A Bridge Too

We will talk about yesterday's bridge collapse in Baltimore forever. If you didn't see the story, a freight ship allided (that's the maritime term for when a moving ship hits a stationary object) with the buttress of the Key Bridge, demolishing in 40 seconds the connection from southeast Baltimore County to Anne Arundel County, passing over the Patapsco River in the Baltimore Outer Harbor.

When the bridge opened in 1977, it completed the circular "Beltway" highway around the town, making an easy trip for ten of thousands daily. The bridge is gone, six lives of men working on its roadway are most tragically gone, but just as surely, the bridge will be rebuilt.

I695 circles Baltimore. The blue oval shows the part now destroyed.  Alternate routes will be the order of the day for many days.

It got me to thinking about a waterway further northeast, so much so that it's almost not in Maryland. Up in Cecil County you'll find the little town of Chesapeake City, home to 736 people in the 2020 census. The town is divided in two by the C&D Canal, which opened shipping traffic to the bay for vessels in the Delaware River with the destination being the Chesapeake Bay, the Atlantic Ocean, and the entire world.

Once larger vessels started traveling the canal, a lift bridge needed to be built for them to pass under, and one opened in 1926 to replace an old swing bridge. 

However, in 1942, the empty oil tanker Frank Klassen, tugged by three tugboats, was carried away on fluctuating tides, and struck the bridge, knocking it down. With World War II barely underway (and American forces seeing some setbacks) the focus was on the war effort, and the little town of Chesapeake City had no connection to the mainland, except for ferry service, until 1949, when a new high-level bridge was constructed.

Old timers up that way will tell about how they rode that ferry all those years for basic needs - or how stores got their supplies trucked in by the ferry. 

I bring all this up to say that, as grim as things look this morning, and with the sadness in our hearts as it is, Baltimore, Maryland, and the United States have always prevailed, and we will again, because we have always been great.