THE NEED FOR ICE BREAKERS ON THE GREAT LAKES
Story by PA2 Allyson Taylor Feller
The Coast Guard's newest cutter Mackinaw is scheduled to be commissioned June 9. It will carry on the tradition of its predecessor, Mackinaw, of being the primary Great Lakes ice breaker, as well as carry out buoy tending missions.
After more than 60 years of service on the Great Lakes, the "Queen of the Lakes" will retire the same day her namesake will take over responsibility. The Mackinaw was commissioned in 1944 as the primary ice breaker on the lakes following legislation passed in 1941 to build a cutter for this sole purpose. Her mission was to keep the shipping lanes open, keep trade moving on the Great Lakes.
Trade in the region is nothing new. People have been participating in some sort of trade from the time of the first Native Americans, to the fur trappers to today's shipping industry of raw materials for the steel mills.
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| MARINETTE, Wisc. - The newest Coast Guard Cutter, a Great Lakes Ice Breaker (GLIB), falls from its cradle into the Menomonee River April 2, 2005. Coast Guard photo by PA3 Allyson E. Taylor. |
Before the years of WWII the shipping season would come to a stand-still and the shipping trade would stop. During the war it was important to keep the steel mills running so products could be continually produced for the war effort. Today the shipping season is still kept steaming with Coast Guard icebreakers breaking the way, and helping to keep more than one million people in the state of Ohio alone employed.
During normal winters the Coast Guard will spend more than 4,000 hours breaking ice to keep shipping moving. However, the winter of 2005/2006 has seen some unseasonably warm temperatures throughout the region which has raised the question of whether or not there is now a need for large Coast Guard cutters on the lakes to break ice.
"One must remember this is an unusual winter," Lt. Cmdr. Charles Alcock, the Ninth District's assistant to aids to navigation chief. "Just three years ago we had one of the worst winters in years."
That particular winter, 2002/2003, was one of the most severe winters the Great Lakes region has experienced in the last 50 years. Ice formation started in early December, a full month ahead of forecasts and normal dates. Records for earliest recorded freezes were set in many waterways.
Conditions continued to worsen throughout the navigation season, and icebreaking continued until late April. Temperatures were so cold that four of the five major lakes completely froze over: Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. For the first time in 25 years ice breaking was required near Chicago.
What is to be done?
"It would be like a city saying ‘Well, we didn't have any fires this week, so we don't need fire fighters anymore,'" said Glenn Nekvasil, the vice president of corporate communications of the Lake Carriers Association based in Cleveland.
Up until the late 19th century and early 20th century most of the shipping trade on the lakes had to come to a halt due to the lakes freezing over. Once the spring started to thaw the ice on the lakes, smaller icebreakers would break up the ice enough to get commerce moving again, though the waterways of the Straits of Mackinac and the St. Mary's River annually became jammed with ice, creating a stand-still in shipping.
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| The first Cutter Mackinaw breaks ice in the Great Lakes. Official Coast Guard photo. |
Two of the early icebreakers were the Cutters Escanaba and the Tahoma. Both were 165 feet long and built for light ice breaking, law enforcement and rescue work. The Tahoma was home ported in Cleveland from 1934 to 1941 and the Escanaba in Grand Haven, Mich., from 1932 to 1941. With the onset of the World War II both cutters were needed for patrolling and ice breaking outside of the Great Lakes.
During the war the need to keep the shipping industry on the Lakes open year became a necessity. The Commandant of the Coast Guard at the time, Adm. C.A. Park estimated that if the shipping season could be lengthened by just 10 more days that would mean 3.5 million tons of resources could be moved, helping the war effort to include feeding American Soldiers with product made from 120 million more bushels of grain.
On Dec. 17, 1941 legislation was passed to build a cutter made specifically for icebreaking on the Great Lakes. In March 1943 the keel was laid for the Cutter Mackinaw and it was officially accepted into service Dec. 20, 1944.
For more than 60 years the Mackinaw has been breaking ice, keeping industry moving on the lakes. Just last year alone it spent almost 700 hours breaking ice, and that was considered a normal winter. During the winter of 2002/2003 it spent just over 1,300 hours breaking ice, keeping the shipping lanes open.
In June 2006 the older Mackinaw is scheduled to be replaced by a newer Mackinaw. At a cost of $90 million, paid for by American taxpayers (not just Great Lakes takes payers) Mackinaw is a one-of-a-kind 240-foot icebreaker and buoy tender, built at the Marinette Marine Corporation shipyard.
The Coast Guard's Great Lakes Icebreaker Replacement Project, a major acquisition to replace its WW II-era predecessor, began in 2001 when the contract was awarded to Marinette Marine.
The ship's primary missions are: Maritime Homeland Security, Ice Breaking, Aids to Navigation, Law Enforcement, Marine Environmental Protection, and Search and Rescue.
Though shipping has declined slightly since WW II (62 million tons of cargo today as opposed to approximately 90 to 100 million tons), shipping is still the ideal way to transport raw materials to the steel mills.
Most of America's "steelmaking capacity remains rooted in the Great Lakes basin. Steel made in Great Lakes mills powers the nation's economy." (Lake Carriers' Association 2006 Position Papers) "Seventy percent of the nation's automobiles are produced in the Great Lakes basin... [and] accounts for more than half of all heavy manufacturing."
In 2005 17 million tons of cargo was shipped during the ice season (Dec. to April), which "16% of the annual shipping total with a product estimated value of $800 million," Nekvasil said.
Shipping these raw materials via the lakes is still the easiest, safest and most economical mode of transporting the raw materials:
- 1 Laker = 7 100-car unit trains;
- 1 Laker = 2,800 trucks
"Trains would burn an additional 14 million gallons of fuel and generate another 4,321 tons of emissions. Moving just one million tons of cargo by truck...would increase fuel consumption by 3.4 million gallons and emissions by 570 tons," according to the LCA Papers.
The LCA Papers predicted a "vessel-to-rail shift for the 11 cargo flows would statistically result in 36 rail-crossing accidents, 14 derailments and one train collision... trucks would statistically produce 141 truck/car accidents on the roads and highways - one quarter of which would have the potential for fatalities or serious injuries."
The winter of 2005 will be remembered as a "warm" winter through the Great Lakes. Icebreaking operations were cancelled due to limited or no ice. The Coast Guard's newest ice breaker, the Mackinaw, also cancelled ice trials because of the scarce ice formation in the region.
But even in the "warm" winter a couple of lakers were in need of help and needed to be broken out of the ice to keep commerce steaming.
Weather patterns will change as they have done so for the past 4,600 million years or so. Though Great Lakes shipping hasn't been around that long, it, too, is just as important to the region and goes hand-in-hand with ice breaking, and for now, they are here to stay.
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