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Along the 1,600-mile, ice gray arch of the St Lawrence Seaway, the 2020 Great Lakes commercial shipping season will lurch back to life on March 25 when the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. reopen. The ceremonial opening signals a passage with passable ice and the 114th Great Lakes season for its fleet of 45 venerable lakers. Most of these huge self-loading freight haulers are at least 50 years old, rust free, and fit; American steel sailing on a freshwater sea.
Lakers are the stars of the Great Lakes. The up-to-1,000-foot freighters are eye-catching, mesmerizing, romantic vestiges of industrial glory days. And we can’t get over their size, whether they’re powering through Lake Erie or pivoting around the hair-pin curves of the Cuyahoga River. Interlake Steamship Co., which is based in Middleburg Heights and owns nine lakers, celebrates the beauty of the ships in its annual calendar.
Interlake Steamship Company, headquartered in Ohio, has a fleet of nine self-unloading vessels, ranging in carrying capacity from 24,000 to 68,000 gross tons, with a total trip capacity of 390,360 gross tons. Interlake Steamship Company carries approximately 20 million tons of cargo annually. In 2016, the company completed a 10-year, $100 million fleet modernization program.
“Iron ore mined from the Minnesota range is truly one of the building blocks of America,” says Mark W. Barker, president of Interlake Steamship Company, which has a fleet of nine vessels that crisscross the Great Lakes, primarily loaded with this leading cargo. “This raw material powers the domestic steel industry and is critical to our manufacturing sectors and our national security. We are proud to be carrying it on our ships which are U.S. crewed, U.S.-built and U.S. owned.”
The first U.S.-flag laker to be built this century was commissioned this week and figures to be completed by mid-2022. The new “river-class” vessel will be built to transit the Great Lakes and service customers in some of the smaller harbors found in the rivers connecting the lakes.
In mid-2022, Interlake Steamship Co. will welcome the first new ship to its fleet since 1981. The Middleburg Heights-based U.S. flag fleet is partnering with Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding in Sturgeon Bay, Wisc., on construction of the bulk carrier. A news release stated that the ship is “believed to be the first ship for U.S. Great Lakes service built on the Great Lakes since 1983.” In an email, Interlake president Mark W. Barker said this is the first fully integrated ship the company has built since 1981. It did a tug-barge conversion in 1998. The addition of the new ship will bring Interlake Steamship’s fleet to 10 active vessels, as it will be extending the fleet instead of replacing a ship.
You can’t help but stare at a freighter on the Cuyahoga River. The Dorothy Ann-Pathfinder is a Cleveland mainstay, representing the city’s manufacturing backbone and the river’s environmental resurgence.
The Great Lakes 2019 navigation season officially kicked off at 12:01 a.m. today, with the first 1,000-footer to ply the inland seas snagging this year’s bragging rights as the first ship through the Soo Locks.
Great pay and benefits, free meals plus room and board all without a college degree.
An apprentice pilot on the Great Lakes, Jason Church hops on numerous international cargo vessels in a given year as he transits the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway out to the Atlantic Ocean as a career.
