Big Bathtub

The lock lay like a tremendous, zebra-striped bathtub for Paul Bunyan. (Down were the barrage balloons that usually guard it.) Up to the walk atop the 680-ton lock gates stepped 16-year-old Jan Harns, smashed a beribboned bottle of champagne over the black iron and concrete of the walk. Thus this week one of the world's most strategic locks was formally opened to deep-laden, deep-tooting ore boats. The lock, named for General Douglas MacArthur, is the newest on the Sault Ste. Marie Canal, the most vital waterway in the U.S. Through the Soo passes 80% of the iron ore (mainly from Minnesota's Mesabe range) that U.S. steel mills feed into the U.S. war machine.

Thus ended a three-year nightmare for top war production officials; one saboteur's lucky blast heretofore could have wrecked the two big side-by-side Soo locks, leaving but one small lock to carry the ore, and so throttle steel production.

Beyond the Moon. The U.S. had not always seen the supreme importance of the 60-odd mile St. Mary's River connecting Lakes Superior and Huron, and the need for a canal around the three-quarter-mile white water rapids. The first canal and a tiny, 39-foot-long lock were dug in 1797 by the North West Fur Co. to steal a march on the Hudson's Bay Co. This gave its bearded, fur-hatted voyageurs a quicker route for their flat-bottomed bateaux. During the war of 1812, Americans wrecked this canal. Later, when the Michigan legislature asked Congress to dig a new canal, Congress refused, relying on the judgment of Orator Henry Clay, who cried: "It is a work quite beyond the remotest settlement of the United States--if not the moon."

When Michigan went ahead on its own, Federal soldiers chased the shovelmen away. In 1852 Congress relented--the discovery of the fabulous iron ore reserve of the region had been made. Since then the canal has been enlarged, new locks have been added: the Weitzel Lock (1881), Poe (1896), Davis (1914), Sabin (1-919).*

Every 20 Minutes. Even in peacetime, on many occasions traffic would jam. Through three locks (the Weitzel has been too shallow to use since 1919) staggering tonnage totals flowed; in 1929 some 92,000,000 tons, more than through the Panama, Suez and Kiel canals combined. In the short season, nipped to eight months by ice, as many as 16,000 ships slid through the locks, one every 20 minutes.

The Army's Colonel Paschal Neilson Strong supervised construction of the new lock (writing the adventures of "Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy" in his spare time); Chicago's Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. did the work.

The problem was to lick the manpower and housing shortage, the intense, bone-chilling 35DEG-below-zero Soo winters, in order to slash the 20-month scheduled estimate. When weary workers poured the last concrete-mix a fortnight ago, the scheduled time had been slashed by seven months. For this feat, an Army and Navy E went to the Great Lakes company.

The MacArthur Lock is not so long as the Davis or Sabin, but it is deep enough for the new 16,000-ton Maritime Commission ore carriers. It can be filled or emptied in six minutes. And it opens in a critical month in a critical year. A late spring delayed opening of the ice-choked St. Mary's River, whittled 8,000,000 desperately-needed tons of ore shipments. How much the MacArthur Lock increases Soo capacity is a military secret. But steelmen know the increase is enormous.

*Named for: Engineers General Godfrey Weitzel, General Orlando M. Poe, Colonel Charles E. L. B Davis, Louis L. Sabin, who helped build the locks.

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