THE EIGHTH SEA

[Music] is the scene of seven which joined to girdle the globe over these and other waters man has moved in his never-ending search for new horizons new fortune every great civilization has had its roots in the sea highway of Commerce trade declaration when the new world was occupied man built his greatest cities where there was easy access to the sea Houston and Montreal Philadelphia Baltimore Charleston in later years as colonization spread inland man searched for new water waves was put an Inland Empire which grew around the largest but 7,000 miles of coastline in the center of a continent a vast sea different in only one respect from the other historic seven of the world the great lake were landlocked cut off by nature from way for ships a natural channel the st. Lawrence River here was a waterway broad and deep for hundreds of miles the most stable river in the world in its flow never flooding never shipped in always maintaining its level and yet the st. Lawrence presented huge obstacles Rapids shallows the rapids that foiled Cartier on his search for a Northwest Passage the same rapids that defied Champlain's attempt to open an empire westward from the sea Rapids that even in our time seemed Insur passable but there were those who thought otherwise a system of canals and locks here just outside Montreal at Lachine that's too large and at the International Rapids section and we could open up a whole big continent the ocean-going Commerce from an engineering standpoint it may be possible but the cost would be prohibitive yes I'm afraid this is one of those fine dreams that will never come true not maritime and I say it can be done and it is being done right now the greatest concentration of heavy machinery ever assembled over 3,000 pieces of equipment I'd work on one of the greatest projects in the history of mankind I'm Walter Cronkite with a report on the st. Lawrence Seaway and power project actually navigation of the st. Lawrence from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes is nothing new the Canadian government long ago took the lead in unlocking the heart of the continent by building a series of canals that bypassed all of the rapids between Montreal and Lake Ontario this canal system would allow the passage of 2,500 tonne Bessel's jumps as much as 250 feet long with a draught of up to 14 feet but the problem was that most of the world's ocean going vessels are larger than this requiring clearance of 80 feet depth of 27 feet it's the goal of the Seaway project to provide such clearance so that ships like this representing as much as 80% of the world's cargo shipping and sail to the Great Lakes so the Great Lakes ships like this can pass to the sea it was in 1954 only after long years of domestic and international discussion that Canada and the United States agreed to begin the gigantic task that of reshaping a continent completing the job that nature had begun thousands of years ago of creating an eighth see and at the same time harnessing the tremendous hydroelectric power potential of this mighty river the total cost of the project will approach a billion dollars but in the long run it will cost the people of two nations nothing every cent of expenditures will be recovered through toll charges and revenue from the sale of power the obstacles of legislation and finance have been copied but one of the obstacles of the river itself well basically the problem is this to move a huge ocean-going ship from here uphill by water all the way to the ports of the Great Lakes how is it being accomplished well first of all the long climb from Montreal requires a system of locks locks that can literally take huge ships upstairs here's how they work the ship enters the lock [Music] the gates are closed [Music] water is pumped into the chamber to lift the ship up to the level of fire water upstream when the water in the lock is raised to the upstream level the upper gate is opened and the ship steams off at all the completed Seaway there will be seven giant lakhs each many times larger than this each able to handle great ocean-going vessels and the first of these locks on the way upstream will be here just outside Montreal let's restate the objective of the Seaway project to move a twenty five thousand ton ship from here at Montreal to Lake Ontario so here the voyage to the 8c will begin this is Montreal harbour it's with an ear shot to the sound of construction on the first 12 miles of channel [Music] the job is too deep in the river and build the st. Lambert locking one of the chief difficulties here is rock hard black rock technically it's called shape the workers thought when in frustration give it other names but no matter what it's called it must be removed but the rock itself was not the first problem here before it could be reached the river had to be moved to side to let the machines in this was done by building a dike parallel to the South Bank which enclosed the excavation area [Music] from this elongated crater the water was pumped out and the river bottom exposed to permit passage of the largest ships the riverbed is being deepened and the bridge across the channel raised once this 12-mile section is completed the river will be put back in the channel our ship will move through the slock and then five miles beyond to this point the beginning of the Machine Rapids there's nearly a 50-foot drop in the river over this distance hardly a navigable waterway so it's been bypassed over five miles of dry land a ship canal is being carved up and another lock constructed in all 45 million cubic yards of rock and earth a good-sized mountain enough to fill the inside of two Empire State buildings will be dug out of the machine section from Montreal another mountain of concrete will be poured to form the lungs about 800,000 yards of it enough to cover a solid acre to a height of more than 500 feet the lock in place and the channel dug our ship will be able to move to the section of the river called Lake st. Louis only some dredging of shoal areas along here and our ship will have clear sailing for another 15 miles along the lake to this point but at this point were stopped by more Rapids small ships now bypassed the section by means of the Canadian suloj canal but to get our 25,000 ton ship around the rapids a new system of larger locks is being built across the river [Music] here at born wa men and machines are fighting a battle against one of the toughest types of material found on the North American continent quartz sandstone [Music] like large chunks of carborundum this silicon stone wears out the steel teeth of shovels in as little as 18 hours often less [Music] millions of tons of the stone must be drilled blasted and hauled out of the way before work can be started on the 2 lakhs [Music] [Music] each lock will boost starship 42 feet a total of 84 feet to the next river level been through the present born waa power canal clear to Lake st. Francis here dredging is clearing the channel all the way to the next series of obstacles the International Rapids section the most concentrated area of work on the st. Lawrence Seaway and power project and one of the most formidable obstacles to the creation of the 8c the mighty long zoo Rapids over 100 million gallons of water per minute roaring down a 90-foot grade but a few miles away is another sound the sound of two nations working together to make these Rapids disappear constructing the world's second largest power dam a thirty-two hundred foot concrete arm which will hold the river back and tame it into a lake the dam will concentrate the drop in the rapids at one point thirty two turbines will catch the water falling 90 feet straight down the result close to 2 million kilowatts of electricity a volume of power second only to the Grand Coulee Dam temporarily diverting the river while construction goes on is the world's largest copper dam almost a mile long [Music] 60 cylindrical caissons made of hundreds of pieces of interlocking steel were driven into the riverbed back tighten with rock and dirt to hold out the water so that the dam behind it could be built on dry ground in the early stages of the project one big problem on the Canadian side was transporting machines and material into the excavation area without interrupting traffic on the present Cornwall Canal to accomplish this two tunnels were constructed beneath the canal one for trucks and machinery and a smaller one for personnel or this one moves the conveyor belt that carries aggregate to the job site [Music] here in a hundred-foot tower called a batch plant stone and cement are mixed together to make concrete and poured as fast as it's made [Music] almost 4 million tons of concrete are being poured as slowly carefully a dam grows from the bed of a river whose water has been turned aside but the job of harnessing the power of the st. Lawrence could not be accomplished with only one dam a control dam is needed to block the South channel and control the flow of the river at a point four miles upstream from the power dam between the u.s. mainland and long Sioux Island construction of this 2900 foot control dam is well underway [Music] since the North channel is completely blocked off for work on the power dam the construction of the control dam here at the South channel is being executed in two stages during the first stage this section was copper dammed and they sliced taken out of the island so that the river could flow this way then in this Basin the water was pumped out during the second stage the same thing will be done in Reverse when the first half of the permanent dam is completed the coffer dams will be removed and new coffer dams will be constructed here and here then this cut will be plugged and the river diverted through a second cut going this way and on through the completed section of the dam but the millions of yards of Earth that are being excavated are not just left for weeds to grow up more than 10 million yards are needed to construct a 14-mile system of dikes around the powerhouse and dam the dikes will prevent flooding in the downstream portion of the dam and help create the power pool behind it sometime in 1958 the cool green waters of the mighty st. Lawrence will back up from the long sue dam and in lazy gulps will swallow 38,000 acres of land along the Canadian and American shores at that time this all will become one vast lake some seven thousand persons will be affected including the entire town of Iroquois Canada in preparation for the oncoming flood huge house movers are being used in relocating homes contents and all to the new town sites a few miles away also in preparation for 1958 all the trees on the affected area must be cut down highways and railways relocated view powerlines built so that nothing will interrupt the flow of water to the power house nothing will bar the path of ships on their way to the 8c the problem now is to get our 25 thousand ton ship around the powerhouse and the dam and up nine more stories to the level of the pool under construction is a ten-mile canal excavated through dry land from here to here and two more locks the grass river locked here at the entrance and the Eisenhower Lock these will solve the detour problem in the international rapid section the grass river lock will be eight hundred and sixty feet long 80 feet wide and 80 feet high the second of the pair the Eisenhower lock will have the same dimensions before work on the locks could progress to the concrete stage one of the real earthmoving challenges of the project had to be overcome a sticky gummy substance called marine clay when it's dry it's as hard as rough several million cubic yards of this purple chewing gum had to be excavated until a solid rock base was reached that would support the concrete lines another contractors nightmare is a type of material called glacial till it is silt and soil embedded with rock of various sizes almost as abrasive a silicon stone it has the same density as concrete during the winter months excavation of clay until became even more difficult frozen hard during the night it became a mass of slippery goo during the day [Music] some instances hard layers of ice as much as eight feet thick had to be hacked away before any work could be done at all sub-zero temperature added to the maintenance problem work slowed down but never stopped working around the clock men and machines fought the worst that nature could throw at them but by the spring of 56 two tremendous canyons have been dug down to bedrock and the concrete walls of the locks were about to take shape [Music] the canal and locks will bypass the power dam and lift our ocean-going ship to the level of the pool but just outside the exit of the canal is another barrier the southern tip of an island and a triangle of land to be cut away clearing the way for another 15 miles to this point Ogden Island it edges are being trimmed and it's South channel widened and deepened [Music] another mile upstream and were stopped by a narrow channel it's being widened so now our ship can move on but there's still another short climb on our elevator ride up to the level of the 8c another dam and one more lock here at pointy require between point Rockaway on the United States side and point Iroquois Canada the second control dam is being built it will be a half a mile long thirty-two steel gates positioned between concrete piers or regulate the flow of water from Lake Ontario a thousand feet of the Iroquois Dam is actually being built on dry land when it's completed and the approach channel excavated the river will spread out to fit the dam the purpose of the longer dam is to permit more gates to provide better control over the river like the long sue dam this one is being constructed in two stages when the first half is completed the other half will be built behind coffer dams and will extend across the river to Iroquois point on the Canadian side in order to bypass the dam and raise our chef a few feet higher to the level of Lake Ontario the last of seven locks is under construction the Iroquois lock will complete the two hundred and forty six foot climb from the Atlantic Ocean the end is almost in sight but not quite a maze of islands and a stretch of shallows still bar the way half of this island is being scraped down to a navigable depth of twenty-seven feet [Music] eight million yards of rock until chopped away from this finger of land which juts out into the channel [Music] and eight more islands bunched in the center of the river are undergoing a face lifting the channel is being sliced through their northern hat and the excavated material dumped in between them to form one Island five miles long this long bald strip used to be three islands about a mile upstream the job of attaching the rest of the islands together is progressing at a fast clip the biggest cut is being made through Galu Island anchor link in the chain when they're through about 15 million cubic yards of material will have been carved out of the northern half of this island this will be the channel Gasca beta material will be placed in here to make one island ahead are shallows a two-mile area that must be dredged here as much as 40 tons of rock and muck are lifted out with each pipe and occasionally all in one chunk when the last shovelful is lifted from the bottom of the st. Lawrence the path will be clear a dream will have become a reality ahead is deep water Lake Ontario in the wake of our ship the greatest engineering feat of our time the st. Lawrence Seaway and power project will be completed in 1959 but already the people of both nations are planning to take advantage of the benefits of the project industries and individuals alike the steel industry for one new iron ore deposits have been developed in Labrador moving the ore to the mills via the st. Lawrence is an economic necessity to maintain the balance of the two nation's economy farmers wheat growers and livestock men in the Dakotas Saskatchewan Iowa and Manitoba will be able to ship their products to Great Lakes ports and hold them in grain elevators or storage houses to await the most favorable market domestic or overseas industrial expansion in Sarnia and Buffalo Hamilton and Cleveland Windsor and Detroit is in the planning stage few plants new jobs new horizons all await the opening of the 8th see there is greater security - in the Seaway because of the spreading out of industry and shipping the defense of North America will be greatly relieved it has been estimated that once an operation the Seaway will carry 25% more tonnage than the Panama Canal Ternay practically landlocked area into a series of bustling seaport contributing also to this industrial expansion is the tremendous new source of hydroelectric power over a billion kilowatt hours of electric power power to run the machines the motors to light the signs the homes supply energy for the thousand and one needs of an expanding economy thus my own is conquering another of nature's challenges moving the Atlantic Ocean to the entire Mid Continent empire opening new trade routes creating new avenues of achievement this is the product of a kind of international cooperation that may well set the example for the whole world a new and 8c a sea of opportunity