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Little Bit Close to the Pier! Elusive, Fresh Out of Refit Thousand Foot Laker

Quite a bit to talk about in this one! Making a very rare arrival through the Duluth Ship Canal on her first trip of the 2024 season, the Stewart J Cort! I’ve only ever caught her one other time on this end of the harbor, 2 years ago. Arriving just days after a lengthy drydock stay in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, where she received her 5 year inspection, new paint and other work over the course of four months, she came straight to the canal! (Isn’t she shiny!) She arrived through the Duluth side to use the fuel dock before going to her usual dock at BNSF Superior. She also features one of the best horns you’ve probably never heard! Personally I’d rank it my third favorite after Barker and Munson. She came probably within 15-20ft of the North Pier at her closest point during the turn. Far, Far closer than the usual 50+ feet they typically sail at, allowing spectators a spectacular closeup experience! The channel has a dredged zone 245ft wide, with an additional 5-10ft of rock buffer between the channel and the pier walls, so she was cutting it a bit close, especially since the back 1/3 of a ship swings outwards during a turn! Fortunately they were on the ball, correcting with thrusters and keeping her off the side. I also came SO close to not being able to see her and only did through an unusual event. For those of you who may not know I’m a school bus driver, and on my last route of the day I bizarrely only had two students. Finished up my route nearly 40 minutes early, saw the Cort and rushed down to the Canal, making it just seconds after the bridge started raising! Built in 1972, the Cort’s front and stern sections were built in Mississippi, while the middle was built in Erie, Pennsylvania. The front and back, named Stubby (people still haven’t let her live that down) https://images.app.goo.gl/7e3vJKSfn3e... sailed around the Atlantic through the seaway into the Lakes, never to leave again. She was cut apart, widened with ballast tanks and combined with the 900ft mid-section. The result was a 1,000ft (304m) long experimental vessel like nothing the Great Lakes had ever seen before. One of the largest cargo ships in the world at the time, the Cort could carry over twice as much cargo as the long reigning cargo queen, Edmund Fitzgerald, which she sailed alongside for 3 years. Her massive size proved incredibly successful, to the point of changing the shipping landscape in the Lakes forever. Existing ships had to be refitted and added on to in order to compete. Those that couldn’t be were retired and replaced with larger vessels. 12 additional 1,000ft vessels eventually joined her on the Lakes over the next decade, although she was the only one ever built with the classic profile (and one of the last ships in general to be built with a forward pilothouse). Some of her other experiential features were less successful however. Her hatch cover design, which rotates open hydraulically, was never used again on any other laker. I’m not entirely certain of the reason but if I had to guess it would be because they have trouble opening and closing in ice and snow and are more prone to mechanical malfunction. Another feature that hasn’t gone over quite as well is her shuttle boom. Stored inside her aft housing, it hides entirely within the hull when she’s underway below large hatches on the sides of the ship. When unloading it pops out of her side and extends roughly 50ft. This design severely limits the ship’s operations today, able to only carry iron ore, and to just two ports: Burns Harbor Indiana and Conneaut Ohio. Only 4 ships were ever built with this system, and only 2 are still active today, Cort and Edgar B Speer. Edwin H Gott had hers replaced with a more versatile traditional boom in 1997, and Roger Blough’s was destroyed by her fire in early 2021. Despite her limitations, the Cort remains one of the powerhouses of the Great Lakes, hauling over 100 million pounds of iron ore every week to steel mills. The work done on her this year ensures her future for a long while, sailing the lakes as a proud part of the history she influenced so much.