There is a cement spit that juts out into the St. Marys River on the approach to the Soo Locks. These locks are what join Lake Huron to Lake Superior and make up the elevation differential so that large commercial vessels are able to travel between the two bodies of water. When there is a lot of traffic, ships will tie up on the spit wall and wait their turn to go up, sometimes for many hours. If there is no traffic the big ships will come alongside gently and slide the wall which will take them into the Poe, the larger of the two locks. Today, in the early morning, we are waiting for a turnback which takes about a half hour, and rather then tread water in the current the captain decides to throw wires out. We nose ourselves up onto the wall and ease forward scraping the ship along the pier. There is a slight bend about halfway along its length, this is called a dogleg and we will tie-up once we’ve passed it.
‘Land ‘em when it’s safe.’ Says the skipper over the radio and one at a time, the deckhands are swung over the side from our landing boom and lowered down to the pier. One heads aft and the other stays forward and they receive heaving lines (weighted polypropylene rope) which are attached to our mooring wires. As the boat ambles along the boys walk with the long length of line coiled in their hand, matching the ships speed. An easy pace. This is called walking the dog.
The pier is long and a prim line of lamp posts runs down its centre. Back hoes and bobcats and other machinery sit next to small storage sheds on manicured patches of lustrous grass. On the far side an enormous work barge is tied up, it’s crane dormant and folded prone like a sleeping bird with its head tucked beneath a wing, its deck is littered with massive shackles and spools of rusty wire. These locks are maintained and run by the US Army corps of engineers and all of this equipment belongs to them. During WW2, the American locks were heavily guarded by American and Canadian troops as a one-waybombing mission by German planes flying from Norway was thought to be imminent. Most of the American munitions and armaments made then were manufactured with iron ore that came from the mines of Michigan and Minnesota.
‘Send out 4 at the next bollard,’ says the captain.
‘Roger that’ I say. ‘OK!’ I shout to the deckhand walking alongside of me. I’m at the aft winch controls and he’s below me on the dock. He pulls out the wire with the heaving line and I put the winch in payout. When he is grasping the ‘bight’ (the loop at the end of the wire) he unties the slippery clove-hitch with which the heaving line was secured and pops the wire on the bollard. I stick the winch in heave and slow us down until we are fully stopped.
We have 19 hatches on this ship. The hatches are secured with dogs. These are large iron clips which are fastened equidistant around the rectangular hatches’ perimeter. They are secured and loosened with a dog–wrench. There are 42 dogs per hatch and 798 in total. Putting dogs on is called dogging the hatches.
When the lock is turned back the gates open like the impregnable wooden doors of a medieval keep and as the old bitch gets going the boys walk the dog again, until they mount the stairs to the lock and hand off their ropes to the American line handlers.
It has been raining. Proper chucking it down. We are all wearing our foul-weather gear. As we enter the lock the rain eases and the sun struggles to come out from the back of a bank of pregnant cloud as they begin to raise us. Already the air is warming. The trees in the distance are showing their first Autumnal colours, an ochre-ish red with yellow highlights crowns their green plumage. The tips of my fingers feel numb from the wet and cold. The first such time this season. One always forgets the cold in the dog days of summer but how quickly we remember when the fall rolls around.
The deckhands are back aboard. Here they come now, the greasy gang of them, Reservoir-dogging it down the deck in their work-soiled jackets and hole-ridden jeans. If the Captain is the brains of this outfit these guys are the sturdy legs on which much of this trade rests. On these ships fucking the dog, means to avoid work and a dog-fucker is a lazy person. But you’ll not find one in this scruffy lot.
In an hour and a half we will be tied up at Essar Steel unloading our cargo of coal. Before that we will re-rig the mooring wires and undog all the hatches. It should be a quick unload, but you never know. Coal can a be a stubborn guest, at times resistant to leave, and the shore staff at Essar are not famed for their efficiency. It had looked to be clearing but now the sky is staining dark, like ink spilled on blotting paper and I’m glad I didn’t remove my rain gear.
With any luck by midnight we’ll be done and heading upriver into the dark, dark night, past Gros Cap and Whitefish Point and out on to Lake Superior where I’ve been told we’re expecting northerly gales and a bumpy ride across to Thunder Bay. The deck hands will be up all night hosing out the cargo holds to prepare for a load of grain.
No new tricks then. No sir, not here. No new tricks.