Just catching up after not reading SB for a while and this caught my eye. If it's not too much of a shameless plug, could this be the barge & crane I wrote about in my latest book "Through Surf and Storm: Shipwrecks of Muskegon County Michigan." Here's the story which is in the last chapter on "Modern Era Shipwrecks:Unnamed barge
On December 15, 1949, an unnamed work barge broke loose while being towed from Pentwater to Muskegon by the Hinkle Brothers and Bultema tug Seahorse with the smaller tug Mary B behind it. Both craft were accidently set adrift one thousand feet from the channel entrance about 8:15 p.m. when the towline from the large tug Seahorse snapped as the crew worked to shorten it in preparation to enter the
harbor. The three man barge crew then cut the tug Mary B loose to prevent damage. It disappeared into the darkness.
The men were trapped aboard the barge as the flat-bottomed vessel stranded on the sandbar and began to break up in turbulent seas about one thousand feet from shore just off the Muskegon State Park Pavilion.
An attempt to reach the three men on the 135-foot barge in the Coast Guards large motor lifeboat proved futile due to the shallow water and heavy ice. U. S. Coast Guard Chief Elmer Richter, accompanied by twenty-seven-year-old John Bultema, skipper of the Seahorse made it through wind-whipped seas in a small skiff to rescue the barge crew: Ralph and Floyd Hinkle, partners in the firm of Hinkle Brothers and Bultema, and twenty-one-year-old Lyle Morphew, all residents of Muskegon.
The company had just purchased the small tug Mary B at Pentwater, Michigan, for $1,500. The vessels were returning to Muskegon after having completed the removal of the Pentwater channel swing bridge. The Coast Guard issued a warning to car ferry captains to watch for the small tug, not knowing whether it sank or was still adrift.
The barge, loaded with ironwork from the bridge as well as air compressors and a large portable crane, was valued at $25,000.
The following day the barge broke in half. In what the newspaper called a Christmas Miracle, dozens of contractors and others with bulldozers, cranes, and trucks volunteered their time to assist in the salvage of the barge and equipment over the weekend, helping the small company avoid what would have been a tremendous loss.
Ribs and other wreckage from the small tug washed up on the beach in the week following the accident.