Lake Effect: A Deckhand’s Journey on the Great Lakes Freighters

Richard Hill
Gale Force Press (2008)
ISBN 9780981737188
Reviewed by Tyler R. Tichelaar for Reader Views (12/08)

 

Richard Hill has captured a way of life and a piece of time in “Lake Effect: A Deckhand’s Journey on the Great Lakes Freighters.” This book is no dry piece of history about working on the Great Lakes ore boats, but rather, a personal memoir of time spent on the ore freighters in the 1970s and 1980s, capturing what daily life was like for the men, including not only the work, but the camaraderie, the shore leave, the trips to bars, the time away from family, the dangers of November gales, and the magnificence of the Great Lakes. Richard Hill describes how technology is changing this way of life, yet year after year as they will do for a century or more to come, the ships travel the Great Lakes, hauling iron ore and other cargo from the iron mines of Upper Michigan and Northern Minnesota to the southern lakes to provide material for the steel industry.

I was curious to read “Lake Effect” because my own father worked on the ore boats in the 1960s just a few years before Hill. Many have a romantic notion of what it is to be on a ship in the middle of Lake Superior with nothing to see but the breathtaking beauty of the world’s greatest lake. Hill recounts the stunning beauty of the lakes, but also the hardships and deprivation, the loneliness and longing to be with one’s wife and children, the inability to get away from the other men, and also the camaraderie of their constant presence. Through Hill’s experiences and vivid descriptions, I felt I was aboard the freighter, “Leon Fraser,” for at least a few hours.

My favorite parts of “Lake Effect” were the depictions of the men on the ship. While the bosun, Dirty Dan, is the most memorable, several others provide humor and diversity to the book. These men were Hill’s real-life coworkers aboard the ship, but their colorful language and occasionally rough behaviors would have made them fit well as characters in a Jack London novel. Beneath their swearing and occasional frustration with each other is a humor and brotherhood that kept the sailors together through festive trips to bars and through dangerous winter storms.

Beyond the book’s history of Great Lakes shipping, and the documentation of life on a ship, is Richard Hill’s personal story of why he chose to work on the ore boats, what he loved about the life, how it changed him, and why he eventually left the boats from a self-discovery that he needed a more creative, free life with his family. Hill places his experiences within the tumultuous time period of the 1970s, the Watergate scandal, and the shock of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. He writes honestly and with a perspective that makes “Lake Effect” history, memoir, and adventure. The book concludes with a lengthy glossary of nautical terms, but the entire text reads easily without one needing to run to the glossary. Hill has captured a way of life for us, something only a good writer who lived the experience could do so effectively.

Whether readers have a connection to the Great Lakes or shipping, or they have never been on a boat, they will find “Lake Effect” an intriguing portrait of a way of life which is vital to the success of the U.S. economy and its industries, one that has not received the attention it deserves, but which demands of its sailors, patience, sacrifice, courage, and a sense of humor. Take the journey with “Lake Effect” by Richard Hill.  You won’t be disappointed.

Make comment on weblog