Shipping Through the Great Lakes

New York Times – "From Montreal to Minnesota, by Inland Sea"

"The lock is part of the oldest and most traveled inland waterway in America — a 2,300-mile corridor that connects the Atlantic Ocean with all five Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Since deep draft navigation opened on the St. Lawrence in 1959, more than two and a half billion tons of cargo, worth around $375 billion, have traversed the seaway."

...

"After picking me up in Montreal, the Equinox’s captain, Ross Armstrong, told me the ship would cross Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron and Superior and drop me in Thunder Bay, Ontario — six hours north of Duluth, Minn. The trip would take six days."

...

"The Great Lakes basin spans 10 degrees of latitude and 18 degrees of longitude — set almost exactly between the Equator and the North Pole. The circumference of all five lakes combined is 10,500 miles, nearly half the distance around the world. An average of 200,000 cubic feet of precipitation falls somewhere on the lakes every second."

...

"The job is more demanding than it looks, he said. The lakes sit in a lowland between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, creating a vortex of dangerous weather. Winds can blow 40 to 50 knots and whip up waves 25 feet tall. The slender and flexible lakers seek shelter or heave-to to survive these storms. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum estimates that 6,000 ships and 30,000 lives have been lost on the lakes. The most famous wreck, Edmund Fitzgerald, sank a few hundred miles ahead on our route."

...

"Seeing a Great Lake for the first time, I understood how French explorers, who discovered “the sweet seas” and essentially blazed the border with Canada, assumed that the lakes led to the Pacific — and China. Most 17th-century mapmakers estimated that North America was only 300 miles wide, and every indication on the edge of Lake Ontario suggested that the lake went on forever."