It’s just after 9.30pm on a Thursday night in late May when a conveyor belt begins dumping 21,000 tons of road salt into the cavernous hull of the MV Mark W Barker at a dock in Cleveland.
As the first US-flagged freighter to be built on the Great Lakes in nearly 40 years, the 639ft (195-meter)-long ship – launched in 2022 – is the only vessel of its kind in the region powered by cleaner, “tier four” marine engines that meet the federal Environmental Protection Agency rules governing hydrocarbons and particle matter emissions.
