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M/V Mark W. Barker

evernoob

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I'm going to start a post about the first large commercial vessel built in an American Great Lakes yard in 35 years.

This yard is owned by Finantieri, an Italian company. The yard is located in Sturgeon Bay, just across Green Bay from their main yard in Marinette.

finacantieri wisconsin.jpg


Here's how the yard sits. Barker is being constructed in that graving dock jutting out from the Fincantieri pin



fincantieri sat map.jpg


drydock-s.jpg


fincantieri sat map.jpg
 
Fincantieri won the FFG(X) contract which will replace the old FFG from the 1980s. Those old FFGs, like the one you saw in Hunt for Red October were not replaced by a unit for years in the Navy.

reuben james hunt for red october.jpg


Instead the Freedom-class LCS, which were built in Marinette, were pressed into Frigate roles, with the expected bad results. The Freedom-class was constructed by Marinette Marine in Marinette, WI, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fincantieri S.p.A.

freedom class.jpg
The LCS has been a huge boondoggle (in the Press), with the Fincantieri-built Freedoms being the worst of the bunch. Not only have there been expected mechanical and development problems, but the Mission Module approach for a Corvette, which is what this ship is, not a Frigate, was entirely wrong for the US's Frigate role. The good Defense Press (not TWZ) counts these as very effective and well-built ships which will be great Corvettes. I agree.

The yard over in Marinette doesn't even have a drydock and they plop them in the old-fashioned way.

USS-St-Louis-12-20-2018.png
 
So that's the background of how this ship will be built. By American workers who have roots in shipbuilding, but in a region where real shipbuilding has only just re-started. Meanwhile, in China, one of about 13 owed by China State Shipbuilding Company:

china state shipbuilding.jpg


The Barker will be built on more modest scale:

Length639' 00" (194.77m)
Beam78' 00" (23.77m)
Depth45' 00" (12.19m)
Midsummer Draft??' 00" (?.??m)
Unloading Boom Length250' (76.2m)
Capacity28,000 tons
Engine Power7,800 bhp diesel


We don't know what her midsummer draft will be set at. The Lakes have no tide but seasonal variation. Midsummer is the driest so all soundings are taken (or corrected) to Midsummer, and drafts set accordingly. Maximum Midsummer Draft is not of high importance to Barker though, she has a different role.

Back in the 1970s, the US started building Thousand Footers on the Lakes. They started with ships like the 858' Roger Blough, seen in the background here:

roger blough behind Small.jpg


As you can see the Blough is a giant compared to Barker, and here is the giant Blough under assistance tow from the 1000-footer Edgar B. Speer

blough and speer.jpg


And a 68,000 ton 1000-footer is a mere mite next to a large containership like the Ever Given. And the Ever Given is small next to an Ultra Large Crude Carrier.

ULCC.jpg
 
But, we like our ships. They're a big deal around here and if you live on the coasts, they are a part of life.





And we like the lore. Like when Arthur M. Anderson, the last ship to have contact with the Edmund Fitzgerald, enters Duluth Harbor on the anniversary of the Fitz's loss, as she did last November 10.



Even in a snowstorm at 11:30 PM on November 10, with HD webcams all around Duluth, you get a few who will come out and see.
 
I love the big Lakers. We toured the William a Irvin in Duluth. That one is a little 600’er. The history of the laker fleet is pretty cool. It’s amazing those old ships still ship huge amounts of bulk materials around the lakes. All my salt I get comes in via self unloader in the greenbay port.

Thanks for the thread!
 
“It is truly amazing to have a ship that is built here in Wisconsin and made from steel from Indiana that came from iron ore mined in Minnesota with U.S. crews, U.S. workers, and U.S. miners all doing this for our great Country,” said Mark W. Barker, President of Interlake.

Pretty awesome excerpt from a article about the vessel

:usa:
 
For those who like to watch the big ships
[video]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzkaQrI9-nSv373EvK5p0SQ[/video]
 
Lol thank you noob just spent 45 mins searching for the captain and ship that would turn the music up to 11 every-time he would come into port. It was some random factoid I partly remember from the tour of the Irvin in Duluth. :homer:
 
Lol thank you noob just spent 45 mins searching for the captain and ship that would turn the music up to 11 every-time he would come into port. It was some random factoid I partly remember from the tour of the Irvin in Duluth. :homer:

The James R. Barker has a lot of videos, with that flagship 2-tone horn.

She's louder and horn more impressive, but she took up the horn role from the Edward L. Ryerson, probably the coolest ship built on the lakes. It has that good old fashioned steamship horn, two-tone, and the design is straight up 1950s artwork.

Edward L. Ryerson's owners intended her to be as aesthetically attractive and luxurious as possible, reportedly spending more than $8 million (equivalent to $54.8 million in 2019[SUP][15][/SUP]) on her accommodations alone. She was capable of accommodating up to 37 crewmen and eight guests.[SUP][9][/SUP][SUP][16][/SUP] She is considered by enthusiasts to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing freighters ever built.[SUP][9][/SUP]

Yeah, that's about right.

View attachment

 
For those who like to watch the big ships
[video]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzkaQrI9-nSv373EvK5p0SQ[/video]

:beer:

First check marinetraffic.com to see any ships near the ports. Wow look it's James R. Barker, we were just talking about her, and she's headed into Port Huron. She may salute the bridge there but it's late and probably not.

View attachment

Port Huron Webcams, with SFW chat. I've seen schoolkids in these YT marine channels doing assignments FYI.







Should be able to pick Barker up there.

Marine City webcam

View attachment



Duluth Canal Cam, basically the centerpoint of Laker-watching webcams. Be sure to check out the Channel for the 6 other webcams around the two harbors.

The Two Harbors and Thunder Bay webcams also link from Duluth Harbor Cam.

Trivia: Thunder Bay, ON is one of the highest-crime cities in CN. Currently it's not in top 10 but for years it dominated Canada's murder rate cities.

View attachment

Canal CAm



Two Harbors cam



Silver Bay cam

 
There are plenty of other webcams around the Lakes, maybe I'll buff up the above post.

Now media releases.

Interlake Steamship Company (now that's a grand name, just fine) is the owner of this boat.

http://www.interlake-steamship.com/

YT page

[video]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoAuWj9H6F2tTKz089u0TbQ[/video]

June 23, 2020

Laying of the Keel.



No Golden Spikes to drive here. Some execs will stand around while a welder tacks two modules together.

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Dec 2020

Mark W. Barker being floated out to make room for Winter 2020 layup maintenance in the graving dock. There's old Roger Blough, b. 1972, as seen in the earlier photo above. I don't know who went into the dock, likely several.

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There is a similar dock in Erie, PA which does winter maintenance. Owner Donjon Shipbuilding.

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If I read that correctly, it's a 600+ ft long and 78 ft wide vessel, bigger than a 1943 USN Light Cruiser. HTH does that get from Duluth to the Ocean ? Erie canal ??
 
March 31 2021 (post date) Being floated back into drydock

[video]https://fb.watch/4K64YJqg_v/[/video]
 
If I read that correctly, it's a 600+ ft long and 78 ft wide vessel, bigger than a 1943 USN Light Cruiser. HTH does that get from Duluth to the Ocean ? Erie canal ??

Lol it’s a laker they go between the iron mines in mn and the steel mills in Ohio. They never leave the Great Lakes.
 
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Some great photos of the construction.

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If I read that correctly, it's a 600+ ft long and 78 ft wide vessel, bigger than a 1943 USN Light Cruiser. HTH does that get from Duluth to the Ocean ? Erie canal ??

Paul R. Tregurtha 1013’ long 105 feet wide and can haul 68,000 long ton of iron ore. She’s one of the biggest in the fleet.
 
Ok this is how these ships work.

They are loaded with a bulk cargo: Iron ore, Coal, Grain, Cement, Gyp, Gravel, Asphalt, Sand. There is a very great deal of Michigan in all of your drywalled homes.

These are iron ore loading docks from back in the day. They're good-sized.
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Trains drive up on the docks and the hoppers unload into the chutes. Here's the Marquette ore dock in drone HD. The Great Lakes Towing Co. owned Michipicoten will load up. These names are all Algonquin/Ottawa/Huron/Chippewa names.

Here are the native folk of the land, their languages all go in here.

indian tribes.png


The language group is called Ojibwe I believe. Oh Jib Way.



duluth ore docks.jpg
 
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Down into the hold.

At the bottom of the hold is a big conveyor belt. Here is Mark Barker's.

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You see the steel sheets laid out, leading up to that hole? They just dump the material down in there, and when it unloads, motors begin to move that belt (under 28,000 tons of ore), and it is drawn down into that tunnel.

At the end of that tunnel is a chute.

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That chute opens like a seed spreader and dumps the ore onto another belt. That belt is attached to the self-unloading boom. From down in the bottom of the ship, the material is carried up and along the self-unloading boom, which is anywhere from 150' - 230' long or longer.

A note about Mark W. Barker's boom, because it is central to the story of the Lakers.

There is a lot out there about self-unloading including graphics, for now here is a plan where you can see the belts on the right, bow, of the top ship lead to the boom. It's just belts driven by very powerful motors.

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Here's a self-unloader beaning it into the grain silo.

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1

But for rocks they just make a big pile.

Here's Cuyahoga unloading some salt. Michigan is a closed economy. We mine iron in the UP. We turn it into steel on Zug Island. We use that steel to make cars in Dearborn. We mine salt on the lakes, carry it to our shores, then throw it all over those cars we just made.

The cars dissolve, and their suspended metals flow downstream to the Lakes. They settle there, and after several dozens of years, they are mined up to being the cycle anew.

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Only the older ships will carry salt, and we do have some old ones. In fact we just de-commed our 100+ year old ships in the last few years. We almost had ships that were commissioned in the 19th century, worked allll though the 20th into the 21st, but I think not quite.

boatnerd.com is the best source for all this.

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Boatnerd has things like AIS data for a lot of GReat Lakes ports, which means you get to see all the Marinetraffic data for the boats, plus auto-chart data for most of the working ports in the GL!



https://ais.boatnerd.com/

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They keep the Winter Layup lists. Here you can see the Algoma Enterprise is being scrapped this year. A more-common fate for our ships, which are increasingly built in Croatia and of course China. The Canadians have been most free in importing foreign-built ships, the Americans the most active in preserving current hulls.

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I'll finish up the boom story (later) and some more construction photos from earlier in the year. Here's a paint crew. The best the ship will ever look. :laughing:
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As stated already, thank you for the info.

I like looking at these pics. They are new to me, I have never seen stuff like this before. It sure is amazing what can be done.
 
If I read that correctly, it's a 600+ ft long and 78 ft wide vessel, bigger than a 1943 USN Light Cruiser. HTH does that get from Duluth to the Ocean ? Erie canal ??

The St. Lawrence Seaway, which the Mark W. Barker will only transit if she goes down to Montreal or Quebec.

Here is a map showing the WElland Canal and SLS, but also the input/output of the Lakes ports. Red for In, Green for Out

seaway_layout_14_header.jpg


She will instead be used to transport bulk cargo to tight Lakes ports like the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland.


cuyahoga river.jpg


Or around Zug Island up the River Rouge in Detroit.

river rogue.jpg


IN one of the River Rouge videos, the Master talks about the fact that the USACE does not dredge by the bridges. The boats just self-clearance that part of it :lmao: I'd suggest Lakers are the most rough & tumble ships run by a Western power. Various barges and towboats get banged around pretty good. I'm no Longshoreman or Merchant Mariner, but I've seen a lot of ships handled in a lot of situations, and the Lakers take the care for large vessels. I've seen them do things that would get a USN Capt de-commissioned.

These are 'barges with engines', in the words of Frederick Stonehouse, one of the Lake's greatest historians. That is the entire story of the Storm of '13, and '46, and '75, and the Mark W. Barker.

I will also later talk about a ship that was strengthened to go to China to be re-fit, but it cracked and sank near Asia. Or when the Croatian-built ships come over, they remove the longitudinal straking for the 600 tons of it. Yes.






The American fleet does not conduct lower Lakes traffic by and large. That is Canadian and foreign. The Great Lakes are a huge part of US trade, but they ARE Eastern Canadian trade.

The US basically made Canada pay for all of it.

Here is the comparison of the Seawaymax standard to others. Humbling.

ship sizes max.png
 
If I read that correctly, it's a 600+ ft long and 78 ft wide vessel, bigger than a 1943 USN Light Cruiser. HTH does that get from Duluth to the Ocean ? Erie canal ??

Soo Locks, to the Welland Canal, to the St Lawrence Seaway. Up and over the top of Maine/New Brunswick and out to the ocean. You can get vessels 700+ ft from Duluth to the Atlantic.

Erie Canal is still in operation but mostly tourist/recreational and much smaller freight.

I went to Duluth/Superior for work a bunch of years ago, until then I had no idea that whole shipping system existed. You can spend hours diving down the Wiki hole learning about it.

As evernoob mentioned, the steel plant at Zug / Rouge River complex used to be owned by Ford. At the time the only things Ford didn't make from raw materials on their own were tires and glass. Every other auto part that went into the Fords built there was made from scratch at that plant, including its own power generation station. Also for work I've been through that steel plant and the Dearborn works and the history and logistics are amazing.
 
If I read that correctly, it's a 600+ ft long and 78 ft wide vessel, bigger than a 1943 USN Light Cruiser. HTH does that get from Duluth to the Ocean ? Erie canal ??

A bit of a last on this context b/c your question gets to the context.

The Erie Canal couldn't be made a bigger deal of in Middle School. It is simply one of the gateways that made it worth it to fight a Civil War against an Agrarian Aristocratic south. I mean, the Erie Canal takes the British Industrial Revolution 1715-1959 and compresses it into 30 years. But it's not about the Erie, even though the Erie makes the USA the USA at one point in time.

So it's the Welland Canal just across from Buffalo, NY, connecting Erie to Ontario and beyond, then the SLS, threading around the Thousand Islands and down one of the mightiest rivers on Earth.

us rivers.jpg


Then there is the makeup of North America itself, and I'll let Peter Zeihan talk about that.



Now think about what Peter Zeihan said, and look at where Duluth and Two Harbors are, in relation to Minnesota which I've pinned
image_56455.jpg


So not only does NA have fantastic water transportation, and you can reach the very heart of the largest Breadbasket on planet earth via the Mississippi River....

But you can sail a 760' ship to the OTHER SIDE of the American Breadbasket.

To the other side of it.

Thunder Bay is Canada's largest grain exporting port, that port saved Europe from starvation not once but twice in 25 years, and it is in the center of the North American Tectonic Plate 1,500 miles from the ocean.

That is the power of the Great Lakes and there is nothing like it.

It is so cheap to ship on the Great Lakes that they:
  • Dig up iron rust in Minnesota
  • Train it 90 miles to Lake Superior
  • load it into ore dock
  • load it into a ship
  • drive the ship 900 miles
  • unload the ship
  • put the ore back on a train
  • drive that train to Pittsburg
Why not just put the ore on a train and bring it to Pittsburg? Trains are huge and powerful, and intermodal transition costs money.

coal train.jpg


But ships are a lot bigger, and even a 'small' ship like Mark Barker makes it worth.

Peter Zeihan talks about some marine bulk costing 40x cheaper than road or rail. 4 orders of magnitude.

ore dock.jpg


For instance, Alpena hauls dust from... Alpena, MI, to Wisconsin. It's just a grubby little job,

apena.jpg


La Farge is one of the most ubiquitous bulk things in the world. It seems every bulk dock on the planet has a lafarge dock. And that's what Alpena does. Lafarge does concrete and aggregate, it's French, and it's everywhere.

So an old Alpena can just haul rocks from Alpena to wherever, where no other ship can get in.

That is the story of Great Lakes Towing, a Michigan based company which bought up some old hulls (more about that later, and the boom), and carries smaller things like a mere 8,000 tons in and out of Muskegon or Waukeegan.

la farge alpena.jpg


So that's what Mark W. Barker will do. Carry those niche loads into the smaller ports, and keep our Great Lakes economy alive.

The fact that she was bought by a 'Premier' company like Interlake, is new construction, and is aimed squarely at keeping our mid-sized ports in operation. Oh man, good news.

If Alpena quit working, and Great Lakes Towing quit hauling, Alpena would become a completely dead ghost town. Many towns would suffer that fate if the mid-sized Lakers didn't run.

So the Mark W. Barker is a big deal, hence this post. Your question goes to the heart of it.

apena.jpg
 
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Lol it’s a laker they go between the iron mines in mn and the steel mills in Ohio. They never leave the Great Lakes.

The first sentence says commercial, then it is totally unclear. :confused: Fascinating but ambiguous. :laughing: The young lad rambles a wee bit, eh ? :flipoff2: The Freedom Class ships are built on the lakes and apparently go over Niagara Falls or through some canal that is a wide mutherfucker. Realizing the Freedom class are smaller than the other Navy vessels mixed in there.
Instead the Freedom-class LCS, which were built in Marinette, were pressed into Frigate roles, with the expected bad results. The Freedom-class was constructed by Marinette Marine in Marinette, WI, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fincantieri S.p.A.
I know about lakers, I was alive and Splibbing when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. We had a shortwave set at our cabin in upper, lower penissula near Gaylord Michigan. We used to pick up all kinds of shit back in the late 60's including Morse code. Go back and flip through the post and tell me that it says which ship is built where and when. :laughing: And why it wouldn't be going over the falls en route to the briny deeps.
 
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