Century-old retired steamer SS Keewatin to be tugged past Port Huron early Wednesday

Ship buffs looking to glimpse a piece of history will get their chance when the SS Keewatin passes by the Blue Water Area early Wednesday.

Among the largest and last remaining Edwardian-era passenger steamers, the roughly 300-foot vessel has spent the last decade in Port McNicoll, Ontario — where it had once traveled to and from with Port Arthur and Fort William in Thunder Bay on Lake Superior half a century earlier.

On Monday, however, she departed in the shores of the Georgian Bay, bound for Kingston, Ontario.

That means the ship is set to pass beneath the Blue Water Bridge and along the St. Clair River via tugboat, exchanging ship pilots in Port Huron. TJ Gaffney, an active Port Huron history buff, noted the coming passage on Facebook Sunday.

“At one point, passenger boats like the Keewatin came through the area quite a bit,” he said Monday. “… She’s got a connection to Michigan. She spent a long time on the west side of the state. You don’t see that level of maritime history — something that significant — come through this area very much. It’s only five years younger than the Titanic (was). In terms of the way it looks on the inside, it’s the closest thing a lot of us would see to something like that.”

The SS Keewatin was built in Scotland and launched in 1907, coming into service the next year. It ran from Port McNicoll for several decades, also ferrying cargo in addition to passengers, before being retired in the 1960s and was acquired soon after for historic preservation.

After a long stint outside Saugatuck, Michigan, the ship returned to Canadian waters. It is currently headed to the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes in Kingston, where an exhibit is advertised to be coming this fall.

According to the museum, the ship has been featured in an episode of the CBC show “Murdoch Mysteries,” as well as the 2020 Royal Canadian Mint coin. The Keewatin was slated to undergo repairs this spring and summer prior to her final place on the museum’s drydock.

On Tuesday morning, Capt. Dan Gallagher, of the Lake Pilots Association, said the estimated time of arrival in the Port Huron area was at 6 a.m. on Wednesday. By Tuesday afternoon, he put the exchange closer to 9 or 9:30 a.m.

The slow journey is being led by the tug Molly M1, which left Port McNicoll around 5 p.m. Monday and has reportedly been traveling around 5 knots.

The tug Manitou will assist from Port Huron to the lower Detroit River.

As the vessel makes the journey, information and some map locations have been shared via BoatNerd.com and other tracking entities online in addition to multiple Facebook groups for ship enthusiasts.

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Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith.