What is this ship?

So, this ship is transitioning between Lake Huron and Lake Superior. It's a bulk carrier plying the great lakes, making it a lake freighter. However, the largest lake freighters are 1000 footers, with the largest, called the "Queen of the Lakes," being the MV Paul R. Tregurtha, at 1013ft, which can be seen here (Google Maps). This ship is however ~1100 feet long. It's 100 feet across, so it still fits into the various canals around the great lakes.  This ship has a different front than the 1000 foot lake freighters. Any idea what ship this is?   

1100ft.kmz (706 B)

I did some research and got the same results you did. The 1,100 ft. ship doesn't seem to exist. But then I noticed something else and discovered that the 1,100 ft. ship really doesn't exist!

I took a closer look at the ship to the north. It's the same ship. (We'll call your ship "ship 1" and the north ship "ship 2".) The angles and shadows are different but I think you'll agree it's the same ship. If you measure them both you'll see that they differ by about 100 feet. The bow is cut off so I measured the difference between the yellow lines fore and aft.




My conclusion: it's an image anomoly. I think it's a 1000 ft. freighter.

I agree with Gregg and show more evidence in the screen capture below.



Items A, B, and C are duplicated and there are alignment mismatches which I have marked. I suspect the tanker was actually in 2 images and the computer algorithm ( or perhaps human operator) didn't get the match quite right to pass close examination. It's also less likely someone was playing with the imagery and decided to make a really super carrier, though I can't imagine why. Of course there was at least one time where someone turned a small single engine aircraft into a fleet of six. 

Then of course there's the other ship missing its bow which I believe Gregg correctly identified as the same ship further along on its voyage.

Well deduced, Gregg!

Ship 2 is the real Great Lakes bulk carrier, even although her bow is missing.  Ship 1 is a composite ship, built up from 2 different images - if you look closely you can see the joint in the imagery.  Counting forward from the rear yellow lines, it's just forward of the 8th cargo loading hatch on the right side of the ship.  Because the camera aircraft is flying an east-west course, the discontinuity on the left side of the image is around hatch 16.

The thing is the cartographer or software doing the image stitching hasn't done his homework on ships of this kind, so he's made the joint in the wrong place!  Looking again at ship 2, I count 16 loading hatches between the yellow lines at the bow and the yellow lines at the stern.  Looking at Ship 1, there are 18.

Looking again at Ship 2 there is a small boat lying across the ship between hatches 7 & 8.  Look at ship 1 - there are 2 small boats!  Given that there is approx 50 ft between hatches, this is where your unexplained 100 feet comes from.

Why are there 2 ships?  Easy - this is aerial photography, not satellite.  The camera aircraft flies a certain course to capture a strip of imagery, them flies back again on the reciprocal heading, but moved a certain distance left or right of his previous track, to shoot the next strip along.  During all this to-ing and fro-ing, he might capture a relatively slow moving object such as a ship several times.  

Interesting find, NL, keep them coming!

Cheers,

Frank

Edit - Hah!  I see Hill's answer arrived while I was writing mine.  I'm glad he came to the same conclusions!  

Thank you Hill & Frank for elaborating. I hadn't caught the exact spot where the elongation occurred. Mystery definitively solved.

Thanks for the answers! Been a long time since I've seen images overlap so well.