With digressions behind us, let’s resume the journey. In part 4 we descended from the level of the Mohawk at Rome NY into Lake Ontario, approximately 248.’ Canadian pilot boat Mrs C meets us not far from the entrance to the Welland Canal at Port Weller, so named for the lead engineer in building of the first iteration of the Welland Canal.
Below lock W1, Alouette Spirit tied at a dock. The mover is Wilf Seymour, a Canadian-flagged former Moran-owned Texas-built tug I’ve met on most trips here since 2015. I’ve seen her on locations between Lake Huron and the St Lawrence just up from Quebec City. Click here to see her being loaded with ingots.
ITB Presque Isle occupied the Port Weller Dry Docks.
So that you can get a sense of how ungainly this ITB looks out of the notch, I’m sharing this photo thanks to Jeff Thoreson of Erie Shipping News. Usually she’s in the notch and considered a 1000-footer.
Exiting lock W1 was China-built Algoma Mariner, whose bow shows the effect of operating in ice.
Notice how narrow the Welland is here, with less than 100′ between Grande Mariner and Algoma Mariner.
For more info on the Welland, click here.
I drove through Port Colborne–at the 571′ level of Lake Erie–a few years ago, but seeing the names of the shops here, I’d love to stop by and wander. I’m not fanatical about pies, but Jay the Pie Guy sounds too tasty to pass up. Check him out on FB.
Four months ago, I posted photos from Clayton NY on the dead ship tow of the former traversier aka ferry Camille Marcoux. Here’s what she looks like now after the
skilled carving tools of the workers at Marine Recycling Corp in Port Colborne.
See the scrapping in the upper right side of the photo, here the pilot steps off and we enter Lake Erie, turning to port for Buffalo.
After an hour-and-a-half run, the grain elevators of Buffalo welcome us. Seeing the blue G, I can already imagine the smell of the Cheerios plant.
Near the entrance to the Buffalo River, I spot NYPA’s Joncaire II tied up near the merry-go-round. I’d love to see her at work managing the ice boom. I don’t see Daniel on the bow, but I believe the full name is Daniel Joncaire II. ??
Over in Silo City, two older Great Lakes tugs–Washington and Vermont— await between jobs. Of course, they still work. The combined age of those two tug is 195 years. YEARS!!
Silo City may not sound all that exciting, especially for folks who know farms, but this complex made Buffalo and forged a link with another boom city . . . . the six boros of NYC. I like the quote here that it was grain elevators and the nexus of the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal that led Buffalo to surpass London, Rotterdam, and Crimea as then the #1 grain handling port in the world. I also recently learned about the influence the grain elevator form had on modern architecture a la Gropius.
Check out this Gropius design.
A few years ago, I’d never consider exploring Buffalo, and I have so many other photos that I might revisit the city on tugster, but for now, I suggest you go there too and
stop at Buffalo Harbor Museum, Pierce Arrow Museum, and Swannie’s, for starters. I started from Erie Basin and walked to all of these in the same day.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
tugster: a waterblog 
12 comments
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August 15, 2017 at 11:24 am
mageb
Thanks Will, I am so enjoying all of these entries.
August 15, 2017 at 1:27 pm
JED!
I believe WASHINGTON and VERMONT sport cast iron hulls. Their sisters (PUNTA TUNA & PUNTA LIMA) which were in Puerto Rico; also had tillers instead of wheels for steering.
August 15, 2017 at 1:37 pm
tugster
Thx, JED. What has become of PUNTA TUNA & PUNTA LIMA?
good shot here of tiller steering on G-tug Mississippi https://tugster.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/random-tugs-173/
August 15, 2017 at 8:11 pm
Daniel Meeter
Having lived near Port Colborne for four years, of course I especially enjoyed this post. Having biked along the canal, from Port Weller to Nickle Beach (named for INCO). Twenty years ago the canal was lined with working industries: GM, Robin Hood Flour, Atlas Steel, Union Carbide, INCO. Serviced by small fabricating, heat-treating, and hydraulics shops run by immigrant Dutchmen, who had that great Dutch technical education. On that street in Port Colborne we could go to Minor’s Fisheries for some excellent Lake Perch.
August 16, 2017 at 6:05 am
tugster
Dan–Your comment tells me I need to get on the ground in Port Colborne soon, both to see Jay the Pie Guy AND see these other shops…
August 16, 2017 at 8:02 am
Daniel Meeter
In Port Colborne, ships came through so often, both lakers and salties, that Hiway 3 had a double route through town, the main route, with a lift bridge, and then a diversion route with its own bridge for when the main bridge was open.
August 16, 2017 at 5:43 am
Rembert
Buffalo not exciting? I remember us studying an atlas of the world, back in time at Kindergarten. It was printed for children and what impressed us more than pictures of the Eiffel Tower or Egypt´s pyramids were the silos of Buffalo. Sheer mass.
BTW I´m delighted to see, that last days vivid pictures of life and scrapping at the waterline are the best antidote to hospitalism. The Tugster- therapy!
August 16, 2017 at 6:10 am
tugster
Rembert– Interesting the things we remember from youth. I once went to Oslo for the sole purpose of seeing Vigeland sculptures in Frogner Park, which I recalled seeing in a Popular Mechanics issue as a boy. But your Buffalo comments intrigue me . . . there surely are lots of silos there, and I have more photos to share, esp with the scale of grain handling AND the info that Gropius and other architects of his time were inspired by their dramatic mass.
August 16, 2017 at 10:32 am
Rembert
Following your hints I googled “Gropius Silo” and found crosslinks in abundance. It´s obvious, that this type of building must have been a very important source of inspiration not only for Gropius. You even find pictures of Buffalos Silos, taken by Gropius himself! And its nice to see, that already the starchitect compared silos to Egyptian pyramids http://www.lessilosmodernes.fr/?p=72 . But it was a short way to present-day “Wohnsilos” (german for tower-blocks), where the term is used in a not-so-flattering sense. I have to admit, that nowadays I regret the marginalization of elder, less efficient construction forms and I remember pictures of those scandinavian-looking red / white barns of New England in the aforementioned atlas. But of course those concrete giants are preferable to the plastic bales, which are scattered across german fields in winter nowadays.
Noteworthy the german perception of the USA in 19./20. century as something like tabula rasa, where material like social forms were born directly out of purpose. Famous poet Goethe observed already in 1827: http://davidsbuendler.freehostia.com/america.htm . America was the continent without constraining tradition. As one can see, for instance in Charlottesville, a number of decades is enough, to change things thoroughly.
Please don´t miss abandoned ice – houses along Hudson and its hinterland – another childhood memory (an Ellery Queen mystery novel, I suppose).
August 16, 2017 at 8:11 am
tugster
The Soo as well as the Welland and the rest of the St Lawrence Seaway must be the two least known keys to economies of big sections of two countries.
August 16, 2017 at 12:52 pm
Mike
The silos in your first Silo City pic are the Lake & Rail Elevator complex, which recently (early 2010s) had a heap of money put into them to re-enter use for the grain trades. The group that bought them had vessel calls in 2014 to load the silo up with Canadian wheat and waited for a predicted shortfall and price spike that never came
Took them almost three years to empty out the silos onto trains and trucks, but just last month they got the last load out and closed up the facility again.
August 17, 2017 at 11:08 am
Lee Rust
No sign of SS Columbia at Silo City. Is she still in Buffalo?