Welland Canal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A ship transits the Welland Canal, with the Homer Lift Bridge and Garden City Skyway in background.

The Welland Canal connects Lake Ontario and Lake Erie through a series of eight locks, allowing ships to avoid the 51 meter high Niagara Falls.

The Welland Canal is a ship canal that runs 42 km (27.0 miles) from Port Colborne, Ontario on Lake Erie to Port Weller, Ontario on Lake Ontario. As part of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the canal allows ships to avoid Niagara Falls by traversing the Niagara Escarpment.

Approximately 40,000,000 tonnes of cargo is carried through the Welland Canal annually by over 3,000 ocean and lake vessels. It was a major factor in the growth of the city of Montreal. The original canal and its successors allowed goods from Detroit, Michigan, Cleveland, Ohio and other heavily industrialized areas of the United States and Ontario to be shipped to the port of Montreal where they were reloaded onto ocean-going vessels for international shipping.

The completion of the Welland Canal made the Trent-Severn Waterway (which links Lake Ontario with Lake Huron) all but obsolete as a commercial traffic route for Great Lakes navigation.

The canal's Lake Erie (southern) terminus, at Port Colborne, is 99.5 m (326.5 feet) higher in elevation than the Lake Ontario (northern) terminus at Port Weller. The canal comprises eight lift locks, each 24.4 m (80 ft) wide by 233.5 m (766 ft) long. Due to the Garden City Skyway, the maximum ship height allowed is 35.5 m (116.5 ft). All other crossings are lift bridges or tunnels. The maximum permissible vessel length is 225.5 m (740 ft). It takes ships an average of 11 hours to traverse the canal's length.

[edit] History

A lock of the second Welland Canal

Prior to the building of the canal, traffic between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie used a portage road between Chippawa and Queenston, both points on the Niagara River above and below Niagara Falls, respectively.

[edit] First Welland Canal

Main article: First Welland Canal

The Welland Canal Company was incorporated in 1824 by William Hamilton Merritt , in part to provide a regular flow of water for his mills. Construction began at Allanburg on November 30, at a point now marked as such on the west end of Bridge #11 (formerly Highway 20). It opened for a trial run on November 30, 1829 (exactly 5 years, to the day, after the 1824 sod turning). After a short ceremony at Lock One, in Port Dalhousie, the schooner Annie & Jane made the first transit, upbound to Buffalo, N.Y.; with Merritt a passenger on her decks. The first canal ran from Port Dalhousie on Lake Ontario south along Twelve Mile Creek to St. Catharines. From there it took a winding route up the Niagara Escarpment through Merritton to Thorold, where it continued south via Allanburg to Port Robinson on the Welland River. Ships went east (downstream) on the Welland River to Chippawa, at the south (upper) end of the old portage road, where they would make a sharp right turn into the Niagara river, upbound towards lake Erie.

A southern extension from Port Robinson opened in 1833. This extension followed the Welland River south to Welland (known then as the settlement of Aqueduct, for the wooden aqueduct that carried the canal over the Welland River at that point), and then split to run south to Port Colborne on Lake Erie. A feeder canal ran southwest from Welland to another point on Lake Erie, just west of Rock Point. With the opening of the extension, the canal stretched 44 km (27 mi) between the two lakes, with 40 wooden locks. The minimum lock size was 33.5 m by 6.7 m (110 feet by 22 feet), with a minimum canal depth of 2.4 m (8 ft).

Abandoned locks of the third canal

Aerial photo of Port Dalhousie from the third canal era. 3rd canal lock at left, 2nd canal lock at right. Note 3rd canal towpath at upper left and Muir brother's ship yard centre right.

[edit] Second Welland Canal

In 1839 the government of Upper Canada approved the purchase of shares in the canal company in response to the company's continuing financial problems in the face of the continental financial panic of 1837. The buyout was completed in 1841, and work began to deepen the canal and to reduce the number of locks to 27, each 45.7 m (150 ft) by 8.1 m (26.5 ft). By 1848, a 2.7 m (9 ft) deep path was completed, not only through the Welland Canal but also the rest of the way to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Competition came in 1854 with the opening of the Erie and Ontario Railway, running parallel to the original portage road. In 1859, the Welland Railway opened, parallel to the canal and with the same endpoints. But this railway was affiliated with the canal, and was actually used to help transfer cargoes from the lake ships, which were too large for the small canal locks, to the other end of the canal (The remnants of this railway are today owned by the Trillium RR). Smaller ships called "canallers" also took a part of these loads. Due to this problem, it was soon apparent that the canal would have to be enlarged again.

[edit] Third Welland Canal

In 1887, a new shorter alignment was completed between St. Catharines and Port Dalhousie. One of the most interesting features of this third Welland Canal, was the Merritton Tunnel on the Grand Trunk Railway line that ran under the canal at Lock 18. Another tunnel, nearby, carried the canal over a sunken section of the St David's Road. The new route had a minimum depth of 4.3 m (14 ft) with 26 stone locks, each 82.3 m (270 ft) long by 13.7 m (45 ft) wide. Even so, the canal was still too small for many boats.

[edit] Fourth (present) Welland Canal

(Officially known as the Welland Ship Canal)

Construction on the present canal began in 1913 and was completed in 1932. The route was again changed north of St. Catharines, now running directly north to Port Weller. In this configuration, there are eight locks, seven at the Niagara Escarpment and the eighth, a control lock, at Port Colborne to control the depth of the canal. The depth was now 7.6 m (25 ft), with locks 233.5 m (766 ft) long by 24.4 m (80 ft) wide.

[edit] Fifth (proposed but uncompleted) Welland Canal

MS Isa lifted in Lock 7

In the 1950s, with the building of the present St. Lawrence Seaway, a standard depth of 8.2 m (27 ft) was adopted. The 13.4 km (8.3 mile) long Welland By-pass, built between 1967 and 1972, opened for the 1973 shipping season, providing a new and shorter alignment between Port Robinson and Port Colborne and by-passing downtown Welland. All three crossings of the new alignment — one an aqueduct for the Welland River — were built as tunnels. Around the same time, the Thorold Tunnel was built at Thorold and several bridges were removed. These projects were to be tied into a proposed new canal, titled the Fifth Welland Canal, which was planned to by-pass most of the existing canal to the east and to cross the Niagara Escarpment in one large superlock. While land for the project was expropriated and the design finalized, the project never got past the initial construction stages and has since been shelved. The present (4th) canal is scheduled to be replaced by 2030, almost exactly 100 years after it first opened, and 200 years since the first full shipping season, in 1830, of the original canal.

[edit] 1974 accident

Main article: Port Robinson, Ontario#The demise of Bridge 12

On August 25, 1974, the northbound ore-carrier Steelton struck Bridge 12 in Port Robinson, Ontario. The bridge was rising and the impact knocked the bridge over, destroying it. No one was killed. The bridge has not been replaced and the inhabitants of Port Robinson have been served by a ferry for many years. The Welland Public Library archive has images of the aftermath.

[edit] 2001 accident

On August 11, 2001, the bulk carrier Windoc collided with Bridge 11 in Allanburg, Ontario, closing vessel traffic on the Welland Canal for two days. The accident destroyed the ship's wheelhouse and funnel (chimney), ignited a large fire on board, and caused minor damage to the vertical lift bridge. The accident and portions of its aftermath were captured on amateur video. The vessel was a total loss, but there were no reported injuries, and no pollution to the waterway. The damage to the bridge was focused on the centre of the vertical-lift span. It was repaired over a number of weeks and reopened to vehicular traffic on November 16, 2001. The Marine Investigation Report concluded, "it is likely that the [vertical lift bridge] operator's performance was impaired while the bridge span was lowered onto the Windoc."^[1]

[edit] Shipping season

The Welland Canal closes in winter when ice or weather conditions become a hazard to navigation. The shipping season re-opens in spring when the waters are once more safe. In 2007, the season opened on the earliest date ever, March 20, just hours ahead of the vernal equinox. The Welland Public Library archive has images.

[edit] Facts and figures

Lock 3 Observation Centre of the current Welland Canal (facing North).

[edit] Current canal

• Maximum vessel length: 225.5 m
• Maximum draft: 8.2 m
• Maximum above-water clearance: 35.5 m
• Elevation change between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie: 99.5 m
• Average transit time between the lakes: 11 hours
• Length of canal: 43.5 km

[edit] Increasing lock size

[edit] List of locks and crossings

Locks and crossings are numbered from north to south.

[edit] Old alignment prior to Welland By-pass relocation

^† If assigned by the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority. The original bridges across the fourth canal were numbered in order. Numbering was not changed as bridges were removed.

[edit] See also

Merritton Tunnel

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Welland Canal

• Welland Canal Information Site
• Boat Traffic Site
• Another Welland Canal Information Site
• Railway Maps (includes details of the Welland Realignment)
• The Welland Canal Section of the St. Lawrence Seaway (PDF)
• Has information about Niagara Region bridges, including many Welland Canal Bridges.
• Welland Public Library archive of canal history images & clippings
• Images from the Historic Niagara Digital Collections
• Art works from the collection of the Niagara Falls Public Library
• "Windoc Bridge Accident." Youtube, 2006-09-30.
• Al Miller, "Windoc Accident."

Coordinates: 43°09′20.00″N, 79°11′37.50″W