Laker

A Laker is a type of ship designed for carrying cargo on the Great Lakes. Most lakers have a distinctive profile to make maximum use of the locks and canals along the lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway: they are long (typically 600-1,000 feet) and narrow, with the pilot house near the bow and a second structure, bearing (typically) a single funnel, near the stern. The newer 1,000 ft lakers have only a stern structure. Before the era of container ships, lakers were also distinctive in not having cranes as most older ocean-going cargo vessels once did. This was because all major Great Lakes ports historically were designed for handling bulk cargo and provided with suitable equipment for loading and unloading, but prior to the container ship era many ocean ports did not have much equipment for cargo handling -- so older cargo ships usually had their own cranes.

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The most famous laker was the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975.

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Ship: :For the online phenomenon of "shipping," see Shipping (fandom)....

Great Lakes: The Great Lakes are a group of five large lakes on or near the United States-Canadian border. They are the largest group of fresh water lakes on the earth and the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence system is the largest fresh-water system in the world. They are sometimes referred to as inland seas....

St. Lawrence Seaway: REDIRECT Saint Lawrence Seaway...