipes that convey coal ash from the boiler room into metal bins. It collects a pickup-truck bed’s worth of ash each trip, or 500 tons per year. Once a week, the ash gets trucked to Charlevoix for use in cement products.

Badger engineer Chuck Cart helped squeeze the system between the car lanes.

“We don’t have a lot of space here, so we needed to design a bin that would fit in the space that we weren’t using to haul cars and trucks,” Cart says.

Enjoying the ride

The boat trip is only three to five hours shorter than a drive around the lake, and there are faster ferries crossing the lake.

But that’s not the point, says Mary Lou Deutsch of Traverse City.

“Life isn’t for going fast,” Deutsch says. “Life is for enjoying the ride, and this has been delightful.”

The ship drops anchor in Manitowoc and passengers prepare to disembark, looking more rested than if they’d driven around the lake.

And now that the Badger runs a bit greener, the experience of a leisurely ride across Lake Michigan is no longer a guilty pleasure.