The Alpena, launched in 1942 and now the oldest operating steamship on the Great Lakes, visits its namesake city all shipping season long, picking up cement from the Lafarge Alpena plant and carrying it across the waters to be turned into product that helps build the country.

Sometimes perched on the Thunder Bay horizon, sometimes glimpsed steaming its way toward other ports, the ship has a fan following of admirers who track its comings and goings, eager to catch a glimpse of their favorite freighter, said Jeff Scott, plant manager at Lafarge.

“They call me all the time,” Scott said. “They want to know, ‘When’s the Alpena coming in?'”

Mid-World War II, under the name SS Leon Fraser, the Alpena steamed into the Great Lakes for the first time on Feb. 28, 1942.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Capt. Steve Stanek explains a steering mechanism in the wheelhouse of the Alpena on Wednesday.

Longer than two football fields and half as wide, the ship loomed as a behemoth among its peers, the longest ship on the lakes and able to carry more than any other operating freighter.

In 1990, a new owner rechristened the ship the Alpena and shortened it by 120 feet, cutting out its midsection in drydock and then flooding the drydock until the two ends of the ship floated and could be pushed together and welded, newspapers of the day reported.

The Alpena suffered a setback when a December 2015 electrical fire caused millions of dollars of damage to the ship’s aft, but it returned to service the following year.

Though some modern upgrades to the ship followed the fire, the wheelhouse still gleams with brass and wood and 80-year-old elegance.

“It has its own Facebook fan page,” said Captain Steve Stanek, who started as ship’s captain in 1997.

News Photo by Julie Riddle A 1940s compass gleams in the wheelhouse of the Alpena.

In the middle of the wheelhouse, brass railings surround a raised platform, on which sit a steering column and an original compass, chest-high and oozing with nautical-history vibes.

Around the platform, modern computer screens nestle between other original equipment, digital blips juxtaposed with devices looking like they jumped from a history book.

Below, a living room and bedrooms used to hold visitors when Lafarge auctioned off rides on the vessel to support charitable causes.

A long, narrow hallway — the storm tunnel, used by crew when waves get high and crash over the side of the ship — runs the length of the ship along one side.

The dim hallway goes and goes, hundreds of feet, one wall holding back giant storage holds while ballast water sloshes in tanks underfoot.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Switches that operate the whistles of the steamship Alpena hang on the ship’s wheelhouse wall. Capt. Steve Stanek would not sound the whistle during a recent visit, saying the incredibly loud blast would frighten anyone within earshot.

Past the holds, under the ship’s distinctive slanted stack, two four-story monsters crouch among stairs and landings and railings in the boiler room, turning fire and water into steam that “makes the boat go,” Stanek said.

In another room, a vast, white space filled with metal and chrome and lights and machines stretches at least three stories down and two stories up, impossibly large.

Here, steam from the boilers pushes turbines that actually drive the boat, Stanek said, explaining with the authority of experience the endless pipes and tubes and tools and whirligigs and gizmos that line the enormous room.

In an adjacent hallway lined with doors, he talks softly. His crew are sleeping, he said.

An officers’ mess, its long table laden with condiment bottles, is technically for the top dogs onboard, but they don’t mind if the other crew members hang out there, Stanek said.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Capt. Steve Stanek overlooks a room inside the steamship Alpena on Wednesday.

He chats with the steward, who feeds the ship’s 21 crew members three meals a day, sometimes for 60 to 90 days at a stretch, with extra treats on holidays.

A nearby room full of exercise equipment used to hold couches and televisions. The crew wanted something to do on their 16 hours off, when they’re not at port and riding bicycles through town, Stanek said.

Atop the ship, where giant metal slabs lay draped across the width of the deck, a peek through a round opening into the cargo holds reveals only bottomless darkness.

Soon, through booms dangling from the silos standing sentry nearby, cement will pour at a speed of nearly 1,000 tons per hour into the holds, in a matter of hours filling them to within two feet of the top.

Freighter crews have to load and unload with care. Ships sometimes crack in half if their load isn’t handled just so, Stanek said.

News Photo by Julie Riddle The day’s lunch menu hangs on a mess room wall of the steamship Alpena on Wednesday.

The Alpena will pull out of Alpena laden with some 12,000 tons of Northeast Michigan, carrying it to Green Bay or Chicago, Detroit or Toledo, to be made into products used around the world.

In the meantime, the crew will get rested up, pass the time, and keep taking care of the oldest steamer on the Great Lakes.

“It’s an awesome boat,” Stanek said. “I hope she runs for a lot more years.”

News Photo by Julie Riddle Atop the steamship Alpena, a hole looks down into nothingness as Capt. Steve Stanek walks along the boat’s deck on Wednesday.

News Photo by Julie Riddle The Alpena waits for a load of cement at the Lafarge Alpena plant on Wednesday.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Capt. Steve Stanek walks down a hallway that runs the length of the steamship Alpena.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Jeff Scott, plant manager at the Lafarge Alpena plant, Steve Stanek, captain of the steamship Alpena, and Lafarge employee Mallory Miller examine hoppers that serve as part of the Alpena’s self-unloading system. According to Scott and Stanek, cement drops from cargo holds onto a conveyor belt that runs the length of the ship. Buckets on a vertical conveyor belt scoop up the cement, carry it upward, and dump it into a hopper. An oversized screw eventually condenses the cement into plugs that are shot through pipes with compressed air — in a process that Scott likened to sending a spit wad through a straw — and into waiting silos onshore.

News Photo by Julie Riddle A crew member walks past cargo hold covers on the deck of the steamship Alpena on Wednesday.