Captain Large however, was not a man to throw in the sponge, just be¬cause a fire had burned his ship. He found a group of men in Brandon who listened to his story about how money could be made by haul¬ing coal down the river to where the Grand Trunk Railway were build¬ing the new line into Brandon from Harte. One of the group was a Coal and Wood dealer named Robert Lane. Wouldn't it be a wonderful tie-up for a coal dealer to be a part owner of a coal barge, deliver the coal to the boat, and take it down the river and sell it to the Grand Trunk to run their machines? Lane agreed, and two and poss¬ibly three more businessmen also thought the idea was a good one, and a young man of twenty, by the name of Art Mansoff, decided he wanted to join the group as the engineer, having had some steam engineering experience on threshing machines. The charred hull of the "Empress" was taken up the Snye behind a gasoline powerboat to Large's shop, where she was rebuilt and converted to carry coal and other cargo. Because she was a low narrow craft, she had a tendency to rock, so that two pontoon out-riggers were attached in front of the paddle wheels. This made her more stable and easier to handle.

Captain Large could not bear the thought of painting "Empress of Ireland" on a coal barge, so she was renamed "Assiniboine Queen". She was used for the summer and fall of 1912 to haul coal and mat¬erials downstream to where the bridge was being built over the Assiniboine. She was caught in the late fall in the ice, and was tied up with two logging chains on the north shore, about two hun¬dred feet downstream from the north abutment of the bridge. The spring of 1913 brought a very severe flood and torrential rains. "The Queen" finally went to the bottom, and there she remained un¬til the Jaycees of Brandon moved about six feet of silt and took out her big paddlewheels, the engines and two logging chains which were still as good as new. The two boilers had been removed dur¬ing the first Great War, to make war machines.

Now that the history of the old ship has come to light, many people have said, "Heck, I knew where that old boat was all the time. Why I used to fish off it when I was a kid". The strange part is, that no one had ever thought of saving the old ship and placing it in a museum - no one that is, until I was asked by the Chamber of Commerce to enlist help to bring the salvageable parts in to Brandon.