Duluth to Liverpool in One Bottom
On June 19, 1920 — 105 years ago today — Scientific American published an article by Robert G. Skerrett editorializing in favor of the “Great Lakes being opened to the sea so that ocean-going craft can steam from Duluth to the Atlantic and thence along our neighboring seaboard or afar to the markets of Europe.”
The text of the article appears below.
Duluth to Liverpool in One Bottom
The Arguments Advanced in Favor of a Deep-Water Route Between the Great Lakes and the Sea
By Robert G. Skerrett
The measure of our productiveness, the prompt distribution of our multiple commodities, and the satisfying of a restless public, hinge in large measure upon the expeditious movement of our tremendous and steadily increasing volume of freight. The tide of this traffic is today distressingly slowed up by reason of the demoralized condition of our railways, and it is inevitable that we find other means of distribution so that the tide of foreign and domestic commerce may be brought to a state of equilibrium.
We cannot achieve this vital end — a goal which is profoundly linked with the nation’s well being — unless we bring the vast industrial areas of the West and the Middle West within easier touch of the seaboard. The citizenry of other divisions of the country seldom realize the economic significance of the States bordering upon or tributary to the Great Lakes.
In certain phases of agriculture, meat packing, dairy products, manufactures, and mineral yields, the total for the United States six years ago amounted to $29,398,414,000, while the group of interior States just referred to furnished nearly 40 per cent of this magnificent sum. And this is only the beginning of the story: a few of the details will make it clearer how much of a treasure house this region really is. Occupying but one-third of the national area, its wide-awake population produces something like seven-eighths of our principal staples, exclusive of cotton and tobacco. Upon its fertile fields are 75 per cent of our wheat; 65 per cent of our corn; substantially all of our flax; half of our potatoes and sugar beets; 50 per cent of the country’s cattle, dairy cows, and swine; 60 percent of our horses. From the mines in these States come 85 per cent of our iron; 39 per cent of our copper; 74 per cent of our zinc; 46 per cent of our lead. And the geologists tell us that quite 72 per cent of our measured coal reserves lie within this favored zone.
The stimulus of the recent conflict did much to augment many of the foregoing figures; and now as a people we must either help ourselves by helping those States to continue at their present productive pace or we shall have to see them slump as a source of stupendous economic power. In a large sense the future of this section and the welfare of all of us depend upon the Great Lakes being opened to the sea so that ocean-going craft can steam from Duluth to the Atlantic and thence along our neighboring seaboard or afar to the markets of Europe. A deep-water route of this character, ample enough to float laden craft of drafts from 20 to 25 feet, would accommodate the great majority of the existing ocean steamships.
This splendid project has been agitated at intervals during the past two decades and more, and the probable cost would be trifling in comparison with the immediate and prospective benefits to be realized. Indeed, the entire outlay for us, including the deepening of present channels through the Great Lakes and tributary to the cities thereon, would probably not equal one-fourth the sum we gladly subscribed to build the Panama Canal; and the gains in some respects would be much bigger at the very start than those now reaped by us through the agency of the Isthmian waterway. Thanks to the enterprise of neighboring Canada, the problem broadly reduces itself to submerging certain rapids lying in the international waters of the St. Lawrence river between Lake Ontario and the Indian village of St. Regis, and then dealing in a similar way with that stretch of the river extending from St. Regis to Montreal, which would involve, incidentally, the work of flooding the Lachine Rapids.
Today the Canadians are enlarging the Welland Canal so that the roomiest locks will be 1,000 feet long, 80 feet wide, and have a depth of 30 feet of water at the lowest level of the river. This work was slowed up by the war, but is now being pushed energetically and should be finished in the course of four years at a total expenditure of $75,000,000. From Galop Rapids to St. Regis, a distance of about 115 miles, the St. Lawrence drops 92 feet, and sufficient water for deep draft vessels can be obtained by building across the international stream a series of dams which would convert the areas now occupied by rapids into a number of navigable slack-water basins. In these dams there would be formed numerous locks so that steamers bound up or down could thus pass from level to level while threading the broad channel of the modified St. Lawrence.
From St. Regis on to Montreal, a run of 68 miles, the St. Lawrence has a fall of 129 feet, and of this stretch 46 miles are now plain sailing with plenty of deep water. The engineering task here would involve the rearing of dams at suitable points across the river to flood the shallows and rapids in about 22 miles of travel. This part of the scheme would rest upon Canada, inasmuch as that section of the river lies wholly within her domain. The river will not be canalized in the usual sense of the term; the submerged rapids would afford broad channelways along which steamers could proceed at full speed. Traffic would be slowed down only when using the canals interposed between Lake Superior and Lake Ontario or when changing level in going through any of the locks. This celerity of movement will mean much toward making it profitable to operate ocean-going freighters over the projected route.
In June of last year, the Lake Grandby, an American freighter, 251 feet long, 43½-foot beam, and of 1,605 net tonnage, sailed from Chicago with a cargo of meat destined for Liverpool. She was the first of a fleet of 15 craft built by the United States Shipping Board and intended for this traffic. However, because the St. Lawrence canals now limit the draft to 14 feet, the Lake Grandby cannot start from her Lake port full laden — she takes on more cargo at Montreal. This means that when returning from abroad she must also discharge part of her freight at the Canadian port in order that she may steam on to Chicago. With the enlarged Welland Canal available, and with the contemplated dams and their great locks built, big cargo carriers of many thousands of tons could traverse the whole length of the St. Lawrence to and from Lake Erie; and with improved facilities at the Soo and deeper channels through the Lakes here and there, Duluth, Superior, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, etc., would have an unhampered outlet to the ocean.
As those familiar with the subject know, vessels laden with wheat bound from Duluth, Chicago, etc., generally break bulk at Buffalo, and the grain is then dispatched by rail or canal to New York, Boston, and Philadelphia on its journey to consignees overseas. This entails not only much additional handling, but it involves a good deal of increased expense. If ships could load on the Great Lakes and steam thence to their destinations across the Atlantic without further to-do, under normal conditions grain could be landed in Liverpool, for instance, for five cents less a bushel.
According to the engineering estimates, our part of the proposed undertaking would not involve an outlay of more than $60,000,000 on the St. Lawrence, and $100,000,000 would cover that work as well as the necessary channel and canal improvements needful to provide ample passageways for sea-going freighters trading with every first-class port on the Great Lakes. This sum does not loom large if we bear in mind that the State of New York has already spent on its barge canal system a matter of quite $150,000,000. But other material benefits of an economic nature would accrue to us through out participation in the damming of the St. Lawrence. The outpouring waters from the enormous reservoirs of the Great Lakes would furnish our side of the St. Lawrence with motive force capable of developing substantially 1,000,000 horsepower of electrical energy. Converted into terms of coal burned in steam generating plants, this water-developed power would represent each twenty-four hours a saving of 36,000 tons of fuel. Changing our potential million horsepower into electrical units we have 750,000 kilowatts, which at Niagara Falls rates of $20 per kilowatt-year would produce a yearly revenue of $15,000,000. If coal were burned to develop continuously so large a block of energy, the cost in the course of a twelvemonth would amount to $65,700,000.
The hesitating taxpayer may be inclined to ask: “Do we really want this volume of potential horsepower — do we need it?” Census figures covering the period between 1889 and 1917 should satisfy the doubter and, at the same time, point to what will certainly be required in the course of the next five or ten years. The installed capacity of prime movers in central stations, manufacturing establishments, and the power plants of electric railways throughout New England and New York State amounted in 1900 to 12,270,000 horsepower. By 1910 this total had reached 21,200,000 horsepower, and today the aggregate of these plants represents fully 27,200,000 horsepower. By 1925 this great industrial nation will need installations totaling 30,100,000 horsepower, and ten years from now, at the present rate of increase, installations will be called for capable of a maximum development of 33,000,000. And it should be borne in mind that this array of figures does not include the horsepower of locomotives and thousands of isolated steam plants now meeting the demands of widely varying services.
It is true, of course, that navigation between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic would be halted during four months of the winter period, but during the eight months remaining a tremendous tonnage could be moved via this route to and from our intensely productive interior section. The immediate and the reflex economic gains due to this new highway of commerce cannot be comprehensively evaluated in mere dollars and cents. In the winter time many of the ships that might be employed in the Great Lakes-ocean trade could shift their activities to the Atlantic seaboard. The project in its entirety reasonably promises to deal with the peak-load period of seasonal freights and to lend itself potentially to general stabilizing of our internal traffic system. Incidentally, it will promote the upbuilding of vast stretches of territory and bring in its train social, industrial, and economic readjustments of primary importance to the whole country.
