The Houston Ship Canal helped Houston become an energy capital

As the 95-foot white Sam Houston tour boat pulls away to cross the Houston Ship Channel, dozens of elementary school students sit in the cool, air-conditioned cabin to hear the safety rules: No running, playing or leaning over the railings inside or out.

The boat is moving at about 10 mph. The loudspeaker announces the start of the automated tour. A soft, southern voice explains that we are 52 miles from the Gulf of Mexico and the open sea. Unlike the ships that dock along this industrial waterway, the Sam Houston does not travel the 52 miles to the Gulf.

While you may struggle to find the brown-water Houston Ship Canal on your bucket list, as other iconic pieces of infrastructure sometimes do (think the Golden Gate Bridge or the Eiffel Tower), the 110-year-old dredge is critical to U.S. oil and gas exports and is home to refineries and storage facilities for major companies like Valero, LyondellBasell and ITC. Without the canal, built shortly after oil was discovered in the area, Houston would never have become Houston.

And what it lacks in natural beauty, the boat cruise makes up for in price (it’s free, including refreshments) and comfort (large, cushioned seats and air conditioning). Locals, community groups, schoolchildren and tourists from around the world have taken thousands of trips on the Sam Houston since it began operating in 1958.

Aboard the Sam Houston, Port Houston public relations director Lisa Ashley-Daniels steps out onto the deck as the ship passes aging warehouses and city docks.

“We just got off the boat and headed to the upper Houston Ship Channel, where the tributaries of the bayou meet, where the channel has been dredged from there, seven miles from downtown Houston, all the way to Galveston Bay,” she said.

Ashley-Daniels said the ship canal was built shortly after the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which was the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history and served as a warning to expand trade further inland.

Construction of the ship canal also followed the discovery of oil at Spindletop, about 80 miles east of Houston, paving the way for the city to become an energy capital. Today, about 70% of petroleum products are imported and exported through the Houston Ship Canal, according to S&P Global.

“We were able to attract customers,” she said. “That’s when we started dredging the canal in 1914. That’s when the Panama Canal was created.”

The Houston Ship Canal has become a vital trade route. Today, the Port of Houston is the largest U.S. port by tonnage, according to U.S. TradeNumbers’ analysis of government data.

Upstairs, Ashley-Williams introduced the two captains of the Sam Houston tour boat, Genaro Ambriz and Greg Penton.

Penton, who was at the helm, used the radio to speak to an approaching barge.

“You see that barge coming around the corner? I just asked for a passage permit,” he said. The barge looks like a flat floating rectangle with trash cans and is part of a new dredging project to widen and deepen the Houston Ship Channel.

“They use big clam buckets to scoop up the mud from the bottom and put it into barges,” he said. “We’re still waiting for a car or something to come out.”

It is a $1.56 billion infrastructure improvement project funded by the federal government and Port Houston.

Environmental concerns have recently been raised around the dredging project, as carcinogenic chemicals were recently discovered in sediment washed ashore by the expansion project.

We continued our journey through the industrial district of Houston and Captain Genaro Ambriz showed us a cement plant, a petroleum product warehouse and refineries. We passed several very large ships, including one of them, the Seaways Hercules.

“You see all these pipelines going over there. Any time you see a ship like that, it’s called a tanker,” he said. Tankers are filled with crude oil and other petroleum products.

Sometimes, foreign workers on these huge tankers wave to the tour boats. Penton says he looks at what country they are from and wonders about their lives, where they come from and how they got into the maritime industry.

“They will work six months straight on this ship and never get off,” he said.

After about 90 minutes, as the tour ended, third-grader Penelope Basaldua said she had a great time on the boat with her classmates.

“I saw water. I saw trash in the water and boats around us,” she said.

She was given a free ride on an air-conditioned yacht in one of the most important ports in the United States: it was a little adventure on a hot summer day.