World’s Toughest Boat Trips | The Great Lakes, USA | Free Documentary

You might think I'm in the middle of the ocean, but I'm not. I'm on the Great Lakes, the largest reservoir of fresh water on the planet. I'm surrounded by six quadrillion gallons of water, and they cover almost 100,000 square miles. These lakes are huge. They're not just beautiful. You are looking at one of the most important trade routes in the world, moving 160 million tons of cargo every year and keeping U.S. and world economies afloat. And boats don't get much tougher than this one. The Great Lakes of North America are a series of interconnected lakes bordering Canada in the north and the United States in the south. The lake basin is home to 34 million people and contains 21% of the world's fresh water. My journey starts on the Detroit River. From there, I head to Oscoda to learn about Michigan's lumber trade before traveling up the rugged coast of Lake Huron. After crossing Mackinac Bridge to the Northern Peninsula, I take a plunge into the murky depths of the shipwrecked coast. For the final part of my journey, I head to Detour Village, where I set off across Lake Superior to Duluth. I'll be hitching a ride on board the largest cargo ship on the lakes, a 1,014-foot monster, the Paul R. Tragertha. For over 12,000 years, people have traveled on the Great Lakes in everything from Native American dugout canoes to wooden sailing vessels and now steel freighters. Thousands of ships have made millions of voyages. The last 150 years have been particularly explosive, and the lakes are among the world's busiest waterways. Now, Detroit might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think about the Great Lakes, but it was founded here on the river for a reason, because of its proximity to a very important larger water system, a system that was as important 300 years ago as it is today. Founded in 1701 by a French fur trader, Detroit had access to lumber, iron ore, and cheap shipping routes, and quickly became an industrial hub. Detroit was booming in the 19-teens and 20s. There was a lot of money around, and people wanted to spend it, so they were none too happy when a series of changes were made to the Michigan Constitution. It declared that the consumption, distribution, and production of alcohol was all illegal. This ushered in Prohibition. By 1917, it was in full force, and it created what would become Detroit's second biggest industry, bootlegging. I'm off to meet Bailey Sisoy-Escrow to find out more about this underground, and sometimes underwater, rum-running trade. Why Prohibition? Prohibition really came about, led by a lot of women's groups. The biggest proponents for Prohibition were actually women. The Cold Water Army, which was the group of women who had the protesting signs of Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine. They were really fun at parties. These women started thinking alcohol was the devil drink. So eventually, through a long line of protests, they were able to make alcohol illegal in the United States. So we're on the Detroit River right now between Canada, and on this side, the city of Detroit, and this was a hotbed for illegal smuggling of alcohol during the Prohibition years. Why? The fact that the river is an international border. We sometimes in Detroit forget that Canada is another country, and as such, it has separate laws. So when Prohibition took effect in Detroit, the booze was still running fairly freely over in Canada. In the Detroit River, it's less than a mile wide at certain points, so it was actually a very easy way to bring alcohol in. How much are we talking about? Tons upon tons upon tons. A lot of booze. When they opened the Detroit Tunnel, it was nicknamed the Detroit Funnel, so much illegal alcohol came through it. By some estimates, 75% of all illegal alcohol coming into the entire United States during the years of Prohibition came through Detroit. Really? And it was across this waterway. So was it like rafts in the dark of night, like Tom Sawyer? It was a little bit of everything. You'd have women taking pleasure kayak and canoe rides across the river and sneaking back four or five bottles. Okay. So all the ladies weren't these tamperance ladies? No, some of the ladies were the kind you want at your parties. You had major gangs, like the Purple Gang. We're talking the mob. Okay. They were backed by Capone, and they were bringing liquor in by the boat full. Thousands of men across the country, and here in Detroit, dozens of men, were being killed, and the government finally said, we can't allow this to go on anymore. So when Prohibition was repealed, across the country there were parties, but there really wasn't that much more liquor than before. Bootleggers might have been playing these waters, but for the last 150 years, there's been another sort of delivery going on in the stretch of the Detroit River, mail delivery. The J.W. Wescott Company is the world's only floating zip code, delivering mail to passing ships. Let's get you suited up here. Okay. It's go time. Not a bad day at the office. Not bad, eh? This has been happening for, what, about 150 years? John Ward Wescott started this company up back in 1874, doing what we're doing today, actually with a rowboat at the time. But basically the same concept is done today just like it was back then. They're not stopping for you. Oh, no. Oh, no. We basically have to match their speeds before we go alongside. And then you just haul it up. Time to line up. A little shot put. That's it. Away you go. This is the only way that ships like this can receive any mail. That's it. For the next stretch, I'm sticking to dry land. I'm going 350 miles up the east coast of the southern peninsula. Route 23 is supposed to be gorgeous. Michigan has 3,200 miles of spectacular lakeshore, easy to explore by boat or by land. Leaving Detroit, my first stop will be Oscoda, the heart of one of Michigan's largest industries, lumber. Hugging the beautiful Sunrise Coast, Route 23 then takes me all the way to Mackinac Bridge and the northern peninsula. It's been like this for hours. There's Lake Huron on one side and these endless green forests on the other. And there is a ton of it. There's actually 30,000 square miles of forest in Michigan. That's half the state. These majestic forests have been logged for centuries. It was in the 1800s, however, that the lumber industry really boomed. By 1880, Michigan was producing as much lumber as the next three states combined. I'm off to meet local historian Rob Berg to find out more about Michigan's timber. It seems like Oscoda is the kind of mecca for the lumber industry. Well, this was one of the real important areas. Located right on Lake Huron and with the river coming down to it, it became kind of the perfect location for cutting logs and sending them to the sawmills. So who are these guys? This showcases three of the important jobs. Who's the guy in the middle? He looks like he's got an iPhone. It's a compass he has. He's the land looker, the timber cruiser. And he's the man that went out and looked for the trees that they were going to cut. The man that's on the right, the sawyer, he was what we would call the lumberjack today. And they would be cutting the trees down from sunup to sundown. And then the man on the left side is the river driver, sometimes nicknamed the river hog or the river rat. And they're the ones who sent the logs, floated them down the rivers to the sawmills. Those men were the ones that became the mythical lumber men because it was based on skill and, in their case, danger. When the logs would be floating down the rivers, sometimes they would get caught up on each other and the river drivers had to fix these or had to get these logs unjammed and they would take a tool like this one right here, what's called a PV pole, and it would be used to kind of push the logs around with the point or with the hook. Did it really get this bad? I mean, this is like... This is like... It's like a marriage pick-up sticks game here. Yeah. This could kill you. It could. You have to worry that you don't hit the wrong log at the wrong time and have it coming right down on top of you. And if you fall in between them, they can close above you, right? Yes, they came down on you. You probably had very little chance. They'd have broken ribs and crushed lungs. And they would hang your river boots as a marker of where your body is and then they would cover it later for burial. By 1897, 160 billion board feet had been logged from Michigan's forests, creating more money and more millionaires than the California gold rush. This is quite a spot. It's beautiful. So the Great Lakes were the engine of all this. How'd they get the logs down to the water? In the springtime, when all the snow and ice had melted, all the rivers are running fast and deep. That's when you float the logs down to the sawmill. Where was this wood going? A lot of it, even here on this side of Michigan, went to Chicago. Chicago burned down in the fire in 1871. It was Michigan lumber that rebuilt Chicago. And Chicago was also the shipping point for lumber to go to the Prairie States. So it was huge business back then. It was our largest business. $110 billion in today's money, $4 billion in the 1800s, far more than anything else that was coming out of Michigan and one of the lucrative industries in the United States. By the turn of the 20th century, Michigan was almost entirely deforested. The lush forest that once dominated the state disappeared, leaving a scarred and wounded landscape. Recognizing the desperate need for conservation, Michigan established a forestry commission to protect, preserve, and restore its forests. And today, there are more than 19 million acres and 14 billion trees. Just coming up on Mackinac Bridge, an amazing engineering feat from last century. It's a five-mile-long suspension bridge, and at the time, it was built the longest in the world. Now, driving across it is supposed to be pretty intimidating, so I'm going to meet someone who's going to give me some tips. Todd. Hey. I'm Holly. Hi, Holly. Nice to meet you. Nice meeting you. Todd, what do you do for the bridge here? My job title is steeplejack. So you're climbing up and down the bridge, fixing it, maintaining it? Yeah. Yeah. Now, I hear people approach the bridge and kind of freak out and need help crossing it. Is that true? Yeah. About four to six people a day need driver's assistance. We have to drive their vehicles across the bridge, yeah. Why are people afraid to cross the bridge? Probably because of the height, I would guess. How high is it? The road deck, about 210 feet. Do people ever just, like, get halfway across and freak out and stop? That happens, yes. I had a lady that was, she ended up in the back seat of her car, just curled up in a fetal position with a jacket over her head, and she was, it was not good. By and large, I'm not, I don't have a problem with crossing bridges, but you kind of got me going here, and it's a super windy day, so you want to take me across? Absolutely. Okay. Wait a second. Hey, hello. Thank you. Thanks, thanks, bye. Somebody needs to be driven across right now to go south. Okay, let's go help them out. All right, cool. We're coming, don't worry. We're on. This is where the suspension bridge is beginning, right? Yes. Not so bad yet. Can't feel the wind. You'll be able to feel it when we get out at center span. Gephyrophobia, fear of bridges, and acrophobia, fear of heights, are extremely common. For some people, the simple act of crossing a bridge can cause them to completely shut down. Each year, the driver's assist program at Mackinac Bridge escorts around 1,200 people, chauffeuring them safely across. Okay, where's our driver in need? Hello. Are you waiting to be driven across? Okay, very good. Todd to the rescue. What's your dog's name, Dave? Harvard. He's beautiful. And you've signed a release to give Todd permission to drive across. Basically, if we fall in, it's not our problem. So how come you didn't want to drive across the bridge? I just don't know why. I'm scared of heights, for one thing, and I think it's a little bit of that, and I'm not quite exactly sure what it is. I get nervous, and I figure I wouldn't do a very, wouldn't want to hold up and cause any problems. I just don't care to go over heights like this, and I'm not good at about a 6-foot ladder, and that's about it. I get a little nervous up here in the middle. Oh, yeah. Then these guys are up there working on this thing, walking around like it's nothing, and I'm sitting there going, Oh, wow. Yeah, Todd hangs from the bottom of this bridge, painting it and fixing things. Oh, wow, cool. Better come to me. All right, Dave. Thank you, folks, everybody. Nice meeting everybody. Good luck on your travels. Thank you. Thank you. Drive safe. Mission accomplished. Dave and Harvard are back on the road. How tall is the tower? 552 feet. Would you like to go up there? Yeah. Cool. Very windy up here. Holy mackerel. It wasn't so bad in the car. No. But up here, it's a little more heighty, shall we say. That's a good way to put it. This is the elevator? So what do you think? You sure you want to go through with this? I think so. You go first, though. All right. So you want to duck your head under and put your leg in first? Here we are. Talk about heights. You didn't have claustrophobia. Jeez. Sorry. It's very intimate in here. Well, let's go up to the top. But you got to be clear of the door, okay? Because that's got to be able to close. Sorry. All right. And there we go. Ooh, does it ever get stuck? No. Not on my watch. Okay. Do you fix anything? Yep. Including this ascending coffin? Okay. Yep. How far are we going? The elevator goes up about 90% of the way. We getting there? Yep. Almost there? Is there a bathroom up here? Hang on a second. Okay. I feel like we're in the movie Alien, you know? There's all these, like, chilling echoes from the distance. Level 3. We go up by ladder. Watch your head. I had no idea what a labyrinth this was. Mm-hmm. Oh, dead birds. This is like, oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. This is incredible. There you are on top of the world. This is fantastic. I don't know if I really want to stand up, though. Whoo! Look at this view. Whoo! You can really see the five miles from here, huh? Sure. What are we looking at here? Lower Michigan. Upper Michigan. And Upper Michigan. And also the bridge divides two of the Great Lakes. We have Lake Michigan on the left-hand side and Lake Huron on the right-hand side. This is a stunning spot. You must just come hang out up here sometimes, huh? Yeah. Wow. When we were down, I didn't feel the magnitude of this. Being up here, I, like, I get it. The fear of the heights a little kicked in. It's not so much fear of heights, but, like, I don't trust myself not to, like... What if I had the urge to jump, you know? I wouldn't let you. Quirky. There you go. That's why you're here. That wouldn't happen on my watch, right? We're about 552 feet above the water right where we're standing. About 940 tons of steel. And how much of this cable, the actual thing that suspends the suspension? About, there's about 22,000 miles. What do you do? I mean, what if it's like, oh, that cable's a little frayed there? Well, if there needed to be any kind of a repair, we have rigging and we have apparatus. You actually hang off these things? Yes. You're so nonchalant about it. Isn't that a little scary? No. No. Exciting. So you're out there, you're all alone, you're swinging in the wind, doing a good hard day's work. What's going on in your heart pod? The best seat in the house. I got the best seat in the house to look at the bridge. Are you kidding? So that safety boat's always tooling around when you guys are working in precarious situations? Well, yeah, he'll try to keep an eye on us depending on where we're at or what we're doing. Do you think we could hop on, maybe? Yeah, sure. Okay. Slip some discs here. There are 31 full-time sepal jacks working to maintain the bridge. It's seasonal work, though, as winter temperatures here can plunge to 30 below and the entire lake can freeze over. I can't believe we were way up there. It's a whole different perspective on it from down here. There you go. How far do they go into the earth? To bedrock. So the height of the tower that you can see, that's approximately how far down the foundation or the caissons go down below. Amazing. Todd, you've got to have one of the toughest but coolest jobs in the world. That's a good way to describe it. Thanks for showing me around. Anytime. It's easy to forget that when the first settlers came to North America, everything traveled by boat. With no roads, trains, planes, or automobiles, these waters were the superhighways and boats reigned supreme. The dominant industry here was fur trading and Mackinac Island was the epicenter. This narrow body of water connected the fur-bearing regions with the rest of the world and people would come from all over America to trade goods for Native American beaver furs. This strategic location was fought over by French, British, and American soldiers and the island had a military presence for over 200 years. My next stop is another of the lake's historical treasures, the famous shipwrecked coast at Whitefish Point. After delving into its depths, I head to Detour Village where I wait for the toughest boat on the lakes, the Paul R. Tragertha. These waters are pretty placid today. It's gorgeous out, but that can change really fast. In fact, there's been an estimated 6,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes claiming 30,000 lives. This stretch of Lake Superior is particularly deadly. They call it Shipwreck Coast. What do you do, Bruce? Well, I am the director here at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point in Michigan's eastern Upper Peninsula and we do a lot of things here but I think probably the most exciting thing we do is go out on the lake and hunt for shipwrecks. The bottom of the Great Lakes are a watery graveyard, littered with the skeletons of sunken ships. Bruce's team has been surveying these mysterious depths since 1978 and each time they take the research vessel out, there's a real chance of finding something new. What we have out there is what's called a tow fish. Our cable's attached to that and what that tow fish actually does, being a sonar, uses sound wave technology so what it's doing is allowing us to see what's on the bottom of the lake. So we'll tow this in a grid pattern. We joke that it's like you're mowing the lawn. You're going back and forth and back and forth. It's not terribly exciting while you're doing this. For a great deal of time we're not seeing anything but with that tow fish, there's something on the bottom of the lake. On the screens inside the file house or the cabin here, we'll be able to see a shadow and we'll record the location but often at times you can tell pretty clearly what you're seeing. How many undiscovered wrecks are there out here? 50, 60, 70 shipwrecks in the area that are undiscovered. Every time you drop this, it's like pure potential. You could be discovering something new. Oh, absolutely. Any in particular we're looking for? Absolutely. There are two French World War I minesweepers, French Navy, that are on the Great Lakes. They were making their maiden voyage across Lake Superior. There were three of them and two of them were never seen again. Wow. You know they're down here and you know they've never been found. Exactly. Nobody's found them. Some people have called them the Holy Grail of shipwrecks. They are very much shipwrecks we would like to find. There are many reasons why the lakes have proved so deadly to ships. They're difficult to navigate, filled with hidden shallows and rocky outcrops, and are at the mercy of some extremes of weather. The winters out here are brutal and ships can face freezing fog, ice storms, hurricane winds, and waves up to 35 feet. The famous storm of November 1913 swallowed up 19 ships in one night, claiming 250 lives. Hey. She said you might have spotted something. Yeah, we got something right here. What is it? Do you know what it is? Or are you seeing it for the first time? Well, this is an 1892 shipwreck, the Vienna. You can see the shadow, and that shows you how high off the bottom it comes. What's it like to come across something you don't know is there? Pretty cool. In 2014, we found the Schooner Nelson. It sank in 1899. This year, we found two steam-powered rail log loaders. We were looking for ships, and we came across them. Wow. You can really get a fairly good picture of it with the sonar. Yep. Here's the bow. This is a stern broke down a little bit, and there's the cargo holes. Okay, so now might you go back with a rover or something? Yeah. We'll go down with the ROV and take a look at it. The Vienna is located one mile off the shore of Whitefish Point, 150 feet down. This is the ROV? Right, yep. This is our remotely operated vehicle. It's like a robot going under the water. It looks like a whole studio on the front of the ROV here. We have a high-definition camera. We've got a sonar that's on it as well. There's some very bright lighting because some of the depths that will take this tends to be very, very dark down there, very dark and cold. We've had it on shipwrecks a little over 500 feet. Basically, this enables for divers not to go. It's a good point. You start going down to those greater depths, the chances of having an accident are much greater, so this is a safer way to go down on a wreck and document it. What we're going to do is we have a line that's on the shipwreck itself, and then Daryl, as the pilot of the ROV, is going to follow that line down. That wreck is about 150 feet approximately. A lot of focus just came over the crew. Absolutely, yep. They're going into their ROV launching mode. Do you guys get nervous at this point? It's more when it's underwater and more when it's down there with everything else that could get it into trouble. There could still be a lot of the cables and ropes, lines, things like that that could tangle up a unit like this. It's a quarter of a million dollars. We're a non-profit, so we really want to get this thing back each time we take it down. So Sarah's communicating with Daryl right now. Yep, he's inside. He's inside the pilothouse, that's right. He's watching that line as it goes down. There? Yep, exactly. Let's go take a look. Thanks, Sarah. That's amazing. What are we looking at there? You're looking at the rudder of the Vienna. Look at that. It's so intact. You can still see the paint. But what year was this? This is an 1892 shipwreck. And you can still see the paint? Absolutely. That's amazing. Cold water really helps to preserve these wrecks. Cold and fresh. Fresh water, that's right. Fresh water, not salt water, yeah. Just going over the rail. There's the railing, yeah. He's just approaching the boiler, which is still standing up. And there's a fish, it looks like, right there. It almost looks like an eel or something. It looks like he's asleep or something. Oh no, I see, it's the back of the fish. Oh, what's that? So there's some equipment. Oh, it might be part of a winch that's laying on the deck. There's the lifeboat. Oh, cool. That is amazing. Sitting there like it's just laying on the deck. 220 years ago. They clearly didn't use that lifeboat. How did she go down? A big part of it has to do with all the ship traffic passing in pretty close proximity to each other. Though the Vienna is downbound, there was another ship that was upbound called the Nippagon. There was a misinterpreted signal between the ships as they were passing each other, and the Nippagon veered in front and basically into the Vienna, smashing right into the hull. So they collided? They collided. You can see a croc right on the deck there too, like a crockery type of body. Wow, it's just sitting there. Just resting on the deck. To see the crockery and like the things that make up everyday life in 1892, that's really... It connects it to the people that were on it, and this was their home as it was sailing. In the museum we have a lot of artifacts that kind of represent that daily life as a sailor on the Great Lakes back in say 1892. These wrecks are amazing. It's like looking into a time capsule. They illuminate an era of growth and prosperity, but they also show the risks that every mariner was taking just by being on the lakes and the tragedies of when things go wrong. One of the best preserved and nationally significant collections of shipwrecks can be found in Lake Huron in Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Fire, ice, collisions, and storms have claimed over 200 vessels, and it's now home to some of the world's best wreck diving. From wooden steamers to steel freighters, the shipwrecks of Thunder Bay represent a microcosm of marine commerce and travel on the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are a lot safer these days, or at least I hope so. I'm about to meet up with a monster of a ship. It's the biggest ship in all the Great Lakes, over a thousand feet long. That's more than three football fields. Now, they're on a very tight schedule, and so they can't stop for me. So the idea is, I catch them on the fly. Good to see you. City block. Alright, now we're sidling right up next to her, and the idea is this ladder ramp thing comes down, and we go. Actually, we've never stopped. Both ships are still moving at this point. Ready? This ship is going to be my home for the next few days as I join her on her journey to collect 71,000 tons of coal. The first part of our voyage involves winding our way through the St. Mary's River to the Sioux Locks. It's the toughest part to navigate in the whole Great Lakes system. From there, we hit the open waters of Lake Superior, and sail to the western most point at Duluth. Bob? Good afternoon, yeah? Yes, how are you? Good, I'm Holly. What's happening? We're coming up on Johnson's Point area, which is one of the trickiest sections of the river. This is about a 150-foot channel. We're 105. And so what happens here, we'll stay close. We don't want to suck into the shoreline here, which the current is coming down. So we're going to try to make a real tight turn coming around here. Below us right now, we've got about 15 feet. That's nothing. Correct. Have any ships ever run aground? Over the years, people have run aground, yes. Yeah, I notice everybody sort of paying attention all at once. All the chit-chat. Yeah, everything kind of goes to, this gets to where all of a sudden now you're getting into a critical area of the river, which you don't have a lot of room for mistake. Okay, well I'll let you focus then. Yeah, let's go 30 left. 30 left. I got 30 left on her. 30 left, roger. Yeah, let's go 20. 20 left. I got 20 on her. Okay, let's go hard left. Hard left. Oh my goodness. What is in this ship right now? We're in ballast. We're actually... Water? We have no cargo. Okay, why do we need ballast? Ballast in a light condition is to keep the boat down so we can keep the props in the water for power. Does this ship carry anything besides coal? This boat is built for carrying coal and iron ore. About 90% of our cargo is coal. Why is it all about the cargo ships here? I mean, what about railroads or other means of transporting the coal? It's certainly a cheaper way to transporting the coal because of bulk. It would take more railroad cars, logistically, to try to get to our customers. How many people do you have working on this boat? There's 25. 25 on board right now. What's unique about the Great Lakes is that a lot of the guys that have been here have grown up with. I got one of the best crews in the fleet, which is good. I'm very blessed to have that. Great Lakes ships move over 160 million tons of cargo a year. From Duluth, where we're headed, they travel over 2,000 miles to get to the Atlantic Ocean. From there, the world. Thanks for giving me the grand tour, Nick. Oh, absolutely. It's nice to be able to share this side of the industry with people. Not a lot of people get to see the inside of an actual merchant vessel. Right. What are your shifts like? We work four hours on, eight hours off. So my normal routine would be midnight to 4 a.m., and then noon to 4 p.m. That's rough. Wait, wait, wait. I've always wanted to know what a poop deck is. It's an old sailing term. When the stern would come down into the water, it would call getting pooped. Hence the name poop deck. Okay, and it stuck. It did stick. And here's my stateroom on board. Nice. Yeah, when you spend eight months a year out here, it's kind of nice to have the comforts of home, pictures of the kids. Right. Wife, you know, mini fridge. This is home. This is home. Time to check out where I'm sleeping. Okay, that's the captain's room. It's supposed to be quiet around there because he sleeps at funky hours. There's a giant red axe. I don't want to know what that's for. My room is supposed to be over here. Nice. I thought I'd be bunking three deep with a bunch of snoring sailors. In fact, I brought my earplugs, but this is great. It's like a four-star hotel room or something. And, oh, except for the fact that there's survival suits. Nice. Hope we won't be needing that. Life jackets, toilet paper, all the essentials. Oh, look at that moon. Gorgeous. I love this boat. But it's late. It's about 8 o'clock now. We're due at the Sulox at midnight, so I'm going to hit the hay. So we're in line, essentially, to go through the Sulox? Correct. And what we're doing now is, I'm listening to my mates, and we're going to be tying up here. We're stopping the boat right now. We're down to about six. Okay, hard left. I got you. Okay. This has got to be one of the most delicate operations. I mean, you are here in the middle of the night doing this. No one else can do it, right? Well, correct. That's the best part of the job. I told you about the maneuvering part, which is nice. It's like a massive thing. You bump up there, like, do you feel it? Yes, you can. If you do happen to bump the boat, you can feel it. So what he's doing now is, these guys are now my eyes and ears, and so I'm listening to the mates. She's closing up forward, she's holding one foot forward, so what I want to do is just feathering it so I don't bump the boat. And the landing chair up forward is how we landed the guys, swinging them out, dropping them there. So now I'm going to have two guys on up here. I'll start backing down the engine here, start slowing her up a little bit. You are really threading the needle here. Not so much here, but when we get to maneuver into the locks, where you're 110 feet wide, we're 105. So we have 5 feet to work with. That's it? That's it. Two and a half on each side? Correct. Oh my gosh. That's correct. I'm doing about 9 tenths of a mile an hour right now. Basically about 300 feet to stop. You don't have brakes though. We have no brakes. We're using engine. Put her hard left. Is there a way I can get off and watch this process from over there? Yes, we're actually going to get you off down below here on the gameway. So we're up against forward. It was boggling to me that you could actually bring this thing in so close. It's pretty cool. Well, you know, it's such a big ship, you just think lawn and power and all that, but what you just did was just a bit of finesse. Finesse is the perfect word, yeah. I can park this better in my car. Told me to be really nice to you guys so you don't jiggle the ladder. Check it out. It looks even bigger at night if that's possible. It's just this massive wall of steel. Looks like a building. Looks like there have been a few fender benders over time. The Soo Locks were built so boats could navigate a series of deadly rapids on the St. Mary's River. The river falls 21 feet in only three quarters of a mile. It is a simple yet brilliant piece of engineering wisdom. You open up a gate, you bring your ship in, you close the gate, you raise the water a couple of feet, you open up the next gate, and you're off. Oh my gosh, it's like three inches. Astonishing. You did it. Perfect. The captain has got her in perfect position, and now there's water pouring in through the second set of gates, and the water level is raising up. It takes about 15 minutes, and then they'll be able to open these, and off she goes. The Soo Locks are the busiest canal locks in the world, and during the summer navigation season they make over 10,000 lockages, moving 80 million tons of cargo. This waterway is a backbone of the American economy, feeding the automobile, construction, appliance, and mining industries, and powering much of the Midwest. It's estimated that if the locks broke down, it would cost 11 million jobs. It's a 24-hour operation, and like my boat, many move through the locks in the dead of night. Overall, my first sleep on board was good. I mean, I like the vibration and the gentle rocking of the boat. It's kind of like being in a mother's womb puts you to sleep. Then there's the series of alarms that went off, which seemed like non-alarm alarms, but they did wake you up. It's kind of like being on a train, except you wake up to this view, which makes it all worthwhile. Look at this. You can't see any land out there. You feel like you're in the middle of nowhere. Lake Superior is astonishing. It holds 10% of the world's fresh water. It's the same size as North Carolina. In fact, it is the biggest lake in the world. Now we're in open waters and it's full steam ahead, cruising across Lake Superior. It's time to see what really drives this boat. I'm off to meet Chief Engineer Dan in the engine room. You'd think that it's diesel that fuels this ship, but it's not. It's food. Hi. Yes? You working on dinner here? We're making tenderloin to put on our smoker outside for dinner. You don't mess around. No, we don't. It's not like big fat pots of unidentifiable stuff. That was the olden days. When I first started, that's the way it was. Oh, really? It was beef stews and boiled corned beef for lunch and that. Now the world's changed and everybody goes to more sensible eating. The thing is, you don't want a lot of hungry, tired, angry, grumpy men. We can make or break the day. What's a shift for you? I try to stay around 12 to 13 hours a day. So you're working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for how long? I just did 84 days straight. It's easy. It's not bad. You're always thinking about what's happening next shift. Right. I'm always thinking when the next groceries are coming aboard. What's the weather like? That's very important. How does weather affect you? If we get stuck in the ice or if there's traffic in the ice. How long can you get stuck out here? Oh, you can go a week, two weeks. So that's when you bust out the big jerky? Yeah. We're getting into lunch hour here, so we've got to go to work. Alright, so what do you want me to do? Oil that up. That other one. Hey Nick. Hi. What do you fancy? I'm going to do a chicken sandwich today. Chicken sandwich. Everything on it? Yeah. Fried? Chicken and cherry wrap. Nice choice. There are 25 crew members who run this gigantic ship, and everyone has a very specific job to do. I'm off to meet Chris, a guy who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Hey, Chris? How you doing? I'm Holly. I'm Chris. Nice to meet you. So what's your job on the boat? I'm the conveyor man. I'm in charge of the unloading system there. You're like the engineer in charge of the conveyor belt? Yeah. That's the boom back there. The rest of it, it's all underneath of us. This is really the critical small part of this boat in some respects, because this is how the coal comes on and off. Yeah. So if something goes wrong, you're on the hot seat. I don't like the hot seat. It don't matter what the weather is. If you got to fix it, you got to fix it. I've been out here in middle of December and January, icicles hanging off my face, breaking ice off everything, so to run. I'm the dirtiest guy on the boat generally. Are you? Yeah. It's a contained environment downstairs, so all the coal dust and the grease and everything just stays right there. So when something breaks, it's covered in coal dust, ore dust, grease, coal, hydraulic oil. To change it, you got to touch it, lay on it, but I enjoy it. Yeah. Where are you from, Chris? I'm from Helmand, Michigan. Okay. Small town? Oh, yeah. Tiny town. Boat's bigger than our town. And when you go on shore leave, do you just scrub down? It takes a couple days to get it all off me, usually. Really? Yeah. I start taking extra showers, two, three a day. Yeah. Then I get home, my wife makes me shower like four times a day, because it's all nasty. Yeah. It just soaks into your skin and you can't get it off. Yeah. Can you show me around the conveyor belt? Yes, I can. Okay. This is so cool. It's like the bowels of the entire ship. Yeah. Right now, we're like 22, 23 foot below the waterline right now. Oh, really? There's only a foot below us, the bottom of the ship, the water beneath our feet. Now, what is this? This right here is the gate. This is what dumps the cargo onto the belt. A simple little valve and away we go. Oh, my God. Okay, so it's sliding down here. And it gets dusty. Yeah. I can see how you get pretty dirty down here. Yeah, it don't take much. You just got to touch it and you wind up like this. And I ain't even done nothing and I got dirty. I better let Chris get back to work as it's all hands on deck to get ready for our arrival in Duluth tomorrow. At first blush, it might feel like you and I don't have any connection to these trade routes and what's in these ships. But, in fact, we really do. I mean, think about it. They carry iron ore and coal and limestone and grain. These are the things that heat our homes, build our cars and feed us. Pretty much everything. There's no denying that life for these modern day mariners is tough. But I'm struck by their grit and how passionate they are about what they do. It's been a fascinating day of exploring this ship, but tomorrow morning early we arrive Duluth and that's where we get the coal. I may be rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, but it's a 24-hour operation here and within minutes of arriving, the coal is being loaded. Duluth and Superior twin ports provide the gateway to the lakes for all of Western America. What's happening? Inductor spring three coal. Out of machinery, this one guy with this little console is controlling it all? Yep. Controls the whole system. Where does the coal come from? Montana, Wyoming. Most of it there is Southern Powder River Basin. And it comes in by railway? Comes in by rail, yep. You hold it here and then you dump it into the ships and off they go? Yep. That's a lot of ships, a lot of coal, a lot of industry. Busy times. While renewable energy sources are paving the way for the future, 33% of the U.S. is still powered by coal. And at Midwest Energy they have the capacity to store five million tons of it. I thought my boat trip around the Great Lakes would be about water and coal, but at every turn and every vessel told the story of tough physical lives, about camaraderie and loyalty, community and loss. The story of the Great Lakes is one of commerce and trade, but at the heart of it all are its solid, proud people.