One of the cool things about the web cams around the world is learning about new places that one may or may not ever have the chance to visit in real life. Even if I make it to Michigan in my travels, I'm not sure I would have thought to hang about the St. Clair River to watch the ships navigate between Lake Huron to/from Detroit, Lake Erie and beyond.

After finding the great ship watching cameras in Duluth, Minnesota, I was excited to find more great cameras!

(Image of the Great Lakes Fleet SS Arthur M Anderson from Zars of Wikipedia.)

First of all, here's where I'm talking about:

St. Clair River, Michigan/Ontario

(Map from Mapquest - used for educational purposes - edited by myself. The stars indicate the camera locations I've found thus far.)

The St. Clair River is a 40-mile river which connects Lake Huron to Lake St. Clair. Any ship going towards Duluth, Chicago, Thunder Bay or anywhere on Lake Superior, Lake Michigan or Lake Huron must travel through this river, making it an ideal spot for seeing the many ships that serve the area.

The main ships one can see on this river are bulk carriers (which might hold anything from wheat to iron ore, containers or even large industrial equipment including wind turbines), tankers or tugs with barges (most of which are bulk carriers in their own right.)

Here are the cameras in Port Huron where you can do some virtual ship-spotting.

Port Huron

This city of about 30k people sits on the border of the USA and Canada (Point Edward, Ontario) with a rather magnificent bridge spanning the St. Clair. Sometimes, the ships coming in will salute as they come under the Blue Water Bridge.

This is one of my favorite cameras because it does a great job of catching the "Nascar slide" as the ships make the sharp left bend going south.

The people behind the camera do a good job zooming in on the ships so you can see their names. Sometimes, it's something else that catches the camera's eye - such as birds alighting nearby or the shore-side train.

As the ships come under the bridge, they also come into view of the next camera, brought to us by BoatNerd. As I watched earlier, the Julie C (owned/operated by Carisbrooke Ltd, Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK) did a really nice Nascar slide around that corner and both cameras did an excellent job capturing the rather tricky maneuver.

(Let's see you take a 452'- long vessel carrying 13,000 tons around a tight curve! And this is a very small ship compared to the largest Great Lakes ships which run just over 1000 feet by 112 feet, carrying nearly 60,000 tons!)