Ark of the Lost Angels

Sea Girt Terminal of the Port of Baltimore _{(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)}

Despite the recent troubles in Baltimore, the dream of a bustling port lives on.

Last week’s collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland cut off access to the Port of Baltimore. This prevents ships from reaching the docks, which prevents the dockworkers from working the ships, and prevents those dockworkers from getting paid. It’s exacerbating one of the issues that held Baltimore back for recent decades, and threatens the progress made in recent years.

They Used To Make Steel There, No?

Baltimore was never a center of the white collar world, for it has always been a working class town. When people ask “Where did you go to school” they mean high school, not college. Your high school was a point of identity here because most people didn’t continue with post-secondary education. Most people went to work in Baltimore’s industry: the docks, the shipyards, or the steel mill.

The Wire is widely viewed as one of the greatest TV shows of all time. The second season dealt with the downfall of industry in Baltimore, with the main case of the season centering on the activities of dockworkers involved in smuggling operations. The union Secretary/Treasurer, Frank Sobotka, is engaging in smuggling for an organization run by a man known as “The Greek.” Frank’s goal from being involved is to get the money he needs to lobby for the grain pier to be revitalized and to dredge the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal to allow larger ships access to the Port, which would bring more cargo through Baltimore and keep more of his union members working.

Frank is a tragic character through and through, being drawn deeper into the criminal world, not for gain for himself, but because he feels a responsibility to safeguard the future of dockworkers in Baltimore. It’s a point of pride that he works the docks because his family has been involved in the waterfront for generations. He watched his brother get laid off from the Bethlehem Steel in the 70s, and industry flee from Baltimore in general without ever having anything come in to replace it. Everything Frank Sobotka does is for his union brothers, to secure a future for his people on the waterfront and for the blue collar working class who had given so much of themselves and their identities to the city.

In the fifth episode of season two, entitled “Undertow,” there is a conversation Frank has with The Greek’s lieutenant, Spiros “Vondas” Vondopoulos. Frank is attempting to sever their business agreement when the cops start sniffing around.  While looking at the former Bethlehem Steel plant across the harbor, Vondas asks Frank, “They used to make steel there, no?”

From a Baltimorean’s perspective, the Bethlehem Steel plant was almost everything to this city. For decades, just about every man who lived here worked for Beth Steel at one point, either at the steel making plant or the associated shipyards. My grandfather worked there for a summer when he was younger. It was simply expected because they were the biggest game in town, and the facilities in Baltimore made up one of the largest steel manufacturing complexes in the world.

When the plants started struggling, it drove people who had been longtime city residents out of the city because the jobs just weren’t there. While the port does a fair amount of business and is improving every day, the proximity to the ports in New York and Virginia, which are easier to access, helped to accelerate the city’s decline.

With the death of American steel, and the decline of the Port of Baltimore, a lot of jobs vanished. A lot of people struggled. To guys like Frank Sobotka, the working man’s life was the only life they had known. To Frank specifically, the docks fell above all else. It was a point of pride. His family worked for the industry of Baltimore for ages. He started smuggling for the Greeks to pay for all the vain efforts to try and save the terminally ill patient that was the city’s industry through politics. But he was only one man with a small union chapter, and entropy is more powerful than any one man. The only thing that could have saved the Port and revitalized the city was an institutional effort, and Frank Sobotka was no institution.

“They used to make steel there, no?” becomes a snide commentary on his futility, “Your city is dying. You and I both know it. The steel is gone. The port is slipping away. The only way you can fight for that which you hold dear is to continue working for us. I know you’re going to fail, but you’re too proud to stop fighting anyways.”

Yet, Vondas was wrong, and Frank was right.

We Built Great Things

America has a rich history of industry. The history of American industry can still be seen in culture and countryside. Driving through the mountains of West Virginia, you’ll spot mines with droll regularity. Pennsylvania was a steel state, with Bethlehem Steel being headquartered in Bethlehem, PA and U.S. Steel practically building Pittsburgh. The names Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Mellon, and Rockefeller ring familiar to most Americans, with good reason. These families amassed such fortunes that they built civic monuments to their societal contributions. We attend concerts in halls named for them, we watch TV shows broadcast from complexes bearing their names, we go to universities they helped found. Even their Gilded Age mansions are still tourist attractions across multiple states. The history of American industry cannot be said without the megalithic corporations that controlled so much of the American economy before the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt started busting trusts. America’s manufacturing continued to explode around the same time with the innovations pioneered by Henry Ford, and Detroit was built off the automotive industry.

This growth only continued into the twentieth century. With the surrenders of Germany and Japan, most of the world was left devastated. America had been on the offensive for the entire time after the war had broken out, putting its full economic and industrial might behind the war effort. America built over 60% of all Allied equipment during the entirety of the war and proved that American manufacturing could lead the world. For example, America’s industrial might was so great that it built a fleet of cargo ships called Liberty Ships in short timeframes, with one being constructed in about four and a half days. A few of these Liberty Ships are still afloat today, and they still sail periodically. One of them, the SS John W. Brown, was built at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyards in Baltimore, the city where it lives today as a museum ship and sails a few times a year through Baltimore Harbor. (I sailed on it myself in 2011 with my grandfather).

After the war, the relationship between West and East frosted over, and most of what was still friendly to America was ravaged by six years of war. America, whose shores were untouched by the war, not only constructed most of the equipment that helped the Allies win the war but was in the position to continue building after the guns fell silent and the peace treaties were signed. They kept up with manufacturing until the rest of the world got back on its feet, but as the industries of other countries did things better, cheaper, and faster, America fell behind. Eventually, many of the American giants closed or declined in influence, and it tore a path through the heart of the country.

Today, America’s influence is felt through its impressive military, its pop cultural dominance, and financial reach. Innovation is now the American game, not manufacturing.

Many of the railroads built by families like the Vanderbilts no longer have the ubiquity they used to. CSX and Norfolk Southern handle most cargo in the eastern United States, while BNSF and Union Pacific dominate the western part of the country. (Canada also has Canada National Railway and CPKC.) Amtrak now handles most passenger traffic in the United States and is a quasi-public corporation with significant government grants and influence formed from a consolidation of the routes by the old passenger rail companies. Passenger rail is important in some areas, like the Northeast Corridor, but since the advent of the Interstate Highway System and the dawn of cheaper flights, the use of trains has dropped significantly for moving people. Cargo is still a major use for the railways, but the industry does not have the same monetary support as it used to as cargo planes are becoming cheaper.

The venerated U.S. Steel corporation, founded by J.P. Morgan when he helped facilitate the merger of Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Steel Corporation, Elbert H. Gary’s Federal Steel Company, and William Henry Moore’s National Steel Company is now up for sale to Nippon Steel Corporation, a major Japanese player in the steel market. Bethlehem Steel Corporation, one of U.S. Steel’s largest competitors throughout the 20^th century, folded in 2003 after decades of decline.

Global supply chain issues were affected by the decline in American manufacturing over the last several years. A report from the Senate Joint Economic Committee discusses this as a supply chain risk. Without American manufacturing, we now are required to turn to other places to build the things we use. America is in the process of becoming a post-industrial society, and it’s leaving lots of places across America hurting. West Virginia has been brutalized by the decline of coal, and the lack of investment in the places that grew up around the mines.

However, there are still the hopeful stories of Rust Belt recoveries. Detroit, which was shorthand for the example of an American urban wasteland for decades, is now seen as cool again. Pittsburgh, which was devastated as the steel industry collapsed, is now one of the rust belt’s greatest comeback stories.

There is hope for America even as the death of its industry has devasted so many places across the country. The lack of manufacturing, ironically, gives Baltimore hope for a future that, for so long, has seemed quite bleak. The need for importing many of our manufactured goods keeps jobs in Baltimore which doesn’t have much else the way New York and New Jersey, Savannah, Charleston, and Miami do. Those places could survive the loss of their ports, while Baltimore probably could not. The good news is that Charm City is seeing more and more traffic, and the ports are booming in ways most people never thought they ever would again.

In fact, Baltimore is doing so well that Frank Sobotka’s dream is closer to being a reality, because Charm City just couldn’t keep up without doing a little work on itself.

A New Day Docks

The docks keep Baltimore alive as the city seeks to move into its next era the way other rust belt cities have. Even with the uncertainty of the next move, Baltimore’s cargo operations are expanding today and keeping the pride of the city’s maritime history alive.

With Baltimore’s port doing more business in recent years than they had in years past, some of Frank Sobotka’s concerns have been alleviated. Twenty years after The Wire’s second season aired, and the cargo moving through the port of Baltimore has risen dramatically, being on an upward trend since 1998. Baltimore is one of the largest ports in the country for roll on/roll off cargo. A great number of vehicles move through the Port of Baltimore each year, including personal automobiles and industrial and agricultural equipment. Not only that, but the container terminals are continuing to do well too. In fact, just a few years ago, a group of new cranes was built to handle the increase in container traffic arrived in the city.

One of Frank’s key issues he was lobbying for was to get the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal deepened, which was a loftier goal, but a deeper canal would allow bigger ships into the harbor. The other was the one goal the rest of the union members agreed with, which was to get the old grain pier back online, before land developers turned it into condominiums. Well, that actually happened. Had the stevedores gotten their way, the grain pier would have given some more ships back to Baltimore, but the canal was the prize. The canal has yet to be dredged in reality, but Baltimore is still expanding operations at its port.

A project to expand the deep water berths available at the Sea Girt Terminal was underway as of a few years ago.  The Port of Baltimore is already expanding its ability to handle more cargo than it used to, and the state of Maryland is making several improvements in the area to accommodate that expansion. From railways to roadways, ensuring that once the cargo hits the shore that it can reach its next destination in a timely fashion is the crucial goal. With the increased amount of money flowing through the area, further improvements to Baltimore as a whole would come along. Perhaps in a few years, there will be a proposal to expand the canal. For now, it would seem that Frank Sobotka’s dream of a booming waterfront in Baltimore is coming to fruition.

The only problem right now is the mass of twisted steel blocking access to the harbor.

The Challenges of Today

In an ironic twist of fate, the only terminal still accessible since the fall of the Key Bridge is the one at Sparrows Point, which is the former site of the Bethlehem Steel plant which was so vital to the city. Technically speaking, Sparrows Point is part of Baltimore County. Baltimore City is an independent city, and despite much of the metropolitan area being in the county, the two entities are legally and administratively separate. It’s why the Baltimore County Executive typically appears at the ongoing press conferences with the Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland.

Now called Tradepoint Atlantic, the Sparrows Point site is due for a major expansion in the coming years. The advantage that Sparrows Point has is that it is on the far side of the Key Bridge. Additional terminal space would further expand the Port of Baltimore, and if the future plans were in place today, then the city would be suffering less in the current day. The Dundalk Marine terminal is keeping ship operations for some ships going, which means some dockworkers are able to put food on their tables. Additionally, land-based vehicle traffic is still going into and out of the port facilities. The Dundalk Marine Terminal just doesn’t have the facilities to handle the larger ships that the other terminals do.

Baltimore’s upswing is currently blighted by a container ship trapped under the fallen bridge. However, this tragedy also provides an opportunity. Cargo ships have gotten much larger in recent years. The Key Bridge was built in 1977 and couldn’t have withstood the impact of ships that have come along in the years since, so it should come as no surprise that the Dali destroyed the bridge. Now that we’re forced to build a new bridge, we can build it bigger and better, and open the door even wider for the bigger ships to come into the port. However, building a new bridge will also be a dauting task. It’s expected to cost upwards of $400 million, and take anywhere between eighteen months to seven years, based on various estimates.

Currently, the dockworkers are out of work and unable to put food on the table. While emergency legislation has been drafted to offer financial assistance to those out of work, there are larger concerns at play. Depending on how long the harbor is blocked, dockworkers may find other jobs elsewhere to support their families. There may be a labor shortage once operations resume. Additionally, if ships have to alter their plans to go to other ports, they may maintain those plans regularly after this affair is over, which would mean that those ships never make it back to Baltimore’s ports, and all the expansion work would be for naught, putting a burden on an already strained tax base.

Additionally, Baltimore has a terminal for cruise departures. The Carnival Pride used to have its home port in Baltimore (I sailed on that ship in 2010) and has been replaced with the Carnival Legend in recent years. Currently, the passenger terminals are inaccessible as well, meaning that the Legend has to operate out of Norfolk for the time being. Who says they come back once this is all over?

Right now, Baltimore is hurting all over. The city’s comeback attempts may be stymied by a tragic accident of a container ship that lost power. Sure, blame may be found at the conclusion of the NTSB’s investigation, but it doesn’t help a maritime city with no access to the open waters.

The worst case scenario seldom comes to pass, and there is a good chance that the activity at the Port of Baltimore will take a dip this year, and some belt tightening must be done, but next year, things will be back and better than ever. The work that has gone into expanding the city’s port operations will be vindicated. This city has withstood the body blow of the death of American industry, and decades of mismanagement and bleeding. It got back on its feet and reminded the world it should not be overlooked. If we can do it once, we can do it again.

Frank Sobotka’s dream may yet live on.