Saint Lawrence Seaway

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.

History

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 wide, and 9 ft (3 m) deep. The Welland Canal at that time allowed transit of vessels 142 ft (43 m) long, 26 ft (8 m) wide, and 10 ft (3 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. 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.

Locks in the Saint Lawrence River

There are seven locks in the Saint Lawrence River portion of the Seaway. From downstream to upstream they are:

St. Lambert Lock - Saint Lambert, QC
Côte Ste. Catherine Lock - Sainte-Catherine, QC
Lock Beauharnois (2 locks) - Melocheville, QC
Snell Lock - Massena, NY
Eisenhower Lock - Massena, NY
Iroquois Lock - Iroquois, ON

Locks in the Welland Canal and Upper Greate Lakes

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.

Lock and channel dimensions

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 m) long, 80 ft (24 m) wide, and 30 ft (9 m) deep. The maximum allowed vessel size is slightly smaller: 740 ft (226 m) long, 78 ft (24 m) wide, and 26 ft (8 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 1200 ft (366 m) long, 110 ft (34 m) wide and 32 ft (10 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 m) (Panamax-depth) downstream of Quebec City, 35 ft (11 m) between Quebec City and Deschaillons, 37 ft (11 m) to Montreal, and 28 ft (9 m) upstream of Montreal. Channels in the Great Lakes Waterway are slightly shallower, typically 25 to 27 ft. 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.

Environmental effects

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.

Translation

The phrase "Saint Lawrence Seaway" occurs as such in the following languages: English, Norwegian (Bokmål).

Translation(s) in other languages: German: Sankt-Lorenz-Seeweg, Spanish: Canal de San Lorenzo, Esperanto: Marvojo Sankt-Laŭrenco, French: Voie maritime du Saint-Laurent, Galician: Canle de San Lourenzo, Hungarian: Szent Lőrinc-víziút, Dutch: Saint Lawrencezeeweg, Japanese: セントローレンス海路, Polish: Droga Wodna Świętego Wawrzyńca, Swedish: Saint Lawrenceleden, Urdu: سینٹ لارنس بحری گزرگاہ.