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Stretching 2,342 miles from Lake Superior to the Atlantic, the Saint Lawrence Seaway opens the industrial and agricultural heart of North America to deep-draft ocean vessels. Via the seaway and the great circle route, Detroit is 400 miles closer to Amsterdam than New York is. The entire Great Lakes–Saint Lawrence Seaway system comprises 9,500 square miles of navigable waters, linked by three series of locks. A ship entering at Montreal rises to more than 600 feet above sea level at Lake Superior. The waterway accommodates vessels 730 feet long, with a seventy-six-foot beam and a draft of twenty-six feet.
The present seaway, opened to deep-draft navigation in 1959, evolved from the engineering efforts of several centuries. In 1534 the Lachine Rapids above Montreal turned back the ships of Jacques Cartier, but by 1783 a canal that afforded passage to flat-bottomed bateaux by passed the rapids. By 1798 a small canal provided a route around the Sault Sainte Marie, on the Canadian side. In 1829 William Hamilton Merritt completed a chain of forty wooden locks across the Niagara peninsula. By 1861 ships were sailing regularly between the Great Lakes and Europe.
Increasing ship sizes and the rapidly growing economy of the Midwest created pressures for further improvements. Between 1913 and 1932, Canada built the Welland Canal to lift deep-draft ships from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie. Strong opposition from sectional interests blocked U.S. participation in proposals to develop the power-generating and navigation potential of the international rapids. The Wiley-Dondero Act of 1954 authorized the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation to construct that part of the seaway in the United States, and construction began under agreement with Canada.
Three initiatives in public policy distinguish the Saint Lawrence Seaway. First, it is international in character, with navigation facilities in both the United States and Canada. Second, entities of two governments, each with authority to negotiate with the other, operate it. Third, tolls assessed on shippers meet its operating expenses.
Bibliography
Thompson, John Herd, and Stephen J. Randall. Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994.
Willoughby, William R. The Joint Organizations of Canada and the United States. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Saint Lawrence Seaway |
The seaway has created a fourth seacoast accessible to the industrial and agricultural heartland of North America and has brought oceangoing vessels to lake ports such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Duluth, and Toronto. The maximum vessel size is 730 ft (223 m) in length with a cargo capacity of 28,000 tons. The shipping season has been extended to 250 days (mid-April to mid-December) by increased use of icebreakers and air pumps to control ice formation in the locks. Iron ore, wheat, and coal are the principal cargoes carried on the seaway.
Construction of the project was authorized by Canada in 1951 and by the United States in 1954. The St. Lawrence Seaway Authority was charged with construction and maintenance of required facilities in Canada; the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation was responsible for facilities in the United States. Principal new locks on the St. Lawrence River section of the seaway are, from east to west, St. Lambert (18 ft/5.5 m lift); Côte Ste Catherine (30 ft/9.1 m), which enables vessels to bypass the Lachine Rapids; Lower and Upper Beauharnois (82 ft/25 m, including the Beauharnois Canal built in 1932); Bertrand H. Snell (45 ft/13.7 m); Dwight D. Eisenhower (38 ft/11.6 m); and Iroquois Guard Lock (3 ft/91 cm). Hydroelectric facilities were integrated with the project and developed and operated by the Power Authority of the State of New York and the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario.
Bibliography
See L. Thomas, Story of the St. Lawrence Seaway (1972); G. Sussman, The St. Lawrence Seaway (1978).
| Wikipedia: Saint Lawrence Seaway |
| St. Lawrence Seaway | |
|---|---|
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| Construction Began | 1954 |
| Date of first use | 1959 |
| Date Completed | April 25th, 1959 |
| Status | Open |
The St. Lawrence Seaway (French: la Voie Maritime du Saint-Laurent) is the common name for a system of canals that permits ocean-going vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the North American Great Lakes, as far as Lake Superior. Legally it extends from Montreal to Lake Erie, including the Welland Canal and the locks at Sault Ste. Marie. The seaway is named after the Saint Lawrence River, which it follows from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean. This section of the seaway is not a continuous canal, but rather comprises stretches of navigable river, a number of locks, and short channels made to bypass difficulties in the natural waterway.
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The Saint Lawrence Seaway was preceded by a number of other canals. In 1862, locks on the St Lawrence allowed transit of vessels 186 ft (57 m) long, 44 ft 6 in (13.56 m) wide, and 9 ft (2.7 m) deep. The Welland Canal at that time allowed transit of vessels 142 ft (43 m) long, 26 ft (7.9 m) wide, and 10 ft (3.0 m) deep, but was generally too small to allow passage of larger ocean-going ships.
Proposals for the seaway started in 1909, but were met with resistance from railway and port lobbyists in the US. In addition to replacing the canal system, generation of hydroelectricity also drove the project. After rejecting numerous agreements to construct a seaway, construction was approved in 1954 when Canada declared it was ready to proceed unilaterally.
In the United States, Dr. N.R. Danielian was the Director of the 14 volume St. Lawrence Seaway Survey in the U.S. Department of Commerce (1939-1943), worked with the U.S. Secretary of State on Canadian-United States issues regarding the Seaway and worked for over 15 years on passage of the Seaway Act. He later became President of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Association to further the interests of the Seaway development to benefit the American Heartland.
The seaway opened in 1959 and cost US$470 million, CAD$336.2 million of which was paid by the Canadian government.[1] Queen Elizabeth II and President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally opened the Seaway with a short cruise aboard Royal Yacht Britannia after addressing the crowds in St. Lambert, Quebec.
The seaway's opening is often credited with making the Erie Canal obsolete, thus setting off the severe economic decline of several cities in upstate New York.
There are seven locks in the Saint Lawrence River portion of the Seaway. From downstream to upstream they are[2]:
There are 8 locks on the Welland, for more goto Welland Canal.
There are 4 locks in the Soo Locks on the American side and 1 lock in the Sault Ste. Marie Canal on the Canadian side.
The size of vessels that can traverse the seaway is limited by the size of locks. Locks on the St Lawrence and on the Welland Canal are 766 ft (233.5 m) long, 80 ft (24.4 m) wide, and 30 ft (9.14 m) deep. The maximum allowed vessel size is slightly smaller: 740 ft (225.6 m) long, 78 ft (23.8 m) wide, and 26 ft (7.9 m) deep; many vessels designed for use on the Great Lakes following the opening of the seaway were built to the maximum size permissible by the locks, known informally as Seaway-Max. Large vessels of the lake freighter fleet are built on the Lakes and cannot travel downstream beyond the Welland Canal. On the remaining Great Lakes, these ships are constrained only by the largest lock on the Great Lakes Waterway, the Poe Lock at the Soo Locks, which is 1,200 ft (365.8 m) long, 110 ft (33.5 m) wide and 32 ft (9.8 m) deep.
Water depth is another obstacle to vessels, particularly in connecting waterways such as the St. Lawrence River. The depth in the channels of the seaway is 41 ft (12.5 m) (Panamax-depth) downstream of Quebec City, 35 ft (10.7 m) between Quebec City and Deschaillons, 37 ft (11.3 m) to Montreal, and 28 ft (8.5 m) upstream of Montreal. Channels in the Great Lakes Waterway are slightly shallower, typically 25 to 27 ft (7.6 to 8.2 m). In the late 1990s the seaway was deepened and widened to allow near Panamax-sized ship access upstream from the Atlantic Ocean to Montreal.
Channel depths and limited lock sizes mean that only 10% of ocean-going ships can traverse the entire seaway. Proposals to expand the seaway, dating from as early as the 1960s, have been rejected as too costly, and environmentally and economically unsound. Lower water levels in the Great Lakes have also posed problems for some vessels in recent years.
While the seaway is currently (2008) mostly used for shipping bulk cargo, the possibility of its use for large-scale container shipping is under consideration as well. If the project goes ahead, feeder ships would take containers from the port of Oswego on Lake Ontario in upstate New York to Melford International Terminal in Nova Scotia for transfer to larger ocean-going ships.[3]
To create a navigable channel through the Long Sault rapids and to allow hydroelectric stations to be established immediately upriver from Cornwall, Ontario and Massena, New York, an artificial lake had to be created. Called Lake St. Lawrence, it required the flooding on July 1, 1958 of ten villages in Ontario, now collectively known as "The Lost Villages". There was also inundation on the New York side, but no communities were affected.
The creation of the seaway also led to the introduction of foreign species of aquatic animals, including the sea lamprey and the zebra mussel, into the Great Lakes Basin.
The seaway provides significant entertainment and recreation such as boating, camping, fishing, and scuba diving. Of particular note is that the seaway provides a number of divable wrecks within recreational scuba limits (shallower than 130 ft (40 m)). Surprisingly, the water temperature can be as warm as 70 °F (21 °C) with little or no thermocline during the mid to late summer months.
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
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