The Greek freighter Sophie C arrived intact in the Twin Ports on September 1962 to take on a load of grain destined for Germany. As the vessel approached the Clure Public Marine Terminal in Duluth, it was caught by a gust and shoved against the dock, causing substantial damage to the ship’s propeller.

Carrying a supply of spare parts is essential for charter vessels, and the captain of the Sophie C felt he was in relatively good shape with an extra propeller blade lashed to the after decks. Buoyed by the convenience of a nearby shipyard, the vessel’s agents and owners arranged to shift the Sophie C from Duluth to Superior for what promised to be a relatively quick and easy solution to the problem. On September 4, the Sophie C became the first ocean vessel to enter Fraser Shipyard in two and a half years and caused quite a stir.

Since a saltwater ship had last called on the yard, though, in 1960, a major addition to the harbor had been completed — a new bridge connecting Minnesota and Wisconsin — to replace the aging, multi-purpose Interstate Bridge. The new bridge was known locally as the “High Bridge.” (More formally, it is now the John A. Blatnik Bridge, originally dedicated on December 2, 1961, and renamed on September 24, 1971, for Congressman Blatnik to commemorate his role in aiding the development of the Twin Ports.)

The bridge was designed to span the main shipping channel between Rice’s Point on the Minnesota side and Connor’s Point on the Wisconsin side and the channel entrance to the shipyard, known as Howard’s Pocket. The main span over the shipping channel was 1,040 feet, with a height above the water of 120 feet. A shorter span of 650 feet was built over Howard’s Pocket, but because the channel was on the downward slope of the bridge as it approached its bottom in Wisconsin, the height of the span over the water at Howard’s Pocket was reduced to 100 feet. The recommended safe vertical clearance for bridges over Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway waterways was 120 feet. Taking into account a maximum water depth of 24 feet beneath the bridge in Howard’s Pocket, the total clearance from the bottom of the channel to the bridge span was only 124 feet.

Given the nature of an ocean vessel’s trade routes, there are considerable design differences between saltwater vessels and their counterparts that sail the Great Lakes. One of the most significant of these is the draft of the vessels – in other words, their capacity to load to a deeper level because of the unrestricted waterways in which they can operate.

It is not uncommon for ocean vessels departing the Twin Ports even today to load to the draft of the St. Marys River and other restricted waterways and then top off to their normal load draft at ports on the lower St. Lawrence Seaway such as Montreal, Quebec or Baie Comeau. The term “deep water” is aptly used to form a distinction between the reduced draft trade routes of Great Lakes vessels as opposed to their salt-water competitors.

The skipper of the deep-water freighter Sophie C was suddenly all too aware of the limitations that the low clearance of the High Bridge was imposing on him him to get his vessel into the dry dock at Superior. The Sophie C, built in 1957 in Hiroshima, Japan, was 125 feet from her keel to the top of her masts. Somehow, the captain and the shipyard had to figure out a way to make the vessel fit beneath the High Bridge in Howard’s Pocket. The most obvious solution was to cut the masthead down. With burning torches in hand, several members of the ship’s crew cut off a portion of the topmast and lowered it to the deck. Because of electrical wiring, only a 15-foot section could be removed. In addition, the crew lowered the ship’s radar mountings to the deck.

The next step would be to get the vessel ballasted low enough in the water to make the fit beneath the span. This would prove to be the most difficult part of the job. To take fullest advantage of their cargo-carrying capacity, the typical ocean freighter of the early 1960s was not built with side tanks to carry ballast water like today’s freighters on the Great Lakes are designed to do. The bottom tanks of the Sophie C were built to carry fuel, which could double as ballast for the ship. The maximum depth that the Sophie C could ballast to was just over 15 feet, still not enough to get her under the bridge and into the yard. The only way to further ballast down the vessel was to flood a portion of the ship’s cargo hold. With the water in the hold, the mast cut down and the assistance of two Great Lakes Towing Company tugs, the Sophie C slipped underneath the High Bridge with less than a foot to spare.

After the repairs were made and the vessel cleared the yard, additional repairs were then needed in the ship’s cargo hold. It was a common practice on ocean vessels to use wooden planks to protect the tank top from damage during loading. As a result of the flooding of the cargo hold, a number of these planks swelled out of place and floated free in the hold, adding insult to injury.

Pat Lapinski, a native of Superior, Wisconsin, is a writer and photographer who concentrates on the Great Lakes maritime industry. Visit: www.inlandmariners.com.