He saw the seriousness in my face. Whether he believed me or not, he stopped laughing and asked what he could do to help.

“Hogarth said yesterday you were the most knowledgeable person in the world on Great Lakes shipping. I want to know what’s happening to it with this lock blown up.”

“Could you explain what you mean, please?”

“The accident to the lock must be having quite an impact, right? Or can ships still get through?”

“Oh—well, shipping hasn’t come to a complete standstill. They closed the MacArthur and the Davis locks for several days while they cleaned debris out of them and tested them, but they can still use the Sabin Lock—that’s the one in Canadian waters. Of course, the biggest ships are shut off from the upper lakes for a year—or however long it takes them to fix the Poe—the Poe was the only lock that could handle the thousand-footers.”

“And how serious is that? Does it have much of a financial impact?”

He pushed the hair out of his eyes and loosened his tie again. “Most of the shipping is between Duluth and Thunder Bay and ports lower down. Sixty percent of the grain in North America goes out of those two ports on freighters. That’s a hell of a lot of grain, you know, when you think of everything that’s produced in Manitoba as well as the upper Midwest—maybe eighteen billion bushels. Then there’s all that taconite in Duluth.” He pursed his lips in thought. “The Soo locks handle more cargo every year than Panama and Suez combined, and they’re only open for nine months instead of year-round like those two. So there is some financial impact.”

“The cargoes will still come out, but the smaller ships will have an advantage?” I persisted.

He smiled. “Just until they get the Poe Lock back under operation. Actually, there’s been a lot of disarray, both in the grain markets and among the Great Lakes shippers since the lock blew up. They’ll settle down in a few weeks when they realize that most traffic won’t be impaired.”

“Except for the carriers who’ve converted primarily to thousand-foot ships.”

“Yes, but there aren’t too many of those. Of course, grain concerns like Eudora are scrambling to get all their cargoes onto the smaller fleets, even bypassing the 740-foot ships. Grafalk’s is picking up a number of orders. They aren’t jacking up their rates, though, the way some of their less scrupulous brethren are.”

“How profitable is Grafalk’s, in general?”

He looked at me in surprise. “They are the biggest carrier on the lakes.”

I smiled. “I know—I keep being told that. But do they make money? I understand that these smaller ships are unprofitable and they make up his whole fleet.”