The Soo Locks

[Craig67]

Wooden hulled sailing ships are mentioned in one of the adventures, so I can agree with the large metal hull ships being the mobile village and the smaller sail boats doing the day to day work.

[mmartin798]

Here is a picture of a freighter, the Roger Blough, that is in the news since it went aground late last Friday. This picture shows some typical features of a lake freighter. You can see the flat hatches over the various holds. The white arm is the self-unloader. This basically has a pair of belts that gets lowered into the hold and will fill the hold from a source on shore or empty the hold to the shore depending on the direction the belts are operated.

There are 5 holds with 21 hatches on the Roger Blough, each hold is probably around 30' deep. The beam is 105' so lets assume 90' to account for the double hull and that each hold is about 1/7 the 858' length and you can build a housing project in the 90'x120'x30' holds containing 30 2-bed apartments in each, and still have room for food storage and trade goods in the remaining ones.

[mmartin798]

One of the questions I ask myself as part of this process is whether or not Lake Erie and up are landlocked and unable to enter Lake Ontario and the Atlantic Ocean. To make that trip, ships small enough need to traverse the Welland Canal at Niagra Falls and then the locks on the St. Lawrence River. Both of these passages are not short and consist of a very large number of locks. I will use the Welland Canal as an example. The map here show the two air burst targets close enough to have any effect on the Welland Canal. Thorold is SW of the center of the 1 PSI overlap area. This is the location of the southern most lift lock in the canal. The northern most lift lock is 3 km inland, putting it about even with the top of the 3 PSI ring of St. Catharines. This section of the canal has 7 of the 8 locks. The 8th lock is on the Lake Erie end to compensate for the changing lake level.

Then there is the 43 km length of the canal to consider. Is the entire canal under one parties control or are there many? Chains and cables could be strung across the canal to bar travel until appropriate toll is paid at just about any point along the canal.

The situation on the St. Lawrence River is similar. I really just want to get a handle on how separated the various Great Lake and the Atlantic would be.

[nuke11]

Getting a ship up thru locks 3 thru 7 is going to be the really tricky part. I'm not sure without electricity this is going to be all that easy. They are all within the blast radius of the St. Catharine's strike, so damage is going to be sustained.

[ArmySGT.]

Well....... it wouldn't be TMP with out a complicated answer.

I would make them landlocked.... Something only the TMP with pre-War knowledge and no local ties or feuds to interfere with has the exact expertise to bring back online.

The Canal would be there with a trickle running through it, canoes and rafts carry some things down stream. A road, if there isn't one with mules bring people, craft, and material back up stream.

For ease on the PD, I would give the Canal over to one despotic Warlord that funds his villainous campaigns with the tolls from the canal. Give him Roman style forts, such as Mile Forts, like once guarded Hadrian's Wall scattered at intervals the length of the canal. That would give the Warlord a sizeable force, but one in small enough packets that the Team would have some effectiveness.

Some grudging respect or cooperation from the Shipmen, Townsfolk, and Gypsy Truckers because the Warlord does keep the canal open and enforces a local peace.

Some local resistance forces operating in the area of the canals lock because that complicates things further..... "Free the Canal!" "No Tolls on Trade!".

Some saboteurs from out of the area trying to kill the Warlords troops, wreck trade on the water and road, as well as put any functioning locks out of commission. There to disrupt things and hurt the Warlords income and blunt his fighting or ability to go on campaign.

Just to further monkey wrench a Team... make the Warlord responsible for so good works like a Hospital with Emdees, and some guest teachers from a far away University to educate orphans. Make sure the Warlord owns an holds open the safe trade camp, farmers market, and flea market.

[mmartin798]

The more I think about it, ships would be land locked by the state of the Canal. Even with the proximity to the blast at St Catharine, the hydraulic pumps could be operated by some other means or the lock door and valves be operated by draft animals if needed. They would not open and close that often. The many bridges that have collapsed into the Canal and the lack of dredging would make it such that only small craft could make the trip, as Sgt suggests, effectively stopping large ships.

I like the warlord concept. Making him actually helpful to reconstruction is a nice complication.