Toronto may be a port
city on one of the greatest waterways in the world, thousands of ships may pass
it by every year, hundreds may turn into its harbour, including cruise ships
and ocean-going vessels from as far away as Brazil, Turkey, Germany, Australia,
and Japan; it may host thousands of debarking passengers and crew; yet the port
leaves barely a ripple in the consciousness of Torontonians. Unlike some of the
other ports on the Great Lakes, Toronto does not consider it important to mark
the opening of shipping season with any fanfare, apart from a small ceremony on
the bridge of the first salt-water ship of the year, where the captain is
presented with a top hat made of beaver (the media have other things to do).
Torontonians think of shipping about as much as they think of their own
heartbeats. Some of this is understandable: with an economy as large and
diverse as Toronto’s, shipping is not prized here as it is in places like
Thunder Bay and Duluth; our docks, located in remote areas, hidden behind fences
and closely guarded, are virtually invisible to the public; and the shipping
lanes on Lake Ontario tend to the far side of the lake. But perhaps it’s a
latent awareness of our maritime situation that makes the memoirs of a Great
Lakes ship captain like Sea Stories: True Adventures of Great Lakes
Freighter Captain, Richard Metz not only interesting but also strangely
relevant.
The stories Captain Metz
wants to tell are of bad weather, drunken crews, failing engines, anchors that
drop without warning, narrow locks, lift bridges that might or might not knock
off the top of the ship, and near collisions. They are good tales. But at least
as interesting for nonsailors is the mental stretching one has to do to remap a
familiar region on the imagination. Thunder Bay is no longer on the
Trans-Canada Highway a day’s drive beyond Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie; it is a
harbour past the Soo Locks and Whitefish Point, past Rock of Ages Lighthouse,
on the other side of Isle Royale, tucked in behind Pie Island where you can
shelter when southwest gales are blowing. Owen Sound is not a vacation and
recreational town; it is a place where you may tie up for the winter. Big urban
centres like Toronto, Chicago, and Detroit get little mention by Metz, because
he is usually heading to or from smaller places, places that only locals and
seamen will have heard of — Burns Harbor, Copper Harbor, Houghton, Lorain, Port
Stanley. Movement, rather than mindlessly following roads, requires setting a
course over open water, an acute awareness of weather, scrupulously up-to-date
charts, a constant monitoring of traffic on all sides, and extremely delicate
handling of the ship through locks and canals — the locks at Snell and
Eisenhower, the Beauharnois Canal and the South Shore Canal and, of course, the
Welland Canal and Soo Locks.
Having Google Maps at
the ready adds to the pleasure to reading Sea Stories, since Metz often
defines his locations nautically. It was while closing in on Fawn Island in the
St. Clair River that a wheelsman horrified the captain by failing to respond an
order to turn to port, casually explaining that the wheel had come off in his
hand (he was fired). The fog was impenetrable while rounding Mission Point,
when a mate raised an alarm to report that an upbound ship was coming their
way, underlining the danger by adding, “And it’s Canadian!” (Americans in the
1960s thought Canadians were poor sailors, drunk most of the time. Later Metz
worked for many years with a Canadian company and came to believe Canadian
sailors were among the finest ship handlers in the world.) We read how Metz
hopes to get to Passage Island before a storm hits, how he will have to face a
mean Nor’easter close to Angus Island, how when he reaches Battle Island Light
he will have to turn and expose his port side to the elements. For sailors the
positions would probably come loaded with meaning and memories, but even for
general readers the stories light up when we are able to pinpoint the locations
on a map.
As background to Metz’s
adventures, we learn a lot about life on a Great Lakes ship, the cargo, the
missions, the many uses of the anchor, the duties of all the ranks from
deckhand to captain, their qualifications, the hiring and firing, Christmas
away from home, the respect a great cook enjoys. For those of us impressed with
what it takes to earn a PhD, the road to a captaincy may come as a shock. Many
years of working as deckhand through first mate are required before one can
qualify to take the written captain’s exam. Then come the orals. A PhD
candidate endures a measly three or four hours. In Thunder Bay Metz began
sitting with his examiner at 8:30, took a short lunch break, then continued to
4:30. That was Day One, and it was followed by two more like it. It was
grueling and almost inconceivably thorough.
Now retired, Metz lives
on Lake Superior, where he still watches the ships and uses his marine radio to
talk to those he is familiar with. He notes that there are fewer ships on the
lakes now, at least partly because of the decline of the steel industry. New
ships can now be over 300 m long, while in his early days a large ship was only
half that size. Despite the increase in size, a typical crew today is 12, down
from the 34 of his day. The day will come, he believes, when ships will sail
without a crew. Metz’s book may thus represent one of the later documents of an
era that could be entering its sunset years.
