Living on the Great Lakes
Growing
up around here you get so used to living around the Great Lakes that you don’t
appreciate them.
Recently,
in reading a book about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it hit me again
about how significant this watershed is.
The Great Lakes make up 80% of the freshwater in North America and over 20%
of all the freshwater in the world.
When
Alexis De Tocqueville visited the United States in 1831, he described the Great
Lakes as one of the wonders of the world—and he only saw the smallest of the
lakes, Lake Erie.
I
remember, as a kid, our parents taking us to go swimming at Lake Erie State
Park. We looked out at the water, at the
expanse, and couldn’t see the other side.
It was described to us like seeing the ocean, which, at that time, we
had never seen.
Lake
Erie seems commonplace to those of us who live around here. Our neighbors in Dunkirk, Fredonia and
Westfield often see the lake. Those of
us living across the “great divide” in the Jamestown area might see it at a
distance as we get to the top of the Chautauqua Ridge on our way to Buffalo.
Yet, our greatest attention to Lake Erie seems to come in mid-winter when we
hope that it ices up thus slowing down snowfall in the hills.
My
Dad told me one time that he had always wanted to spend a summer as a deck hand
on a Great Lakes ship...a dream that he never realized. Yet, in this book by John
Bacon titled “The Gales of November,” maybe it is just as well that his dream
didn’t come true.
Over the decades, there were many ship wrecks and
sinkings of these Great Lake freighters...one of the reasons being that they were
built not so much for the weather and waves they would encounter but for the
dimensions of the locks through which they had to pass.
The locks at the “Soo” (Sault St. Marie) were
especially influential in boat/ship construction—ships were made long and
narrow to just fit into them. The ships
are also flat bottomed so that they can traverse the relatively shallow
waterways that connect the lakes themselves, which can mean that they are less
stable in heavy seas.
Millions of tons of iron ore have been shipped using
these vessels over the decades to such places as Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland and
Buffalo...all made possible by the shipping highway of the Great Lakes. Shipping by water costs significantly less
than by rail. The book’s author argued
that World War II could not have been won, had not the United States been able
to ship the iron ores of Minnesota to the factories further east which were
making the ships, tanks, and guns needed to win the war.
Today, the Great Lakes seem to be in better shape than
ever. Pollution has pretty much been
tamed, and, around here, fisherman by the hundreds go to Lake Erie to catch
perch, salmon and walleye.
Yet, the book was a good reminder that storms and wind
can come up quickly on the Great Lakes.
The fact that fresh water forms the waves, and that the waves are
confined by the topography surrounding them...means that the waters of the
Great Lakes can become deadly if not respected.
We have better technology and weather prediction
capabilities than we did when the Edmund Fitzgerald went to the bottom in that
storm on Lake Superior in 1975. Yet, it still holds a lesson—those using the
Great Lakes must be on guard for wind and high waves when storms are strong.
There is nothing in the world that compares with the
Great Lakes. We are lucky to live along
their shores.
Rolland Kidder, Stow, NY
This article was published in the Jamestown
Post-Journal
June 13,2026
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