At the end of a pier in Sandusky, Ohio the Norfolk and Southern Coal Company’s load rig perches on the seawall like a steam-punk gargoyle, regurgitating a steady torrent of carbonized rock from its gaping maw into the bellies of waiting freighters.  It is an impressive assemblage of steel i-beams, rivet and bolt, enormous cogs, fly-wheels and mile upon mile of thick cable;built nearly 100 years ago, it is a regular stop for many in the Great Lakes fleet.  Railway tracks run straight into it and one by one, in a fantastically simple feat of engineering, cars are lifted and up-turned, relieving them of their cargo.  It is a loud affair, a junkyard orchestra of clangs and squeals and crashes and the steady roar of coal pounding into the ship’s holds.  The pier is taken up with mountains of coal and the attendant rail cars that have come all the way from the blasted-out hill tops of West Virginia carrying this outmoded fossil fuel.  The whole area is coated in a layer of red-hued black dust and in the hot Ohio summers, as if to contribute to the piers satanic aspect, it is home to a thriving colony of black water snakes that have sent bigger and tougher sailors than me scrambling up the ship’s ladder.  

We are here to collect 22 000 tons of hi-vol coal to deliver to the Soo.  In order to position each of our vessel’s cargo hatches beneath the load rig we must run our mooring wires out 600 feet in either direction and in this manner we’re able to maneuverback and forth without using the engine.  A load can take anywhere from 8 to 16 hours.   One time we waited for 36 hours as the train delivering our product had been misplaced between Sandusky and West Virginia, lost somewhere on the vast network of tracks that hashtags the country like a steel brand.

En route to Sandusky from Prescott, Ontario, we had to pass through the Welland Canal, the system that allows ships to travelfrom Lake Ontario to Lake Erie and makes up the height of Niagara Falls with a series of 8 locks.  There is a stretch betweenlocks 7 and 8 known to mariners as ‘the ditch’ or ‘the level’.  Well into my third season of wheeling and this place still gives me the jitters.  During the day it’s easy, the Captain will just give the order to ‘Keep ‘er in the middle’ but at night it is dark, and the banks are lined with lights which reflect into the water and create all kinds of scatter.  To make matters worse the banks themselves are not visible.  This makes figuring out where you are, as the wheelsman, exceedingly difficult.  My days are made up largely of hours which are not my finest, but of them all, thiswas the nadir.  A couple of times I felt myself freezing up in confusion and I had to ask the mate of the watch, himself a veteran wheelsman of 15 years, to stand by me and talk me through it, as I fishtailed the 700’ ship down the canal like a slippery minnow in a hose pipe.  The great worry is getting your stern too close to the shore which will create suction and send the bow careening towards the opposite bank.  My jangled nerves were not helped by the recent collision of two freighters in this spot a month prior.  The incident was captured on video and is enough to send shivers down even the saltiest of timbers.  

We made it to lock 8 intact and I was relieved at midnight. Iwent to bed vowing to hand in my notice the following day because there was no way I was ever going to put myself or the ship through that again.  My nerves settled somewhat by morning and were further relieved when the mate and captain assured me, that while bad, they had both seen much worse.

To use the parlance of cancel culture, I, like many others, find coal ‘problematic’ and I am uncomfortable with the small way in which I contribute to its transport and use.  At least, I think to myself, one ship load is saving it being transported by 800 trucks, which is one of the things that makes bulk cargo economically and environmentally viable.  If anything were worthy of being ‘cancelled’ it is coal.  It is dirty and dated and detrimental to our planet both in its extraction and its application.  But as ever, we can’t blame the soldier for the war, and switching to a more tenable source of power is not a quick fix or one that can happen overnight.  

By the way, the collision that occurred in the canal, it turns out, terrible as the circumstances were, that the incident was the metaphoric jackpot.  One ship was carrying coal and the other was carrying blades for a wind-powered turbine.  

And you, friends, can guess which one fared better…