The Icemen Cometh

leaving This tranquil scene of an icebreaker until harbor belies the fact that from December 2015, more spring, ice owns the Great Lakes. In frozen; than 80 percent of the surface water was March. In Lake Erie was 94 percent covered in into June. 2013-14, there was ice on Lake Superior is often When the cold winds blow, the ice waters to pushed and shoved across the freezing In blocks, be swept into busy bays and harbors. piles on bergs and sheets up to 5 feet thick, it and docks, itself, jamming tight against bridges into jagand turning roadsteads and anchorages in, nonged white parking lots filled with iced- moving shipping. With That’s when the icebreakers get to work. propeltwo 2,500-hp diesels turning an 8-foot they’re ler and driving an inch-thick steel hull, but it’ s made for the job. Top speed is 14 knots, a ship power that counts when you’re driving into an ice floe. into There’s more to breaking ice than bashing up onto it it. Heavy ice is dealt with by riding it into large and using the ship’s weight to break

pieces are chunks. Sucked into the prop wash, the can rock broken even more. The helmsman also called the ship from side to side in a technique in ice. sallying, making waves to break up locked- a Race-tracking describes the vessel making breaking series of loops through the ice pack, the current up pieces that are small enough for is finally to carry away. And when a channel clean, cleared, the icebreaker shaves its edges that might being careful not to break of f a floe jam things again. Great There are nine of these vessels on the ports Lakes, keeping open the big commercial keeping — Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland — and The icethe grain and coal freighters running. no one breakers’ motto: “We move ships when else can.” known The Coast Guard icebreaker as a as the “Queen of the Great Lakes,” serves She is museum in Mackinaw City, Michigan. and over - open for tours, educational programs night encampments.

Mackinaw, themackinaw.org — Steve Knauth