The Soo Locks

The Soo Locks
I watched in awe as the freighters passed thru the Soo Locks. There are actually four locks able to take ships back and forth between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. The elevation change is 21 feet and the locks are capable of a ship 1,000 feet long and 80 feet wide so imaging about 1 football field wide and 10 long and that is the size of the ship.
Before a ship can enter the locks it must take on a pilot whose job it is to navigate the ship thru the locks. Not an easy task as you will see from the pictures. There was only about 3 feet on either side of the ship I saw going downstream.
The lock on one side is opened and the ship enters the lock. Then the lock doors are closed and the ship is either raised or lowered by letting water in from Lake Superior to raise the ship or letting water out of the lock into Lake Huron. There are no pumps necessary to do this as it is all gravity fed. It takes surprisingly little time to do also, I would estimate 10-15 minutes once the ship is in the lock. It appeared that about one ship at least every hour on a Sunday passed thru the locks and many more smaller vessels (mainly tour boats that take you thru if you want the experience).
Notice in the photos how high the ship sits when entering the locks from the Lake Superior side and how low it sits in the locks when exiting the Lake Huron side
I was not able to visit the River Museum as it was closed nor did I visit the lake freighter ship museum (not enough time).
So that now gives you an idea of what happens.
The locks were built so that ships could get around the rapids in the St. Mary’s River. Prior to that in the 1800’s they would have to unload, carry the cargo up or downstream and load it again on another ship.
1 Opening the lock
2 Entering the lock
3 Moving thru the lock
4 Lowering the ship
5 Leaving the lock