ship & bridges, cuyahoga river

Here are a few more photos from my brief trip to Cleveland last March. I was wandering around the Flats area taking photos of bridges (and I have several bridge posts still in draft that you'll see here sooner or later). I started looking at this large cargo ship tied up across the Cuyahoga River. The river's obviously deep enough for ships this size, but it's also surprisingly narrow and meanders through the city in a series of tight hairpin turns. It looks as if the ship is substantially longer than the river is wide, in fact. So turning around is out of the question, and getting around bends in the river has got to be a serious navigational challenge. I checked YouTube and found a video showing a few minutes of the process: A tugboat is pulling a large freighter upriver, stern first, and we see it essentially yanking the stern sideways to get the ship around a tight bend. Presumably there's another tug at the bow pushing or pulling the other direction. And did I mention there's a lift bridge just upstream of the bend that the ship has to get under? Crazy. I don't know a lot about the tugboat industry, but I have to think this qualifies as playing in the big leagues.