Originally published on: https://www.seafarersfriend.org/
For nearly two months international seafarers labor to voyage weeks to the Port of Patache, Chile, and then spend weeks loading on a long wharf, then they voyage via the Panama Canal to a salt ‘pile,’ or mountain, in at the old US Coast Guard Station in Chelsea Creek. That pile was contested by the town of Chelsea for decades when the son of Irish immigrants in Lowell, northeast Massachusetts, named Leo Mahoney started moving bulk cargoes along it. Nowadays his daughter, a philanthropist and MBA named Shelagh Mahoney. She is the owner and CEO of Eastern Salt Company and Eastern Minerals, where ships from all over the world dock and discharge road salt during the Boston winter. Early in December a Santa’s sleigh rides atop that pile. Let’s learn more.
Patache Chile is a rugged industrial mining port in northwest of the country, north of Iquique. It is wedged between Bolivia, which used to have a navy, and Peru. In the 1800s, fishermen used the region then copper and now also salt. Precise ownership of Compañía: Cia. Minera Doña Inés de Collahuasi (named for Mrs. Ines) is not clear, though it appears that Ms. Mahoney’s has an ownership stake, through Eastern Salt Company, Inc., Eastern Minerals Inc., and Atlantic Salt, Inc.
While there are others salt importers in Boston, none compete in terms of regularity and volume, and truck traffic distributing to New England. The six states, particularly north of Connecticut, are reliant to a large extent on Boston’s deep water port. Some ships self-unload using conveyor belts pressed together, others by cranes and in Chelsea the shore crew (stevedores) discharge the ship. So the men have the change to walk to downtown East Boston, or have Seafarer’s Friend take them shopping.
I recall riding a salt ship and being concerned that salt was eating outwards on our single-hull ship as well as inwards from the ocean. But, thanks to determined mariners who are starving for stimulation after months at sea with a dull port and fairly dull cargo, our vehicles grip a salted surface more safely, while the seafarers shop.