Chemical/Oil Tanker ROSSI A. DESGAGNÉS

The ROSSI A. DESGAGNÉS is the last of four custom designed tankers built in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018 and named after Mario Rossi who worked for Groupe Desgagnés for 15 years and played a major role in the design and supervision of these newbuilds. 

ROSSI A. DESGAGNÉS has a cargo capacity of 17,471 cbm in 15 tanks. 

Peekaboo, I see you Montreal bound ROSSI A. DESGAGNÉS as the Groupe Desgagnés tanker slowly approached Iroquois Lock on January 3, 2025, my last downbound catch for the 2024-25 St. Lawrence Seaway shipping season. Whether it's one of their heavy lift general cargo vessels like those which you may have seen on the CBC's hit show High Arctic Haulers, or their various oil and chemical tankers, the Groupe Desgagnés boats always look immaculate and pretty snazzy in their navy blue hull and with a yellow stripe at the bow. 

While doing my research of the 4432'11'  ROSSI A. DESGAGNÉS and background of the Quebec City based shipping company's family name, I found an interesting articles online call The Desgagnés: Two Centuries of Schooners by the Musée maritime de Charlevoix. I will share you the link later but meanwhile the overview starts out by saying, 

"There is salt water running in the veins of the Desgagnés family. Moored in the region of Charlevoix, Quebec for nearly 275 years, their story is intimately linked to the development of the navigation of this country. Over the years the Desgagnés have built and piloted many wooden sail-powered and later motor engine-powered ships as they became major witnesses and actors of the golden age of coasting (1860–1960). Their ships have visited and provisioned remote territories, each more distant than the last.  By adding Ungava Bay, Hudson Bay and Baffin Island to their already long list of destinations, they truly made North America their kingdom". 

ROSSI A. DESGAGNÉS's dual fuel Wartsila propulsion engines allows her to use LNG, marine diesel and heavy fuel oil.

It's a really interesting story about the seafaring Desgagnés descendants first talking about Jacques Desgagnés who landed in Quebec City in August of 1685 from Normandy, France and becoming a voyageur supplying posts that traded with indigenous communities up the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers and the Great Lakes. Then there's Zephrin Desgagnés who built the first family owned "goélette or schooner" named MARY-ANN in 1864 to transport and sell surplus vegetables from his farm  to Quebec City and then return with supplies for his home in Les Étoulement and then later along the Sagueney River region as well. Later on, not only does Maurice Desgagnés in his wooden schooner MARIE VIGILANTE transport pulpwood and general cargo to the outports along the St. Lawrence River and Gulf but he expands the trading area to the Magellans, Newfoundland and St. Pierre & Miquelon. With new opportunities came along over the years, so did the transitions from sail to motorized wooden schooners, to steel hulled coasters, their own built at Davie Shipyard and others purchased from the British Admiralty, Department of Transport and the Hudson's Bay Company. 

A leading character in High Arctic Haulers, general cargo vessel 

TAÏGA DESGAGNÉS loading soybeans destined for the Netherlands 

at the Port of Johnstown on November 17, 2023 

More durable, and able to handle larger payloads, the small Desgagnés steel coasters were kept busy serving the developing Québec's North Shore and in the summer of 1966, fourth generation Desgagnés cousins, Captain Yvan, first mate Marcellin, and chief engineer Zélanda, embarked in the shallow-draft coaster L'AIGLE D'OCÉAN to transport food and everyday products to six remote villages in North Quebec and Hudson Bay. Little did they know that the annual tradition of hauling goods, and now cars and even fire trucks and ambulances would be a significant components of current day's Groupe Desgagnés's success 60 years later and even having a CBC multi-episode documentary produced and viewed all over in acknowledgment of their efforts and experiences called High Arctic Haulers.   

    

The enclosed forecastle protects equipment and crews from harsh seas
and conditions while especially operating on the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The article was quite intriguing and here's a link to it as promised: https://www.communitystories.ca/v2/desgagnes-deux-siecles-goelettes_two-centuries-under-sail/ but what I couldn't find in the fairly detailed overview, was why there was a yellow stripe near the bow of all of their ships and company flag? 

To find an answer to this mystery, I then looked through all of my Great Lakes shipping journals written by the late Skip Gillham and though there were several photos of past Desgagnés boats showing the stripe, there was no explanation that I could find. So next, like they did on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire", it was time to contact a friend, the "Mr. Know-It-All" of ship-watching, Ron Beaupre, who recalled seeing the stripe painted on their ships in the early 1970's but didn't know the meaning behind it. According to the AI at Google, the distinctive yellow stripe on the bow of Groupe Desgagnés ships is a key part of the company's branding and livery. Yup, that I knew and thought my mystery was to be lost in limbo for ever, until Ron linked me with a gentleman named Hubert Desgagnés, who according the AI at Google, Hubert Desgagnés is a key figure in the preservation of Québec's maritime heritage and an actual descendant of the famous Desgagnés family of mariners. Thank you Ron and merci beaucoup Monsieur Desgagnés for this wonderful explanation.... 

...according to Hubert, it was Yvan Desgagnés, the former Captain and then Chief Executive Officer of the newly formed Groupe Desgagnés who decided to use the Delta flag of the International Code of Signals as a starting point to create a unique look for their current and future fleets. Since Desgagnés starts with the letter "D", the flag's blue and yellow colours would be used. Back then, their small coastal carriers, AIGLE D'OCÉAN and AIGLE MARIN both had a blue funnel with a golden eagle on them which Yvan had bought during a trip to the United States. But if the other boats were to be equipped with an eagle as well, this decoration was to be quite expensive, so Yvan chose to keep the blue funnels with a yellow diagonal line to represent the letter "D". This was fairly easy graphic to execute. 

For the "bow line", the starting point was still the Delta flag but Yvan wanted to show other companies that sailed on the St. Lawrence River that Groupe Desgagnés would be "Number ONE". So the yellow bar met "the first". The U.S. Coast Guard was already using a diagonal line and Yvan thought it was nicer than a vertical line. So by the mid 1970's Groupe Desgagnés vessels began displaying a diagonal yellow stripe on their dark navy blue funnels and blue hulled bow. In the photo to the left, the upbound 355' MÉLISSA DESGAGNÉS had the yellow stripe at the bow and on her stack when she passed beneath the Larocque Lift Bridge near Valleyfield when I caught her on September 2, 2012.

152' steel coaster AIGLE MARIN in her proud Groupe Desgagnés blue hull and yellow stripe livery here motoring upbound on the Welland Canal below Lock 3 in St. Catharines in September 1975 in this photo by the late Jack Heintz, courtesy of www.shiphotos.com . 

The double-skin hull and hold ROSSI A. DESGAGNÉS has a polar ice-class 7 rating making her capable of navigating in ice-laden waters. 

Eventually the yellow stripe on the funnels was replaced with a replica of the Groupe Desgagnés flag which also shows a diagonal yellow stripe which we can see in ROSSI A. DESGAGNÉS blue funnel above. 

Showing their stripes, medium endurance multi-task vessel CCGS SAMUAL RISLEY and Bay-class icebreaking tug USCGC BRISTOL BAY (WTGB 201) operate as one making tracks for commercial shipping on the ice-clogged St. Clair River in this great photo by Stark Raving Robert on February 7, 2021.

Shot 📷 from the double-decker into town. Can't stay on the beach⛱ all the time, eh

I can appreciate Yvan Desgagnés  mentioning how he liked the U.S. Coast Guard's diagonal line or red, white and blue stripes near the bow of their cutters. The Canadian Coast Guard did the same in 1975 adding a wide white stripe or slash more amidships over their red hulled vessels. In fact, many coast guards worldwide show their colours near the bow like Cuba's blue, white and red stripes in these two patrol boats I photographed at Varadero in January 2014. Duluth-based Great Lakes Fleet boats also shows off black and silver stripes which matches the colours on their stacks which dates back to previous owners, the Pittsburg Steamship Company and U.S. Steel. 

Though I did catch the  GREAT REPUBLIC with her Great Lakes Fleet black and silver slashes at the bow on the St. Clair River in September 2016 from the my porch at the Blue Resort, the 634'10' river-class self unloader was bound for Quebec City laden with iron ore pellets when I caught her passing Mariatown on June 1, 2022.

The 367.5' hot asphalt tanker IVER BRIGHT was bound for Oswego when
I caught her motoring by Prescott, Ontario on July 18, 2023. 

No, it's not a stripe or slash near the bow of the Iver Ships high-heat tanker  IVER BRIGHT , but instead a huge white "V" to acknowledge their Dutch parent-company Vroon BV which operates and manages approximately 140 deep-sea vessels capable carrying livestock, dry bulk cargo, containers, automobiles, product tankers, high-heat tankers and off-shore support vessels, and they all display the huge "V". With her red hull and operating year-round on the Great Lakes, it's no surprise IVER BRIGHT is often mistaken as a Canadian Coast Guard vessel.  

KUDOS 👏, to Captain Yvan Desgagnés, a master at commanding a ship 🚢 and a pretty 🆒 brand marketing guy too. Logos, emblems and livery, the identity and image you want people or your target audience to think about, and remember. For Groupe Desgagnés it's a yellow stripe on blue, a prowling black bear on blue and red for Algoma Central, a former white stallion to a green and blue M for McNeil Marine. Can't forget the red hull Fednav's and on the stack a partially circled  F 'n 🍁 (Oops 🙊, that didn't sound good), or maybe it's a bold CANADA STEAMSHIP LINES on a rusty red hull or is a hull that's rusted red 😳 (Hard to tell these day).  

But one thing for certain, when we saw a classic wheelhouse forward  straightdecker or self unloader coming along pushing a white wake, with her battleship grey hull, white trim separated with a red line forward and astern with an indigenous warrior in a ship's wheel on her stack while flying a Canada flag 🇨🇦, you knew she belong to Lower Lakes Towing, the Port Dover based shipowner which gave a fleet of last chancers, one more go at showing their worth and usefulness. Sadly LLT's is now gone but Not Forgotten 😔 

Ah, another CarlzBoats blogpost is finally complete. It's been a while and the plan to pass along what I've photographed and found out at  least monthly. For this story and pics, thanks again for your insight Ron Beaupre and reaching out to Hubert Desgagnés. Thanks again Jeff Cameron for shiphotos.com, it's a great resource and as always, the boatwatcher's guide Know Your Ships and especially the DECADES Special Edition with "Great Lakes & Seaway Smokestack" from then till today. Stay Well, Carl