MV Mark W. Barker Refloated after Grounding on Belle Isle 

Life seems to be a long river of memories and emotions. Pretty nice to remember them. I’m grateful too.

As a college student, I did the same thing (68 years ago, not to try to outdo you) on the BH Taylor, a limestone boat out of Rogers City. What a great experience it was!

@@davidhogberg4904 my experience was in 62 and 63…

@@dmitch1177 I have wondered more than a couple of times what my life would've been like had I stayed working on the boats. I'd probably have a lot more money that I do now

there is also a salt mine under the city of Detroit. The mine is mostly under the southwestern part of the city.

Oh, I thought it was under Cleveland? Or is that just the browns stadium...

Syracuse “ salt city “

@@bobmackay3414 was on a tour of the salt mines as a kid, vein runs to Cleveland under the lake if I recall correct.

Hello from Downriver! ✋🏽Southgate, to be precise.

Lovely sharing. Sorry for your having to be in the People’s Republic. Welcome back!

I grew up outside Detroit. A favorite family day trip was a ride to Algonac, with a stop at Sid's for lunch and freighter watching. The ride continued to Port Huron, across the Blue Water Bridge, then to Windsor, either through the Tunnel or across the Ambassador Bridge. My love of watching ships led to a career as a naval architect and marine engineer.

You must have a pretty good arm to throw a stone that far!!

I have a mule and his name is Sal, 16 tons on the Erie Canal😮

Does the Mark Barker have a double hull??

Why engine fail on such a new boat

@@ninajasmine2219 Complex machines often have something go wrong when they're new, e.g. due to a defective component or a mistake during design or assembly. In reliability engineering it's described by the "bathtub curve". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

Thank You!

The anchors are the only emergency brakes they have. Other than using reverse gear. Lol

Actually, the battleships are pretty small compared to modern freighters and container ships

Frame of reference check:. Battleships were generally about 1000 feet long such as the USS Arizona now a monument in Oahu. This ship is 639 feet long so well short of a battleship.

@@michaeldeierhoi4096 USS Arizona 608", USS New Jersey 887', IJN Yamato 863', just sayin.

Tug boats are amazing and so are their captains, I grew up in Rotterdam harbor. Watching the ships come and go was part of our entertainment. Fun stuff!

@@navmn2 Well I stand corrected then. I'm surprised as I thought that the Arizona is much longer. It is good to be corrected. Thanks for the comment.

They're absolutely gorgeous! I've been fortunate to powerboat Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair, Lake Huron, Detroit River, St. Clair River and St. Mary's River. Some of the most beautiful scenery and some of the best fishing in the world! They have soooooo much to offer, you want to make it happen! 😊😊

The Great Lakes are most challenging. Narrow, twisty, shallow channels in the connecting rivers and ports. Violent storms that create steep sided waves. Note that the west end of Lake Erie is so shallow that it has dredged channels. We sailed on Lake Erie for a few years, remember looking UP at waves bearing down from astern like a wall. Our boat was designed for Lake Erie, so it was OK, but scary. We never got water aboard.

The canal is called Portage Lake in the early 70''s military tested hovercraft for artic conditions on the ice on the lake.

@@erbewayne6868 heck yeah! I'm assuming youve seen the old Air Force radar base up there yeah? that place is so cool

Thank you for your support.

Thanks Dale. I do my best when I venture in the fresh water.

The Great Lakes are one of those weird areas where ocean-going designs don't make sense for a laker. A lot of the 1000' ship have a similar design, and that's because it's more about capacity than efficiency through the water. Not to mention the Mark Barker was designed with the cuyahoga river navigation in mind.

​@@nicholasuszko Well said. I've realized the great lakes freighters are almost designed like a self-propelled barge when compared to ocean-going vessels.

@@nicholasuszko It's very entertaining to watch a boat go up or down the Cuyahoga!

What’s the crew makeup and size for this ship?

Edit: obviously at the end there " . .after losing power".

You are correct. It is a pretty flat bow.

The Chief Engineer is sweating bullets.He and Captain have too answer too company and Coast Guard.⚓⚓⚓

@@vernwallen4246 Maybe. They did a great job of minimizing the damage.

@@vernwallen4246 Probably the NTSB too. Airline incidents (crashes, rough landings, near misses in the air or on the ground), as well as railroad incidents and trucking, passenger bus incidents are all under the auspices of the National Transportation Safety Board.

They ran out of coal.

Shaft vibration shut it down

Separate systems.

The forward boom is for specific difficult harbors where a rear (actually pretty far forward from the stern) boom can't reach into corners. Example, look at the Fairport, OH turning basin upriver, which has docks on both sides of the basin. Mid/aft booms can't reach the shore. If they tried to back in, it's shallow, possible propeller and rudder damage. Another example, of the 4 Great Lakes Fleet AAA's, Munson came from Bradley Fleet, which hauled stone to awkward harbors with no unloading equipment, thus had a forward boom as built, while Anderson, Clarke and Calloway were intended to haul ore to steel mills with straight dock faces and Hulett unloaders, so no booms were needed as built, later received aft booms, which minimized the length of power wiring to the conveyor motors.

No, but a very fast current, ~6 mph.

What do you mean by void compartment? I never heard that term and I used to work on ships like this one.

@@michaeldeierhoi4096 that is what Sal called it, no? The area between the outer and inner hulls.

@@chrisb4647 Yes that does make sense. I missed that statement. As to your comment if there was any potential damage from having run aground it could be inspected underneath by flooding only the stern ballast tanks enough to lift the bow out of the wstrr in order to inspect it. This was done on a ship I worked on 45 years ago. It was already 70 years old in 1977 and after running aground the bow was raised and found to have a gash on side of the bow. The ship was promptly decommissioned and was taken to a yard to be scrapped.

It is not an issue with use, but with the grounding and potential damage.

If you check Google Maps the grounded Barker is visible and from the bridge- aft I shows that part of the ship is in Canadian waters.

That's the housing for the loop belt conveyor that takes cargo up from the hold "tunnel" conveyor to the boom conveyor belt. The loop conveyor is 2 belts going up around a 180 degree bend, with the material trapped between the 2 belts. Older boats had a bucket chain elevating conveyor, looks like a bunch of front end loader buckets on a pair of roller chains. You could hear the clanks, and see pulses in the material coming off the boom. All self unloaders have something like that, but most boats with aft mounted booms have the loop conveyor hidden inside the accommodation block. Forward or aft boom location depends on the original planned use for the boat. Putting the boom and conveyors aft near the engine room saves a lot of wiring, but prevents access for many awkward docks, like the turning basin in Fairport OH. Thus several new builds have forward mounted booms.

@@SteamCrane 👍Thanks

Great info!

I am awaiting for the last awards in the TSP to be announced.

It should be both.

I saw

If the ship lost power how did they "decide" to ground in US? How were they able to steer the ship at all? Weren't they at the mercy of the current?

By treaty, commercial boats can operate on either side of the border.

In this case, the bottom of the river on Belle Isle was more friendly for grounding than the shore on the Canadian side of the channel with its concrete shoreline structure.

It would just be another level of bureaucracy and legal issues that could be avoided.

May 2023

Casual Navigation has a video on that : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-oP2y1eiu0ac.html

All of the modern ships both Great Lakes and ocean vessels now have the superstructure on the aft end of the ship. That was already the case for Great Lakes ships when I was working on ships 45 years ago.

She runs on diesels.

There are issues associated with this, but it is not clear what was the issue on Barker.

In terms of the specific geography at that point in the river, Belle Isle is north and Canada is south.

@@wgowshipping I would have to argue that you’re wrong. Draw a straight line across the river from the island, Windsor is directly across.

@@iamgriff Here, the Detroit River is flowing east to west. We show visitors the view of Ontario, LOOKING SOUTH.

Built in 2022.

So your brand new Mitsubishi Mirage could never have a mechanical problem? Wise choice Meric.