Much has changed on the inland seas during the past 30 years, and the U.S. fleet has withered to a shadow of its former glory days in the 1950s and '60s. Back then, demand for the raw ingredients of integrated steelmaking kept hundreds of ships sailing the length and breadth of the system, from the Iron Range at the head of Lake Superior, to the mills around Chicago and Detroit, while grain flowed to Europe through Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Shipbuilding was booming and the boats got bigger every generation. Larger ships, the influx of cheap foreign steel beginning in the 1960s, and steadily increasing competition from land-based shipping modes have decimated the industry. Nowadays you’re lucky to catch sight of a single laker loading cargo at the ore docks of Duluth or Marquette. Ships also don’t navigate using marine chronometers anymore; these have been long since replaced by LORAN-C (radio beacon navigation) and then GPS. The ship’s four-hour watch rotations no longer need to be chimed on and off by Chelsea clocks, yet the anachronistic timepieces remain aboard as a matter of tradition, with as many as five or six clocks per laker.