Preceding pages: An enormous new ship, the Stewart J. Cort, 58,000 tons gross, making her first passage through the Detroit River a few years ago en route from Lake Erie, where she was built, to Lake Superior where she would receive her first cargo. This ship measures 1,000 feet in length by 105 feet in beam. Her diesel engines drive her at 16 miles per hour. Currently there are 198 ships under the U. S. flag plying the Great Lakes. Almost all of them are dry bulk carriers.
Large ships by the hundred, long wakes marking their passage, carry millions of tons of raw materials every year between one port in North America and another.
These are the Great Lakes freighters of the United States and Canada. They are slow ships, most of them. They have little sheer and no flare. The waters they travel can be deep, though not by oceanic standards, and often they are exceedingly shallow. Frequently the channels are narrow for long distances and the water, if not always drinkable, is never salt.
By blue water standards the distances these ships steam are not long, for they are more likely to be measured in hundreds than in thousands of miles. But by overland standards they are long, and that is the proper comparison, for the competition these steamers face comes not from other ships but from trucks and trains. Appropriately, the distances they steam are measured in statute miles and the speeds at which they advance in miles per hour.
How important are these ships? What would be the effect on the country if they were to stop sailing? Briefly, such an event would be a stunning blow. Most of the steel industry in the East would stop. In the Midwest steel and chemical plants, deprived of limestone, would fade or close altogether. Many electric utility plants, deprived of coal, would shut down. Nearly a billion bushels of grain a year, including a quarter billion bushels for direct shipment overseas, would rot in the ground. Those communities and industries dependent on lake-borne oil would be devastated.
All three major Canadian steel producers are located on lake ports. A large share of Canadian grain is funneled through lake ports, and all of the coal used by utilities in the major Ontario industrial areas comes in lake vessels. The St. Lawrence Seaway, seventy per cent financed by Canada, would become no more than a plugged funnel.
The lakes on which these ships sail, four of which form much of the border between the United States and Canada, increase in size from east to west. Lake Ontario, 180 statute miles in length, is the smallest’ Lake Erie, at 210-feet maximum depth the shallowest has an east to west extent of 236 miles. Lake Huron has a length of 247 miles from north to south. Lake Michigan, the only one of the five entirely within the confines of the United States, extends 321 miles from north to south. The largest and deepest of the group is Lake Superior, where the principal sailing course from Sault Ste. Marie to Duluth is 383 miles. It is the largest body of fresh water in the world, with a maximum recorded depth of 1,302 feet.
Connecting these lakes are the St. Marys River, with a length of 65 miles, between lakes Superior and Huron, including the St. Marys Falls Canal; and the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, and the Detroit Rivet, with a combined length of 95 miles, joining lakes Huron and Erie. The Welland Ship Canal, in Canada circumventing Niagara Falls and the Niagara Rivet, with a length of 26 miles, forms the connecting link between lakes Erie and Ontario. The seven locks m this canal move ships up or down 326 feet. Altogether the distance from Duluth to the St. Lawrence Rivet is over 1,200 miles. That river and the St. Lawrence Seaway connect Lake Ontario with world trade routes at Montreal, where ocean ships formerly had to end their voyages.
The Great Lakes cover over 95,000 square miles, which a little over a third are in Canada and the rest in the United States. All of these waters, including Lake Michigan, are, by treaty, considered to be international for purposes of navigation.
Canada and the United States have created the International Joint Commission, composed of three members each, to oversee activities relating to the Great Lakes. It concerns itself with such issues as water levels and water and air pollution.
In the overall lake trade, the U. S. fleet’s proportion is in the range of 65 to 68 per cent, with the Canadian fleet having about thirty per cent and foreign carriers up to four per cent. The foreigners mainly are in the grain trade. The high point in U. S. ascendancy during recent years occurred in 1962 when 84.02 per cent of the bulk trade was carried by our ships.
For many years the principal Great Lakes cargoes, in volume sequence, have been iron ore, coal, limestone, grain, and petroleum products. In 1973 this pattern changed, with stone exchanging place with coal. This stemmed from coal's environmental difficulties, from regulatory restrictions placed on the transportation of coal on the lakes, and from the trend toward less use of coal by electric utilities. But as a result of the recent energy problems, it appears likely that the diminution of coal's importance in lake commerce will be reversed. In the future, expanded coal tonnage will probably be eastbound from Lake Superior, rather than westbound from the older Lake Erie sources. Additionally, in 1973 Canadian self-unloading vessels moved nearly half of Lake Erie's coal traffic (15.8 million net tons) on the short haul (100 to 150 miles) from ports in the United States to Canadian utilities and steel plants.
Iron ore moves from both east and west. That from the lower St. Lawrence River loading ports, such as Port Cartier, Quebec, is carried primarily in Canadian ships, although it is consigned to Great Lakes ports in both countries. The Lake Superior trade is dominated by United States ships and U. S.-generated cargo. The amount of ore carried depends on activity in the steel industry. However, this traffic now appears to be in a long uptrend as a result of the construction of additional large plants for the processing of low grade taconite and jasper ores, from eastern Canada, Michigan, and Minnesota, into high grade iron pellets for blast furnace feed. With the new plants the upper lake trade will be more distinctly a one-way movement, with prospective tonnages of western coal planned for transport to utilities near Detroit augmenting the projected increase in iron pellet movements. Thus, the only appreciable westbound tonnage in the upper lakes will be minor quantities of eastern coal for some upper lake consumers.
Limestone, the cinderella commodity, originates mainly near the mid-point of the lake system, adjacent to the confluence of lakes Huron and Michigan. Almost 43 million tons of it were moved in lake steamers in 1973. Carried in crushed form, it is handled primarily in self-unloading vessels of both U. S. and Canadian registry and travels to a myriad of ports, both large and small, throughout the lakes. Mostly it is used for making steel, but the chemical and construction industries also use a lot.
Although more than half of 1973's enormous volume of 962 million bushels of grain originated at U. S. ports such as Duluth, Minnesota; Superior, Wisconsin; Milwaukee; Chicago; Saginaw, Michigan; Toledo and Huron, Ohio, that much romanticized trade is principally handled in Canadian and foreign vessels. U. S. vessels carried only 50 million bushels, or 5.2 per cent of the total. Individual cargoes ranged up well over a million bushels each for wheat, corn, barley, oats, and mixed grain. Grain from upper lake ports goes either to lower lake receivers, to St. Lawrence River transfer elevators, or directly to offshore destinations. A major share of Canadian grain is moved to the same destinations in Canadian ships. It is then transferred to ocean vessels for overseas delivery. This tonnage affords most Canadian ships a balanced trade, with grain eastbound and Labrador ore westbound. The only ballast segment of the 1,700-mile route is from the iron ore discharge port to the upper lake grain loading terminal.
The final major element in lake traffic is the tanker trade, providing about 7 per cent of total volume and divided about 60 per cent to Canadian carriers and the rest in U. S. vessels. The major points of origin are Duluth, Chicago, Toledo, and Sarnia, Ontario. Additionally, there is a substantial movement upbound through the Seaway from refineries near Montreal. Cargo is off-loaded at terminals throughout the lake region and usually in the country of origin. Because of the increase in pipelines, the lake tanker trade has not experienced the growth enjoyed by some other segments. The peak season was long ago in 1952 when over 17 million net tons were transported.
Except for oil products, all of the trade components can move interchangeably by either standard lake bulk freighters or self-unloaders—except that grain is not usually handled by the latter.
While the major port cities of Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toronto receive much cargo, none of them participates in a substantial way as a tonnage originator. In contrast, Duluth; Thunder Bay, Ontario; Calcite, Michigan; Taconite Harbor and Silver Bay, Minnesota; Sandusky, Ohio; and Escanaba, Michigan, are all large loading ports, though each generally handles only a single major commodity. Toledo, Ashtabula, and Conneaut, Ohio, are important in both shipping and receiving.
With three of the four major traffic components originating on the upper lakes, many American ships go one way in ballast. Though Canadian carriers have a more balanced trade, with grain eastbound and iron ore westbound, even for them there is a ballast interval of several hundred miles between unloading their ore at a lower lake port and receiving their grain at Thunder Bay or Duluth on Lake Superior. Despite intense competition from the railroads, Great Lakes transportation has kept pace and, in fact, 1973 represented the peak year in the dry bulk trades at 215 million net tons, with the tanker movement adding 15.1 million tons.
A century ago, passenger ships did a thriving business on the lakes, but World War II, the expanding highway network, high operating costs, and aging vessels combined to end this traffic. Now only railway car ferries, doubling in the carriage of automobiles and passengers remain—and year by year their numbers dwindle. In Canada the cruise trade on the Great Lakes and the lower St. Lawrence River has disappeared and only short-haul ships on Georgian Bay continue to carry people—with the aid of government subsidy Attempts at renewal have lost in the test of economic viability. A Greek passenger ship, the Stella Maris, cruised the lakes in 1974 but she probably will not be a fixture in the lake trade. The Aquarama, a converted C-4 freighter, has been idle for a decade awaiting the return of profitable conditions for passenger traffic on the lakes.
As on the coasts, cabotage laws effectively reserve the commerce between U. S. ports to our vessels; and in Canada similar restrictions are in effect.
There is a substantial international trade on the lakes and with passing years an increasing share has been acquired by Canadian vessels with the aid of their lower construction and operating costs plus the construction subsidy which has aided their building during the past fifteen years. Presently only eleven per cent of the trade between U. S. and Canadian ports moves in U.S. bottoms.
The Merchant Marine Act 1970 undertook to assist U. S. vessel operators in regaining a segment of this international movement by making lake carriers eligible for operating subsidy when engaged in trade to or from Canada, but so far only two operators have been awarded such subsidy. In both cases, the demands of their domestic trade have made it impossible for them to achieve substantive results in their international trade.
Canada almost entirely renewed her fleet during the quarter century 1946-1971. In that period 105 vessels were built for Canadian operators in the bulk, tanker, and package freight trades. Construction subsidies, generous depreciation and amortization provisions, and other ingenious cost limiting devices all helped. Thus the current Canadian fleet, although much reduced in numbers (from 258 ships in I960 to 163 in 1970), is at a capacity peak and has an average age of only about twenty years.
In the United States a sizable postwar building program continued during the 1950s, ending in I960 for new ships, and in 1961 for a small number of reconstructed ocean tankers. From then until 1968 no ships were built and the average age of the fleet rose to 45 years. At the same time the number of ships sank from 283 ships in I960 to 198 at the end of 1974.
The Merchant Marine Act of 1970 extended to Great Lakes operators the construction reserve fund principle which long had been available to ocean traders. This principle permits an owner to put earnings from ship operations into a special reserve before he calculates his income tax. Thus this money is not taxed until it is used for building or modernizing ships. With this incentive available, the log jam in building of new ships was broken. Because they can discharge cargo without need for shore facilities, self-unloaders were adjudged to be the wave of the future, and since 1968 twenty-one self-unloading bulk vessels and two tankers have been built or contracted for.
In addition, eight existing ships have been, or will be, lengthened with a resultant gain in fleet capacity. No government construction subsidy funds are involved.
It is interesting that with the advent of the new building program in the United States there has been a slide in new construction in Canada to its present almost dead slow status.
Although no ships were built in U. S. lake shipyards during the period 1961-1968, major yards remained at Superior and Manitowoc, Wisconsin; Chicago, Bay City, Michigan; and Toledo and Lorain, Ohio. Primarily they survived on repair and maintenance work, together with government contracts and use of their facilities for other material forming and fabrication work. The principal drydocks are located at Superior, Manitowoc, and Lorain, with a new one at Erie, Pennsylvania. With the construction of larger ships it has been necessary to enlarge the drydocks at Superior and Lorain and this work has been accomplished. In addition, a new concept of modular ship fabrication was tried at Erie, where Litton Industries, Inc., built a new yard, but that yard has been closed after building only two ships. The drydock is idle. Visualizing the demand for larger vessels the Manitowoc Company moved its yard from Manitowoc to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, where more space was available, and reestablished it under the name of Bay Shipbuilding Corporation.
In Canada three yards can build large vessels—one each at Port Weller, Ontario, on the Welland Ship Canal; at Collingwood, on Georgian Bay; and at Thunder Bay, on an estuary of Lake Superior. However, it has been many years since major construction was undertaken at the last-named. It is used principally for reconstruction, repair, and the fabrication of metal forms for shoreside industries.
The current wave of lake ship building was initiated in 1968 when construction began on the 858—foot Roger Blough for United States Steel Corporation and in 1969 with commencement of work at Erie on the 1,000-foot Stewart J. Cort for Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Both are diesel-driven self-unloaders designed to carry iron ore pellets. Then, with the enactment of the Merchant Marine Act of 1970 and the need for fleet modernization, contracts were announced on an increasing scale—both as to numbers and as to ship size. The major builders—American Ship Building Company and Bay Shipbuilding Corporation have shared in this business
The 23 new vessels range from 384 to 1,000 feet in length. In capacity they range up to 59,000 gross tons (gross, rather than deadweight, tonnage is the normal measure of ship size on the lakes); all of the bulk cargo vessels are self-unloaders; the two tankers include innovative features designed to broaden the scope of their operation. More new ships are expected to be built.
With the present building program, the size of lake vessels has undergone a startling change after three quarters of a century of building to size. The first initiatives toward expansion in size occurred in 1968 when the Poe Lock at St. Marys Falls Canal was opened. Because this new lock can accommodate vessels of up to 1,000 feet to by 105 feet, the Stewart J. Cort was built to those dimensions. She has been followed by contracts for six more ships of the same size and similar or greater propulsive power.
As a result of the restricted and shallow channels between the lakes, ships have to be able to carry as much as possible on limited drafts. Hence, lakers utilize as near a maximum block coefficient as feasible without entirely eliminating a reasonable speed/horsepower ratio or a satisfactorily attractive silhouette. (Block coefficient is the nearness to a block or square which can be achieved by the designer. A high block coefficient makes for a very blunt bow.)
Despite use of the same basic design concept through this century, lake transport has held its own against the competition of other modes and remains the most economical method of transporting large tonnages.
The replacement of small, old ships by big new ones, through resulting in the reduction of fleet numbers, is providing more capacity—not only per trip because of the new ships' greater size but throughout the shipping season, because of their greater speed, which means more voyages can be made in the same period of time. The same end is served also as a result of the efforts, shortly to be described, toward extending the shipping season and toward deepening the channels.
For instance, in 1973 the average iron ore cargo was over 17,000 gross tons, compared with under 12,000 gross tons two decades earlier. In 1973 the average ship passing through the St. Marys River, whose depth limits the extent of vessel loading and cargoes, drew 27 feet one inch, nearly three feet more than was possible only a decade earlier. It also meant an average gain of nearly 3,000 tons per cargo for vessels capable of that deep loading.
Another interesting change in Great Lakes vessels has been the trend from coal toward oil fuel. All of the ships built or contracted for since 1968 have been diesel powered. During recent years there has been a significant turn toward conversion of steam vessels from coal to oil for bunker fuel. The swing has occurred both in deference to the Environmental Protective Agency’s activity and the reduction in crew numbers which becomes possible with the change. Hence nowadays 60 percent of the lake carriers burn oil and only 40 per cent use coal. The average oil-fired lake bulk freighter transports 495 ton-miles per gallon. In some instances fuel frugality extends to as much as 650 ton-miles per gallon. (In comparison, river tow boats yield about 240 ton-miles per gallon and railroads 200 ton-miles per gallon.) During the past year, however, the preference for oil slowed because of the enormous increase in the cost of such fuel.
A contributing factor in decisions to build new vessels is the desire for greater speed. For many years twelve miles per hour was considered the optimum gait for lake vessels, but now most of the new carriers are in the 16 to 18 mile-per-hour range and some ships have speeds above twenty miles per hour. However, their effective speed is lessened by the long narrow channels connecting the lakes, where it is limited by regulation. Thus the value of increased power and speed are not as clearly documented as in the ocean trades. In the Lake Erie-Lake Superior segment, there are about 160 miles of such narrow channels, or about 20 per cent of the total distance. On the passage from the Seaway to Lake Superior the restricted mileage increases nearly 290 miles.
On the lakes proper, restricted waterways include the Welland Ship Canal, the Detroit and St. Clair rivers, and the St. Marys River, with its locks.
The basic concept of lake design has not been substantially altered through the years. There was a period when the lighter Isherwood hull, with longitudinal rather than transverse framing, was in vogue, but this concept did not provide sufficiently durable ships for the weather and operating conditions found on the lakes. Usually a length-to-beam ratio of 10:1 has been normal. In the new ships this has been reduced to 9:1 in some instances in order to fit the usable dimensions of the new Poe Lock, and deeper hulls have been cranked in as a means of enhancing cargo capacity. The block coefficient has been increased in some new hulls nearly 90 per cent, or about the ultimate for practical design.
Despite their specialized character, lake ships suffer from no structural weaknesses, a fact which is sported by the paucity of founderings or other casualties resulting from stress of weather. During the past quarter of a century, there have been only three founderings involving U. S. lake bulk carriers. It is important to understand, though, that lake designs are not adapted to ocean service. Wave lengths on the lakes are much shorter than those in the ocean, and this means that there are fewer unsupported areas of the keel in heavy weather.
In general, Canadian lake vessels are built to designs comparable to those of U. S. carriers, although their dependence on grain as a major cargo has necessitated larger cubic cargo capacity and smaller side tanks and other water ballast areas. Ballast is necessary, of course, for the considerable amount of route between discharging one cargo and picking up another. There are other variations, mostly related to government safety requirements. Nearly all U. S. and Canadian lake vessels have double bottoms, water tight side tanks, and essentially are of double skin construction, thereby enhancing their ability to survive hull punctures.
No new U. S. tankers for lake service were commissioned between 1963 and 1974. But a new ship, named Saturn, was built at a Louisiana shipyard, moved to the Great Lakes via the East Coast and St. Lawrence Seaway during the late summer of 1974, and is now in service. Although designed for general product hauling, she is the first lake tanker to be fitted with heating equipment for the carriage of hot asphalt as a regular cargo. With capacity of 7,200 gross tons, a retracting pilot house so she can get under low fixed bridges, and diesel power, she will be of handy size to supply almost any lake terminal. Another tanker of 9,000 gross tons is under construction and is scheduled to be available this year.
In Canada, tanker construction has continued at a measured pace, with all new ships being modest in size. One of the largest is the 12,600-gross-ton Imperial St. Clair, commissioned in 1974. During the previous decade, Canadian tankers for lake service were in the 6,000-8,000-gross-ton range with the exception of the Imperial Bedford which can transport 14,400 gross tons of cargo.
In earlier years considerable amounts of crude petroleum moved over the lakes, but such shipments ended with the expansion of the pipeline system. Nowadays, tanker cargoes consist of refined products, intended for destinations in all sections of the Great Lakes region. Liquid industrial chemicals are included as a segment of tanker volume.
The railway car ferry trade, which once was active on lakes Ontario, Erie, and Michigan and the Strait of Mackinac, now is confined to the last two areas. The economic attractiveness of this complement to rail movements is fading. Presently, two operators on Lake Michigan and at the Strait are making efforts either to reduce or discontinue their required sailings. Lake car ferries are unusual in appearance, with interior rail tracks on which the cars are fastened for the water voyage. Some ferries are equipped to transport automobiles on an upper deck, as well as passengers in adequately appointed cabins. These craft generally have dimensions of about 400 feet in length by 60 feet in beam and have speeds of 16 to 18 miles per hour. The most recent construction was in 1953, when the Badger was commissioned. A special type of ferry is used to move rail cars across the Detroit and St. Clair Rivers between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, and between Port Huron, Michigan, and Sarnia, Ontario, respectively. The cross lake ferries are equipped for year- around service, although ice in mid-Lake Michigan is not usually so severe as to impede normal scheduling. Occasionally shore ice makes Coast Guard assistance at the terminal points necessary.
Navigation in the open lakes is aided by gyro compass, radio direction finder, radar, and radio telephone. Celestial navigation is not necessary for there are frequent landfalls. The lake fleet was the first large group of commercial ships to use the ship-to-shore and ship- to-ship radio telephone widely and to install navigational radar on a fleet-wide basis.
Because of the fixed routes and the great density of traffic, it early became both possible and necessary to designate on navigation charts prescribed sailing courses for the purpose of separating traffic steaming in opposite directions. The first such lanes were established on lakes Superior and Huron in 1911 and gradually they were extended to all five lakes. The courses are shown on government navigation charts, and adherence to the courses has been required by owners and shipping trade organizations in both the United States and Canada. Consequently, there have been few collisions over a period of six decades. After the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, there was a time when ocean masters were negligent in adhering to the separate courses, and there were collisions and sinkings. But this situation has been brought under control as foreign owners recognized the validity of this safety tool.
In order to describe the separate course procedure and discuss its adaptation to traffic problems then developing in the English Channel, the author was invited in 1964 to address the combined institutes of navigation of Great Britain, France, and West Germany, at Eastbourne, England. Seven years later prescribed courses were made obligatory in the Channel, thus indicating a worldwide recognition of this means for furthering navigational safety under congested operating conditions.
Foreseeing the availability of the new ships, the operators have begun a program to find out how far the lake navigation season can be extended. Instead of finishing operations by mid-December, they are trying to keep the larger, more powerful ships in their fleets in commission until mid-January or later. (The smaller, less powerful ships might not be able to cut through the thick ice.) Assistance in this activity is provided by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard, the Weather Bureau, the Great Lakes Commission, the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, and other agencies, all of which continue their varied activities much longer than formerly. As a result, tonnage moved during late December and early in the new year expanded in five years from half a million to more than four million net tons of cargo. No major casualties and very little damage to vessels has resulted.
There are difficulties, of course, in changing the pattern of operation to include periods when severe weather and low temperature are to be expected in northern waters. Ships move slowly and are subject to schedule delays. Planning to alleviate all possible discomfort to ships' crews is necessary. Only cargoes which are not seriously affected by low temperature can be carried.
Once, iron ore was difficult to move during cold weather because of its appreciable moisture content. But now nearly 75 per cent of that commodity consists of processed pellets which are not affected by temperature changes. Grain can be handled in either warm or cold weather. Modern tankers have heating coils toward off the normal problems of cold weather viscosity. Weather problems continue for coal and stone.
There has been no organized opposition on the part of lake seamen toward longer season operation. However, a trend has been established toward offsetting leave periods during the summer so that sufficient crews will be available for those vessels which operate in the winter.
It is obvious that with increasingly costly vessel there is a desire to obtain the most utilization of the investment so as to spread the overhead across a maximum annual productive period. There is a corresponding urge on the part of receivers of cargo to limit the accumulation of high cost inventories. Both desires can best be met by a longer operating period by the ships.
With new ships coming into service and expanded trade opportunities indicated, there is another important factor which has to be considered if the present building program and ships yet to come are to provide the best results: channel depth. Presently, water levels are fighting words to riparian land owners on the lakes and to some environmentalists. Lake levels are high fin I now, and even the largest vessels can load to their marks. But this situation can change quickly. Nine years ago lake levels were low. Efforts begun at the time to bring about more effective regulation of water levels and the further deepening of some important channels have not yet borne fruit.
The most important element in the operation of the lake fleet is the people who man the ships. Deck officers on the lakes are licensed as pilots and can be qualified to navigate in all of the lake shipping areas. Men with licenses as ocean mates or masters are not. Thus, there is no interchangeability between lake and ocean deck officers. In the engineering area the diversity of propulsion machinery is narrowing and thus there is some prospect of movement between the lakes and the coast. Graduates of the various maritime academies are evincing a degree of interest in lake careers.
Among unlicensed men, most lake personnel live in the eight lake-bordering states. There is very little interchange between ocean and lake employment and most ocean oriented seamen seem not to care for the repetitive trade characteristic of the lakes and therefore do not work out too well on the lake ships.
Over the years there has been a significant career factor in lake shipping, often with two or three generations of a family having been so engaged. Clearly, a substantial percentage of crews have looked on the lakes as a worthwhile career. With the advent of automation and the extra skills now required, the need for long term men is more urgent than before. In contrast, artificial officer shortages have occurred recently as a labor organizations which permitted men with specified minimum periods of employment to retire with life-time pensions in early middle age. This is detrimental not only to the industry but also to the men themselves.
The S. Great Lakes fleet affords employment opportunity for about 1,700 officers and 4,300 unlicensed men—all of whom must be licensed or certificated by the U. S. Coast Guard. For sixty years the Lake Carriers' Association has maintained winter schools for prospective licensed officers, as well as short term classes for men seeking to obtain certificates of service as able seamen, oilers, and firemen. Over this period some 2,700 men have obtained deck officer licenses and 4,000 have earned engineer licenses through attendance at these facilities, which have been made available without change. During the past decade, labor organizations have participated in the training program. The Lake Carriers’ Association plan also makes provision for home study kits which are designed for shipboard use, in preparation to attend the winter classes.
With the advent of longer operating seasons, proposals for pre-license training at intervals during the year are being readied. Another adjunct to training has been the establishment of the Great Lakes Maritime Academy as a part of Northwestern Michigan College, Traverse City, Michigan. With a complete set of marine equipment, including large tugs and other vessels, the Academy, under the supervision of Admiral Willard Smith, a former Commandant of the U. S. Coast Guard, is recognized and provided for by both the State of Michigan and the Maritime Administration as part of the Nationwide group of nautical academies. The course lasts three years and generally requires a high school diploma for entry. There are about 100 students. Because there are too few licensed officers in the lakes trades, employment opportunities for graduates, as well as for men following the usual line of job progression, are ample.
The Canadian lake fleet provides opportunities for 1,500 officers and 3,000 unlicensed ratings. Since that country has no major ocean merchant marine, the men of the Great Lakes fleet represent the bulk of the country’s maritime employment. Training programs have, in recent years, been patterned after those in the United States, with both industry and government participating.
In Canada the provisions for pilots in the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes, to assure the sub-navigation of foreign vessels entering the system has been a developing source of employment. Additionally, the engagement of St. Lawrence River pilots between Montreal and Les Escoumins, to seaward of the Saguertay River, is obligatory on all vessels. At the latter point such service is no longer needed.
In the United States the requirement for special pilots is limited to vessels designed primarily for use on the oceans. Pilots are required only in restricted channels or canals, and overall supervision is provided by the Great Lakes Pilotage Administration, a division of the U. S. Coast Guard.
The St. Lawrence Seaway, dedicated in 1959, with President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II participating in the ceremonies, was a dream coming true after a period of forty years. Originally considered as a better avenue for Canadian grain exports than either an all-rail or a split lake-then rail route to Montreal its final impetus was provided by the decision that the immense iron ore deposits in eastern Quebec and Labrador should be developed. Only by means of a deep water channel circumventing the rapids of the upper St. Lawrence River could this treasure be made available to the steel industry in the heartland of the two countries.
Thus a treaty was negotiated covering not only navigation but also the development of the gigantic hydroelectric resources of the rapids area. The Seaway has been successful as an artery of bulk commerce, for the volume of traffic is high, but it has not developed the flow of manufactured exports and imports which had been hoped for. Canadian lake-type vessels carry about 85 per cent of the traffic—largely composed of grain, iron ore, and tanker products. U. S. vessels have never been an appreciable factor in Seaway trade.
During the early years several U. S. ocean vessel operators, including Moore-McCormack, American Export, Isbrandtsen, and Grace Line, tried to operate subsidized vessels into the lakes. However, the wide dispersal of loading and receiving ports and the small lots of cargo at individual terminals soon brought these pioneering efforts to unsatisfactory conclusions.
While the 27-foot channel depth of the Seaway may have restrained some ocean vessels from entering the lakes, this was not a decisive impediment, since all of the principal lake channels and harbors also have 27 foot channels. Nonetheless, large foreign vessels have participated in the grain trades, taking on final cargo at Montreal or another lower St. Lawrence River port to get down to their Plimsoll marks. In the container trade, an innovative British firm, Manchester Liners Limited, has been operating a feeder service between Montreal and major lake ports for several years; thus making possible direct movement between the lakes and northern Europe. Most foreign-flag liner services are performed by seagoing break-bulk vessels of moderate size. Some trade is carried between U. S. and Canadian lake ports in British Commonwealth ships.
In 1973 foreign ships carried 535 cargoes of grain through the Seaway, or 32 per cent of overall grain shipments. Of such forwardings to overseas countries, volume for the Soviet Union accounted for 26 per cent, about the same as in 1972. Thus it is apparent that U.S. lake ports have shared substantially in the export grain trade, although U. S.-flag ships have not found it possible to do so.
In 1973, 15.7 million net tons of iron ore moved westward through the Seaway to Great Lakes destinations, almost all in Canadian ships. This represented 14.5 per cent of the entire lake ore trade. Offsetting eastbound grain cargoes, including the direct overseas trade, amounted to 22.7 million net tons.
Studies are continuously under way to determine whether economics justify enlargement of the St. Lawrence Seaway so that the locks of that waterway could transit 1,000-foot ships, the same size that the Poe Lock at St. Marys Falls Canal has been capable of handling since 1968. Obviously costs would be very high since all of the work would be in solid rock, with a total of fifteen locks in the St. Lawrence and Welland sections of the Seaway being involved. While this would allow the biggest lake vessels to transit the Seaway and serve the eastern Canadian ore loading ports, ocean ships would continue to be limited because their sharper lines restrict the amount of cargo they can carry through the 27 foot channels (at low water datum) of the lake route. If deepening of the Seaway were to be done to, say, 32 feet, to match the proposed lake channel depths, even more expense would be involved.
To deepen the channels connecting Lake Erie with lakes Huron and Superior would involve 65 to 70 miles of the 160 miles of narrow channels, plus some of the shallow western end of Lake Erie. It would take a long time to do this and completion probably could not be expected before 1990—even if environmental concerns could be met promptly and the necessary massive financing were authorized by the Congress. The Canadian government would also need to fund the Welland Canal, work and a major part of any St. Lawrence expansion.
The ships are here, and more are building which could use the increased channel depths and lock dimensions. This has been the history of lake shipping through the decades—first expand vessel size and capacity and in time the enlarged navigating facilities will become available. This might be termed build-push progress!
In considering the defense aspects of lake shipping, one can best theorize the future by examining the past. In World War II, large tonnages of grain moved out of the lakes through the St. Lawrence for our allies in the European war zone. With the use of submarine nets in the lower St. Lawrence and the usual types of naval units, shipping for the North Atlantic moved through the relatively sheltered estuary as far east as Newfoundland, compared with the entirely exposed ocean crossing by vessels from east coast ports. There is no reason to assume that such an advantage would disappear in any future conflict.
But the major impact of the lake trade, in war as in peace, is its unexcelled ability to marshal immense tonnages of essential commodities. This was proved in World War I, again in World War II, and more recently in the Korean and Vietnam periods. Operating independently, with only policy guidance from Washington, the U. S. lake fleet met every quota, did it with economy of manpower, and assured the maximum use of potential industrial capacity.
In both world wars there was close cooperation between Canada and the United States. International interchangeability resulted in breaking many potential traffic bottlenecks. If we can judge the future by the past, then the Great Lakes fleet is one of the Nation’s greatest assets in time of emergency.