GREAT LAKES SHIPS

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Grain, coal, ore and limestone for making steel travel on Great Lakes ships, too. So do many other kinds of cargo. Long ago, explorers believed that the enormous sea-like lakes would lead them all the way around the world to China. One man even wore Chinese clothes as he paddled westward in an Indian canoe, so he would be properly dressed when he arrived!

For nearly three hundred years since then, vessels have used these great inland waterways to carry goods and the most precious cargo of all—people. Settlers by the thousand from Germany, Sweden, Scotland and other countries filled the decks of sailing vessels and paddle steamboats that took them right up to the frontier. Today almost five hundred modern cargo vessels shuttle back and forth on the Lakes, carrying the wealth that the descendants of those pioneers have created.

A Great Lakes ship doesn’t look like any other. She is broad and low and very long—so long, in fact that she is less rigid than most ships. Seamen say she feels “willowy” if she steams along in heavy weather after her cargo is unloaded. The wheelhouse of a Lakes ship is forward in the bow, along with quarters for the officers and a few passengers. The engine and the crew’s quarters are away at the stern. In between, are holds—a great many more of them than on any ocean-going ship. Marvellous loading machines dump ore or any other loose cargo into the holds. Other wonderful unloading machines quickly scoop the cargo out.

Many of the ships run between ports on Lake Huron and Lake Superior. Lake Superior is 22 feet higher than Lake Huron. So ships must use a sort of ladder to get from one to the other through a canal called the Sault Sainte Marie—or Soo for short. Locks in the canal are the ladder-rungs. Suppose a ship is going up. She enters the narrow canal. Ahead are gates. Gates close behind her. She is in a lock. Now the gates in front open and let more water into the lock, lifting the ship higher. She moves forward into another lock and is lifted again in the same way. Sometimes as she goes along, seamen on board toss money to ice cream sellers on shore, and catch the pop-sticks that are thrown back.

For eight months each year, the Lake ships keep hurrying back and forth between Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Chicago, Duluth and other port cities. There’s hardly a time when a man can’t see smoke from other vessels on the horizon. Then winter comes, and the Lakes freeze over. Lake sailors tie up their ships and go ashore. Most of them have been on the water day and night through the whole season.

Sometimes a ship stays out too late in the year and can’t get to port because ice has locked her in. Then a ship called an ice breaker comes to her rescue. An ice breaker smashes up ice early in the spring, too, so that ships can begin to move.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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