Brooklyn gets a visitor from the Great Frozen North.

There's a dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard that receives crushed rock salt from self-unloading bulk carrier ships. Most of these that call here are of the Norwegian Torvald-Klaveness or German Egon Oldendorff shipping groups. However, a few days ago I spotted (after enlarging my photo enough to read her name off her stern)
Atlantic Superior, of Canada Steamship Lines, docked there.

Atlantic Superior could be considered a new style laker; however, as her name proclaims, she's at home on open ocean as well as the Great Lakes.

Eisenhower Lock at fifty, and more about classic lake boats.

Over the past couple of months, I've received a lot of hits on my blog off web searches for "Eisenhower Lock", about which I've posted before here and here. I asked my mother-in-law, who lives in Massena, New York, a mile or so from the Lock, why this might be. She said the Lock has its fiftieth anniversary this year. When we visited Massena a couple of weeks ago, I made my usual trip to the Lock.

I arrived as the classic laker Maritime Trader was locking through. Here she is, leaving the Lock and headed upriver in ballast toward Lake Ontario and her home port of Hamilton. By "classic laker" I mean a ship built specifically for Great Lakes/St. Lawrence River trade, with the traditional design (dating back to 1869--see under "Old Style Lake Boat" in Herb's Lake Boats here) having the superstructure containing the bridge and crew quarters at the bow, and the engine room, another deckhouse and the funnel at the stern.

About an hour after Maritime Trader departed, another classic laker of Canadian registry, Ojibway, entered the Lock. Back in January, I posted about the thinning of the ranks of classic lakers, but those that survive are, I reckon, more likely to be found trading between St. Lawrence River ports and the Lakes, because they are small enough to fit the St. Lawrence Seaway locks.

Here's a closer view of Ojibway's forward deckhouse and bridge. Note the bowsprit often found on classic lakers.

Canadienne bakin' on Ojibway's fantail.

Ojibway leaving the lock, bound upriver toward the Lakes. According to the chalkboard at the Lock's Visitor Center, she was carrying a cargo of coke (presumably the kind burned in steel mill furnaces) to some destination in Ohio.

Closely behind Ojibway came the "salty" (i.e. oceangoing) freighter Marlene Green. The chalkboard listed her cargo as "windmill", which I thought seemed appropriate for a ship of Dutch registry.

Here's a close view of Marlene's wheelhouse and bridge as she sits low in the Lock. 

Here's another view of Marlene's superstructure, and one of her deck cranes, after she had been lifted to departure level.

The metal tubes and truncated cones stowed on Marlene's deck are sections of a tower that will hold up a giant wind-driven electrical generating turbine. The turbine blades are probably stowed in the hold below.

Here is Marlene heading out of the Lock and upriver toward her destination in Michigan. Later on the same day, Tugster photographed her on her way past the Thousand Islands.

As a service to readers who may be visiting Eisenhower Lock or other Seaway vantage points, I'm putting here (as I did on an earlier post) a link to the Seaway web site, which has a further link to a map showing the positions of vessels navigating the Seaway.

A survivor on the Lakes

Edna G was the last steam powered tug in use on the Great Lakes. She was retired from service some twenty years ago, but remains tied to this pier near an ore dock somewhere on the shore of Lake Superior. She appears well cared for in this photo taken just a few weeks ago--perhaps some historical society has made her its charge.

Thanks to TenaciousK for taking the photo and posting it on Tenacity Central.

Update: TenaciousK (see comments) writes:

Hi Claude! She's moored to a working pier at Two Harbors, a town about 30 miles north of Duluth. According to the placard, she is kept in working condition, and was completely restored in 1994. I figure with diesel prices being what they are, perhaps someone is thinking her retirement will not be, er, permanent.

He also gives a link to this Wikipedia article about her, which says she's listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and has a footnote indicating she's under the care of the Lake County (Minnesota) Historical Society.

Classic lake boats: a dying breed.

In a couple of earlier posts (here and here), I've written about, and posted photos of, the unique ships (called, I've now learned, "boats" by true Great Lakes sailors) built for bulk cargo (usually grain or ore) transport on the Great Lakes. Yesterday, thanks to Tom Turner of NYCMaritime, I received a link to this story by Jim Nichols, in the Grand Rapids Press, about the scrapping of Calumet (photo above, by Dick Lund, from Dick's Great Lakes Ship Photos & More), a particularly handsome classic laker (i.e. one with the wheelhouse and crew quarters at the bow). She was launched in 1929 as the Myron C. Taylor, of the U.S. Steel Corporation fleet, and traded under that name and ownership for most of her life, before being sold and assuming her present and final name a few years ago. With her passing, the fleet of classic lakers continues to diminish; soon, all will be gone except for a few that may be preserved as museum pieces.

I forwarded a copy of the Calumet article to Mark Crawford, who told me he had served some years ago as a crewman on lakers. He replied, sending me a photo of the William B. Schiller (see below), also of the U.S. Steel fleet, on which he had sailed.


Schiller was a particularly fine example of the classic laker type, long and lean, with trim lines and a tall stack, and sporting a bowspirt. According to the records of American Shipbuilding (a company later purchased by George Steinbrenner), she was delivered to her owners in 1910, and went to the breakers in 1978. Sixty eight years of service is remarkable for a ship, though Calumet managed seventy eight.

Of his days as a Lakes seaman, Mark wrote:

I started out working as a deckhand and after a few months was promoted to watchman, the easiest job imaginable -- my work consisted of measuring any water collecting in the empty ballast tanks when the boat was cargoless, providing relief for the wheelsman, making coffee for the pilot house crew, and swabbing the forecastle deck. The rest of the time I would spend reading. My watches were from 4PM to 8PM and 4AM to 8AM, so I got to see almost every daybreak and sunset. I read a massive number of books at the time.

Mark's decision to leave this contemplative life (though one not without danger: he was a Lakes crewman near the time of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald with all hands) meant that the Lakes' loss would be the art world's gain.

Eisenhower Lock revisited.

About a year ago, I posted about a visit to Eisenhower Lock, on the St. Lawrence Seaway at Massena, New York. What I didn't do then was document the entire process of a ship locking through. On my recent visit to Massena, I checked the traffic report on the Seaway website and noted that the Birchglen was due at the Lock in a couple of hours.
I got there in time to see her enetering the lock. Birchglen proved to be a new style Great Lakes bulk cargo carrier, or "laker", in that she has both her bridge and engine room aft instead of having a separate wheelhouse and crew quarters perched on her bow (compare with the photos of Frontenac in my earlier post linked above). In this respect, she looks like a typical oceangoing bulker; her laker pedigree is proclaimed by her very rounded bow, which contrasts with the sharper-edged stem of a typical "salty", and her relatively narrow beam compared to her length, which enables her to fit the Seaway locks.


To the right is a closer view of Birchglen's bow, revealing a sloppy paint job covering raised metal letters spelling out her earlier name, Federal Richelieu. Sailors used to consider it bad luck to sail on a vessel if its name had been changed. Today, it is rare to find a merchant ship more than five years old that hasn't had its name (and probably its ownership) changed at least once. In fact, Birchglen was launched in 1983 as Canada Marquis, sailed under that name until 1991, when she became Federal Richelieu, had her name changed again to Federal MacKenzie in that same year (ironically, the name she bore for the shortest time is the one memorialized in raised lettering), stuck with Federal MacKenzie for ten years until becoming simply MacKenzie for the period 2001-02, then was given her present name. No wonder her owners, Canada Steamship Lines Inc., don't worry too much about the neatness of the paint job. As a lawyer, I assume this name-changing mania is driven by tax considerations, this being what seems to be behind any seemingly economically nonsensical business activity. (Information on the name chages comes from the very useful Know Your Ships: Guide to Boats & Boatwatching, Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Seaway, published by Marine Publishing Co., Inc. of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and available at the Eisenhower Lock Visitor Center gift shop.)




These photos show Birchglen's superstructure in a full lock (having come in from the west), and after the lock has emptied to the level of the Seaway downstream. This lowering of a 35,000 deadweight ton vessel (or raising of a vessel going in the opposite direction) is accomplished by the force of gravity; the only electric energy used is that needed to open and close a couple of valves.




















Finally, we see Birchglen, having left Eisenhower Lock, sailing down the St. Lawrence toward her destination, Quebec City, where her cargo of grain will either be transshipped onto oceangoing vessels for transport overseas, or, perhaps, be milled into flour to make baguettes for hungry Quebecois.

Update: Alert reader (and friend) Ellen tells me by e-mail that frequent ship name changes aren't tax-driven. In her words:

"As I recall from my super brief stint as a sometime admiralty lawyer (wish I'd been able really to learn the stuff; it was quirky and fascinating in many respects, though it could be frustrating as well. Because of goddamn name changes, even while the vessel was at sea, I once lost a tanker for a while), it's often that a vessel is a corporation's only asset, and when there are liens against the corp or other liabilities, the principal "transfers" the vessel to "another" corporation, changes its name, and puts the first corporation in bankruptcy. Or something like that. It wasn't as much, always, about taxes as about crookedness and avoiding liability. But maybe that kind of thing isn't as easy anymore."

Second update. A very big thank you to Homer Fink of Brooklyn Heights Blog (today featuring a photo of Robert Moses, who, coincidentally, was one of the principal promoters of the St. Lawrence Seaway, looking very predatory under his broad-brimmed fedora) for telling me how to link directly to an old post instead of to an entire month's archive. I've fixed the link in the first sentence of this post accordingly.

Ship watching at Eisenhower Lock

One of Massena's fine points is that it's located close to the Eisenhower Lock on the St. Lawrence Seaway. The Seaway is a system of canals, locks and dams that allows ships of up to almost 700' length to traverse the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, from the Atlantic to Lake Superior. The Seaway was built in the 1950's, and replaced an older system of smaller locks and narrower, shallower canals that limited navigation to uneconomically small vessels.

When completed, the Seaway locks were large enough to accomodate most cargo ships, excepting the largest tankers and bulk carriers. Today, many container ships and bulkers are too large for it, but it still carries an impressive amount of ocean-borne cargo to and from ports ranging from Ogdensburg, New York west to Duluth, Minnesota. An even greater volume consists of cargo carried to and from U.S. and Canadian ports along the Lakes and the St. Lawrence to other such ports. Most of this cargo is carried on "lakers", specialized vessels built for Great Lakes navigation. The classic laker design had the wheelhouse atop a tall superstructure at the bow of the ship, and the engine room and funnel at the stern, leaving a long open deck with cargo hatches between. Recently, lakers have tended toward the arrangement standard for oceangoing freighters of having both the wheelhouse and engine aft. Still, they can usually be distinguished from "salties" by an overall blunter, more bargelike hull shape.

Whenever we visit Massena, I get on line and visit the Seaway's web site, which provides a handy map showing the location of ships on the Seaway. From this, I can tell when to drive up to the Eisenhower Lock visitor center, which has a platform overlooking the lock, and see a ship or two locking through. This past Friday, I saw that two ships, one a laker and the other a salty, were due to lock through in the late afternoon. The first through was the Frontenac, of Canada Steamship Lines (note that, despite the company name, this vessel, as almost all now active, is diesel powered), a laker built to the maximum dimesions allowing transit of the Seaway locks. Here is Frontenac entering the lock.

You can see the classic, wheelhouse-forward laker design. Below is Frontenac in the lock, looking aft from behind her wheelhouse. The enormous boom is for unloading cargo (typically grain or pelletized ore) at ports that lack unloading facilities.

Finally, we see Frontenac, having locked through, heading downstream toward her home port of Montreal.

By the time Frontenac was gone, and the lock refilled, the Russian freighter Aleksandr Suvorov was waiting its turn. Here's the Suvorov entering the lock.

Unfortunately, after this shot the batteries in my camera expired, preventing me from recording the Russian vessel's progress through the lock. A very tanned, weather-beaten looking man and a woman with coppery red hair were lounging atop the wheelhouse. From the stern, I read Suvorov's hailing port as Murmansk, on Russia's north coast. This explained the logo of a white polar bear emblazoned on the ship's black funnel.

Update: For more photos and text about Eisenhower Lock, see here and here. For more about classic lake boats, see here.