Last Dollar

The hell of Great Lakes seamen is the St. Mary's River over whose cascades 75,000 cubic feet of icy cold Lake Superior water somersault every second. At the city of Sault Sainte Marie, this "Soo" River drops 20 feet in three-quarters of a mile. But both the Canadian and the U. S. Governments have built locks at the cascades, that can lift two to four lake steamers to the Lake Superior level. These ships, long, round-topped whale-backs for the most part and peculiar to the Great Lakes, carry coal from Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky to ports of Lake Superior, the largest body of fresh water in the world. On the down voyage they haul wheat from Canada (Port Arthur and Fort William) and from the U. S. (Duluth), and iron ore from Lake Superior's southern shores. This commerce is immensely valuable and ship owners push their vessels to beyond the limits of the navigation season, which ends the first week in December and begins the middle of April. It is at the end of the season that St. Mary's River becomes a veritable hell for mariners, with ice smashing down the river. Sailors go through it, however, at the bidding of their masters zealous to wring a last dollar from transportation. Last week this sailors' hell was frozen over--solid. In the West Neebish Channel, in the Rock Cut and in Mud Lake there were spots where the waters were solid to the channel bottom. Not a ship could pass through. More than one hundred, 66 of them bound down with 15,000,000 bushels of grain, had been caught in the freeze. From Detour to the "Soo" they stretched in long file, like sausages linked out over a gutter of lard. Reefered sailors dog-trotted up and down the long iron decks; flapped their cold arms against their bodies, like turkeys trying to fly to a shed roof; dared not pull off their mittens to blow their noses. There was wind and snow. Men hunched up their shoulders and pulled their necks into sweater collars. Like horses miserable in a gale, they turned their backs to the blowing.

For a time fear spread that the crews might have to go hungry. Food stores were running low. But there was greater danger that some of them might be killed, for the vessels, with plates only five-eighths of an inch thick, stood in constant danger of being crushed by the squeezing ice. The potential destruction of property aggregated some $200,000,000; insurance lapsed with the first week of the month.

All week, wooden tugs armored with iron plates gnawed at the solidifying ice. Masters poured oil into the waters to retard the rate of freezing. It takes more cold to freeze fouled water than pure. But the weather was 20DEG below zero and the tugs had to do their work. They would back off 300 to 400 feet from the pack. Then with a snarl of steam they would dash at the ice, only to be bounced by their own recoil. Yet at each attack a bit of ice did crumble to their bites.

At the week's end, the Sainte Marie, largest ice crusher in the world, swaggered over from the Strait of Mackinac, where she does regular winter duty. Like a burly policewoman, she pushed her way through crashing, shrieking ice to see what the trouble was. Where the pack was solid, she would back away, and, with a schlup and a slide and a scream of steam, she was high out of water, half on top of the ice. The ice would yield, like an overpacked trunk when a big woman sits on its lid. Slowly she bashed her way up the St. Mary's, freed this ship and that, brought food and fuel to sailors. With continued cold, she may not reach all ships; some may be frozen tightly until spring.