Lakespeak: The Language of the Great Lakes – Seaway Route (Part 1) – Spring 1984
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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
By Capt. John J. Lawrence and Robert D. Graham
The lake sailor speaks a different language from his saltwater brother. It’s not hard to understand why: discrete endeavors generate their own talk-of-the-trade. And it is a strange truism that the more isolated the endeavor, the more extensive the vocabulary.
There are disparities within the Lakes’ language. No doubt because of his more frequent contacts with salt water, the Canadian lake sailor speaks a more traditional seagoing language than his Yankee colleague who styles a ship a boat, computes speed in miles per hour, and refers to sides and steering directions in terms of right and left.
Anchor pocket: a recess in the bow (or stern) for anchor stowage within the hull line, thus minimizing the chance of damaging lock walls, wharves, or other ships.
Batten bars: steel bars to hold canvas hatch tarpaulins in place on ships that used wooden hatchboards or sliding-leaf hatch covers. See also windy bars.
Booby hatch: a small hatch on the spar deck (see) that affords crew access to a cargo hold.
The “iron deckhand,” or hatch crane, of the laker Canadian Mariner. Note the modern, one-piece hatch covers secured to the hatch coamings with Kestern clamps.
Iron deckhand: the hatch crane, electric or diesel-powered gantry on rails along a laker’s spar deck (see), primarily to remove and replace the 6-7-ton hatch covers.
Kestner Clamp: patented, over-center clamp mounted on the hatch coaming of a modern laker and used to secure the one-piece hatch cover. Each hatch is generally fitted with more than 70 such clamps, which are worked with special wrenches.
Landing boom: a spar rigged to swing outboard from a vessel for the purpose of landing personnel on a wharf or lock approach wall. The rider sits astride a bosun’s chair.
Scuttle: a windscoop mounted in a porthole to enhance ventilation of accommodation areas.
Canaller: a type of ship designed for the 14-foot locks of the pre-1932 Welland Canal and the pre-Seaway St., Lawrence canals. The canallers were generally laid out in the bridge-forward-machinery-aft pattern of the laker, and carried some 2,200 tons of cargo. Of the hundreds of canallers built, all but a very few have disappeared, and those few are now in specialized occupations.
Eyebrow: visor above the wheelhouse window.
Fence: on the spar deck (see), removable railing consisting of light-guage wire rope strung through socket-mounted stanchions.
Gooseneck: a spar deck-mounted ballast tank overflow pipe.
Port Colborne fairlead: a pair of roller chocks mounted in a rotating disc, thus permitting mooring wires to be paid out at various angles relative to a ship. Particularly useful when vessel being raised or lowered in lock, and as with other chocks, provides mechanical advantage for a winch.
Spar deck: main weather deck on a laker. The hatches are located on this deck.
Spearpole: the bowsprit or steering pole of a traditional design laker that allows navigational personnel to steady the ship at a given mark. Also called the steering jib by some. The latest, all-aft lakers dispense with the appurtenance since the bow or fore kingpost serves the same purpose.
Strongback: a timber or steel beam placed across a hatch to support wooden hatch boards. Seldom seen today.
Tank top: the top of a double-bottom tank that forms the bottom of a cargo hold. It is common for a laker running in ballast to carry several feet of water over the tank top of her aftermost hold in addition to that in her ballast tanks.
Telescope hatches: the old-style sliding-leaf steel hatch covers used on upper lakers built before World War II. These were superseded by the one-piece steel hatch covers introduced into common use in the 1940s. The latter covers eliminated the need for tarpaulins.
Tunnel: enclosed, longitudinal passage on each side of a laker’s cargo holds, utilizing the space between the tops of the side tanks and the spar deck (the area sometimes called main deck level). By using the tunnels, personnel may move between bow and stern areas without venturing onto weather decks. (2) on a self-unloader, the longitudinal space beneath the cargo holds that contains the conveyor system.
Wheel: a propeller.
Wheelhouse: navigation bridge.
Windy bars: steel bars run athwartships on a hatch cover to hold a tarpolin in place. Used in conjunction with batten bars.
Wire: a line made of wire rope.
NAVIGATIONAL
All fast: secure on a wharf or wall with all wires out.
Check (down): to reduce speed.
Under check means running a speed just sufficient for steerageway, often employed as an alternative to tying up or anchoring when a delay exists ahead.
ETA/ETD: estimated time of arrival/departure.
Dump: to lower the water (and thus a ship) in a lock.
Four-point bearing: a means of determining distance off some object on shore, such as a lighthouse. Using a bearing board or pelorus to determine when the object, or mark, was four points off the bow, the log was read, and read again when the mark lay abeam. The elapsed distance was then regarded as the distance off the object. The practice has been superseded by determination via ranging rings on radar.
Fick: application of engine power to initiate or accentuate steering response.
Haul: noun or verb referring to a course change (“We made our haul at the buoy,” or “We had to haul around suddenly.“)
Knuckle: the point at which a lock approach wall turns from an oblique angle to a straight shot into the chamber. A ship should be aligned for entry when she reaches the knuckle. On most U.S. locks the knuckle occurs several hundred feet prior to the chamber, while in Canadian design it occurs just before the gates of the lock.
LA: abbreviation for limit of approach. The LAS indicate how far a ship may approach along a guide wall while waiting for lock entry, and are marked by signs. There are usually two LAS, with #2 being outermost relative to the lock. Generally a ship awaiting clearance of opposing traffic will be directed to tie up at LA 2, but if another must tie up astern of her and she will not impede emerging traffic, she will be directed to LA 1.
Light/light ship: in ballast, carrying no cargo. security call: a radiotelephone message intended to warn other vessels of a ship’s position. Usually given when entering narrow channels, at blind bends, when leaving a wharf, or when executing a turnaround.
Sliding the wall: an approach to a lock by a large vessel accomplished by placing the bow against the approach wall and moving ahead while maintaining this contact. Control of the ship is thereby maintained while the wall guides her to the lock entrance. To save wear and tear, the face of the wall is lined with timber fendering. While sliding, the ship moves obliquely, her bow “right up” but her stern well clear and thus free to maneuver. By the time she reaches the knuckle, this balancing act has ideally lined her up for a perfect lock entrance. Sliding the wall is often accomplished with the help of seamen who have been placed ashore by landing boom during the initial approach, and who then pace the vessel carrying (or ready to take) spring lines from the ship as insurance against a sudden loss of control. The bow-thruster has greatly facilitated the wall slide by allowing the captain to keep the bow against the wall with the thruster, and without resort to kicks of the main engine.
Snubbing wire: in the pre-Seaway era, a special wire used to check and/or stop a ship in a lock. This was possible at that time because of the strength of the snub and wire relative to the size of the vessel, and also because the depth of the locks was less than today’s.
Spring: (1) a large-circumference rope line generally used at the bow. (2) any mooring line other than a breast line. (3) the working of a ship’s hull in response to wave action. This working is especially apparent on a laker because of her length-to-beam-to-depth ratios.
Stick (or stake): a spar buoy.
Stick out: to pay out a long lead of wire.
One whistle/two whistles: terms for port-to-port / starboard-to-starboard meetings of two ships, respectively. Since Rules of the Road call for exchange of single-whistle signals in the former case and two-whistle signals in the latter, shipmasters and pilots have come to describe the meeting situations by the whistle blasts prescribed. Thus they speak of a one-whistle or two- whistle meeting. Often the word whistle is omitted; then, when masters of two ships discuss an impending meeting on their radiotelephones, they are apt to talk in terms of “Meet you on one (two).” (Generally, when there is any doubt about what kind of meeting will transpire, it is discussed between the ships before it transpires, with the master or pilot of the downbound vessel given the choice. In general, a one-whistle meeting is considered the norm, but the two-whistle meetings frequently are arranged, particularly if one of the parties must make a port-hand lock approach wall soon afterward. The one-two-whistle terminology is also used in overtaking situations.
Pool: short for intermediate pool, an area of water between two locks. Pools exist between Beauharnois Locks 3 and 4, between Eisenhower and Snell Locks, and in the Welland Canal between each of the first four locks and again between Locks 6 and 7.
Prospect: an event whose occurrence is anticipated. A shipmaster requests a pilot for a certain time and, unless otherwise advised, thereby obtains a prospect that the pilot will be aboard at the time requested. The term is also applied to departure time from a port.
Sweep: to inspect and clear a channel of obstructions.
Traffic buoy: a fairway, or center-of-channel buoy, marked with red and white stripes. These buoys often mark traffic calling-in-points.
Turnback: filling or emptying an unoccupied lock to accommodate a ship approaching from the same direction as the last ship to occupy the lock. Thus, if there are two eastbound ships and none westbound, the first will be lowered, after which the lock will be turned back for the second. The term dummy lockage is sometimes used for this.
Walkthrough: a lockage operation in which a ship enters, is raised or lowered, and leaves without ever coming to a stop. This is possible in Lock 8 of the Welland Canal, which is nearly twice as long as the largest ship that can use the system, and in which the rise/drop is slight. It is also possible at Iroquois because of the very slight change in level, but is seldom done.
Schooner: a small, usually-wooden cargo vessel once common on the lower St. Lawrence, but which now has all but disappeared. The French word for schooner, goelette, was often applied because they carried tall masts onto which steadying sails could be bent, and because in hull lines they recalled old sailing vessels. Sometimes referred to as a penouche, a possible corruption of the French pinasse (pinnace).
Seven-thirty: a laker, sometimes with seagoing capability, built to the maxi- mum dimensions permissible for Seaway passage. Nominally 730 feet in overall length, the class includes a number of just-slightly-shorter vessels and several newer ones whose bulbous bows give them slightly greater length, but which are still admitted for Seaway passage. Since 1974, all seven-thirties have been built in the all-aft configuration. The seven-thirty is actually the modern equivalent to the pre-Seaway canaller -on a tenfold scale!
Hulett: the famed articulated iron ore-unloading machine, named for its inventor. The largest Huletts are located in Conneaut, Ohio; these can unload twenty tons of ore at a bite. The Huletts are rapidly giving way to shipboard self-unloading gear.
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