Today, an inland seaport. The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
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Seaports are wondrous places. Huge ships carry the stuff of daily life to far-flung ports. They let us feel the presence of other lands and their needs. Our Port of Houston handles America’s largest trade – a quarter-billion tons a year. And it spreads out over some fifty miles. But now I’m drawn to another American port.
The twin port of Duluth and Superior, in Minnesota and Wisconsin. It’s the furthest from any ocean. It lies at the west end of the world’s largest fresh-water lake – Lake Superior. Minnesotans know its Native American name of Gitchi-Gami – that means Great Sea. This port – unlike most other US ports – deals largely in raw materials. An iron ore called taconite accounts for over half its shipping. And its ships carry grain, coal, limestone ...
Those ships are unlike the so-called Salties that cross oceans. Fresh water is less dense than ocean water, and the ships differ. Laker boats, as they're called, are huge. Some exceed a thousand feet. Few have the loading superstructures we see on ships that carry manufactured goods or containers. And here, shipping usually stops when the lake, and the locks on its east end, freeze over. That’s in mid-January to late March.
A lake this large poses threats just as surely as an ocean does. One cold November in 1975, the ore boat Edmund Fitzgerald carried taconite to a steel mill in Detroit. It went down with its full crew in a terrible storm. Gordon Lightfoot’s song about its sinking still echoes today.
But that was just one ship out of some six thousand that lie on the bottom of the Great Lakes. For every wreck they’ve found, nine more are still lost. The Lake is most lethal in November, near the Soo Locks that connect with lake Huron. Those locks, by the way, are the first of many on the way to the Atlantic Ocean, twenty-four-hundred miles away.
Now AI locates shipping with pinpoint accuracy at all times. We have far better means for predicting weather. The ships are safer. The dangers, far less today. But new threats arrive with new technology. Here, in the Gulf of Mexico, ships have to avoid thousands of abandoned oil well platforms. Some are visible. But some lurk unseen below the surface. Shipping will always turn-upon anyone who quits paying attention.
So I watch ships coming and going in our vast seaports. Great container ships – or those majestic ore boats, passing under Duluth's lovely lift-bridge. And I hear an old Spanish song, Partens las Galeras. It tells of ships sailing off to far-away lands. And our longing for both repose and adventure out on those vast seas. Houston and Duluth are so different, yet so alike in that sense of connection. In each, the edges of great waters become great marketplaces – great agoras that help hold our splintered world together.
I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.
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(3:23 minutes)
This Wikipedia article describes Lake Superior’s Twin Ports. See also, this website. And here is the Port of Duluth website. See also: https://visitduluth.com/blog-shipping-in-duluth/ and
https://duluthport.com/about-us/frequently-asked-questions/. Wikipedia pages about Lake Superior and taconite iron ore.
This is the Port of Houston website. See also this Wikipedia article about it.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, Hiawatha, ends with a mythical version of that Native American Leader anticipating death. They launch him in his canoe, into the Lake’s waters. Longfellow wrote the Lake’s Native American name as Gitche-Gumee. This was regular grade school reading in the North during the early 20th century.
Wikipedia article about The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. This famous song abou it, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, was sung by Gordon Lightfoot. See Episode 1378 about the wreck. See also, this Episode 333, and this website about Great Lakes Wrecks.
Click here for photos of the ports and ships that I talk about. (Photos above are by J H Lienhard.)
The song, Partens la Galeras by Juan Aranes, as sung by Paul Shipper, was part of a program of Spanish Music, available here. My English translation of the text goes like this:
Partens las Galeras … The Ships Depart
and take my soul with them ...
As it’s carried away,
It goes willingly.
In time the sky,
all pearl and silver,
will mist the fields,
and spray the waters.
My star appears,
its light, striving
to herald the cool morning’s
sleepless fears.
I am startled
by their fearful weight.
The ships depart, … etc.
Because I seemed
to envy joyous love
without a home – how sweet
the joy in winning it.
Yet who can borrow
its heaped glories,
even as they seem
undiminished …
Since I am sorrowful,
with so many memories
of the sea and its waves,
I immerse myself again,
in the high sea.
My thanks to Cindy Timmons Carlson, and Jayson Hron of the Port of Duluth, for helpful counsel. Jayson Hron adds the following two observations relating to the Twin Port of Duluth-Superior:
- “The Port of Duluth-Superior is the Great Lakes’ top port by total tonnage, and one of the nation’s top 20. At various times during the early 1900s, and as recently as 1942, the Port of Duluth-Superior led the nation in maritime tonnage. Now Houston holds the top spot.”
- “Duluth-Superior is one of America’s foremost natural resources ports and a leading mover of bulk commodities ranging from iron ore, coal and limestone, to grain, cement and salt. Duluth is also recognized worldwide as the heaviest lift port on the Great Lakes for its expertise in handling various breakbulk/heavy-lift cargoes. Duluth is also the westernmost container-handling port on the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System.”
This episode first aired on January 17, 2025