Word: peckinpaugh
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...song Captain Olaf Kaldefoss does not have a mule to pull his boat through the Erie Canal. He has a pair of 25-year-old diesel engines, one of which has just been overhauled. But he is confident that they can move his craft, the 256-ft. M.V. Day Peckinpaugh, through the canal at a stately, steady speed of 8 m.p.h., and so is the ship's engineer, a compact, muscular fellow named Dan Sauvey. So, with the sun just clearing the horizon and beginning to burn off the mist shrouding the upstate New York city of Utica, Kaldefoss...
Kaldefoss's statement is one of fact, not resignation. The only commercial ship still plying that route, the Peckinpaugh has made more than 30 trips so far this year between the industrial city of Rome, located near the center of the state, and the Lake Ontario port of Oswego. It makes the trip west and north empty, completing the run in about 16 hours. It makes the trip back loaded with some 1,600 tons of cement. And the ship does it cheaply, carrying its high-bulk, low-cost cargo for less than the cost of sending...
...That the Peckinpaugh is no pleasure craft is evident. Built in 1921 and named for a Great Lakes coal shipper whose brother Roger once managed the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians, the Peckinpaugh was drafted into service during World War II to carry coal offshore, and made several runs to Cuba. But then it was restored to its original purpose, which was to run the still waters of the canal...
...Smolensk, steps ashore and walks beside the slowly moving boat, a loop of its thick forward hawser over his shoulder. As he slips the loop over one of the mushroom-shaped bollards onshore, another deck hand, a stocky, bearded man named Tim Burke, tightens the line, snubbing the Peckinpaugh to the side of the lock...
Passing through the lock takes only a few minutes. No sooner have the gates closed behind it than the Peckinpaugh begins to rise, buoyed by the water pouring into the rectangular lock enclosure until its rail towers above the head of the lock keeper. A moment later, the lock's forward gates swing open and the ship sails on, a full 16 ft. higher than it was when it entered. Ahead of it stretches the Erie Canal, as straight and flat as a highway...