Walter J. McCarthy Jr. - Blue Evening in Duluth

Here is the 1000-foot Walter J. McCarthy Jr. arriving in Duluth, Minnesota after sunset in the late afternoon hours of November 14, 2020. She came to pick up a load of coal from the Midwest Energy Terminal on the Superior, Wisconsin side of the harbor. The McCarthy was launched in 1977 and has a carrying capacity of 80,900 tons, which gives her the largest load capacity of any laker, despite not being the longest ship on the lakes. She is powered by four 3500 HP General Motors Electro Motive Division (EMD) diesel engines.

The brilliant red skies we saw in the morning (see the Manitoulin video that I recently uploaded) were replaced in the late afternoon by overcast skies that had a grayish-blue appearance. The lighting on the lake is constantly changing, with each variation having it's own type of beauty. After watching the McCarthy make it's entrance into the Duluth shipping canal, I then relocated to Rice's Point to watch the McCarthy back underneath the John A. Blatnik highway bridge and approach the Midwest Energy dock. While the Aerial Lift Bridge in Duluth gets all of the attention, the Blatnik bridge also looks very attractive when lit up at night, nicely illuminating the McCarthy as she passes underneath.

Unfortunately, my bad luck with hearing salutes from the McCarthy continued with this visit. Despite a decent-sized crowd gathered on the piers on this afternoon, she denied us a friendly salute as she arrived. I have now gone more than five years since I last heard a salute from the McCarthy. She DOES salute at other times, but seems to withhold salutes whenever I have a camera rolling! Eventually I'll catch her on a day when the captain is feeling more generous with his salutes. Someday...

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