…as in up a river, or a waterway? (Weird yet straightforward enough, I think)
I’m no expert, though I’m guessing the answer is “not far”…as much as that spoils my plans for one kick-ass Amazon cruise, but it’s been pestering me for awhile, and I thought I’d ask, just to be sure.
This is just an (informed) guess but the Mississippi river can handle giant ships including supertankers from the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans easily. The river has been dredged all the way to Baton Rouge to handle large ships and an aircraft aircraft carrier may be able to make it that far as well. In total, that would be over 100 miles inland.
The Nimitz is post-Panamax which means it’s too big to go through the Panama Canal.
Here’s a list of deep water ports which according to the article means that it can support a Panamax ship. This of course does not mean that it can support a Nimitz class aircraft carrier.
I’m guessing that the St. Lawrence seaway might be the furthest inland, depending on how you define it. I have no idea how far you can get into it.
For the hell of it the Scoresby Sund is 350 kilometers or 217 miles long, which is the world’s longest fjord.
All in all I’d guess Port Cartier, an iron ore terminal on the St Lawrence River, which is southwest of Quebec. This assumes that you are not considering the Black Sea inland, which I think you could drive the Nimitz to.
I was thinking the same thing, but the channel to Montreal appears a trifle too shallow (11.3 meters). However far it can get up the St. Lawrence River, it certainly can’t fit through the locks past Montreal.
I should have read Darryl’s link. Longveiw, Kalama, and Portland/Vancouver are on the Panamax list. (That’s Vancouver Wash.)
Don’t know why Astoria OR is not on the list. It’s at the mouth. Docking at the port probably not kept dredged deep enough. The battleship Missouri made a visit there before it’s retirement.
The Chesapeake bay is 200 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the mouth of the Susquehanna river. The channel is at least 50 feet deep to Baltimore, roughly 175 miles up the Bay.
I wonder if you could get it as far as Manaus, on the Amazon. Lots of large ocean-going vessels can make it that far, but I don’t know if anything quite that big could make it.
The St Lawrence equivalent of Panamax is Seawaymax - the dimensions of a ship that can pass through the canal locks on the St Lawrence Seaway. Seawaymax vessels are 740 feet (226 m) in length, 78 feet (24 m) wide, and have a draft of 26 feet (7.92 m). The Nimitz is too big.
The river itself is dredged to 12 meters up to Quebec City. Past that it’s only 11 meters. So it looks like that’s as far as the Nimitz could go.