thanks for the reply, i live in erie,pa. & hear nothing day or night, maybe someday i'll stumble across an active freq. !!!
Between the VHF voice radio, AIS, PCS phones (& some using high-gain external antennas) & especially SATCOM aboard the ships, plus USCG having more remote bases as part of the RESCUE 21 network, there's just not much need for HF aboard a Great Lakes ship anymore. Sad for us radio-geeks, but remember, the shipping companies had to PAY $$ to the coastal maritime stations to be a messaging relay, quality wasn't great, everyone could listen-in, etc. so it's no-wonder that's been phased-out by IP/VOIP services over SATCOM.
For me as a teenager in the early 1980s, it was especially fun to hear the ship to shore phone patches from passengers aboard the oceanic cruise ships ("Yes, mom, I'm having fun -- they had a dance party last night but I was in-bed by 11PM so I could go to the 9AM church service this morning" & then they'd call some friend & it was "Duuude! I got so wasted last night that I banged a fat chick! Couldn't get her to wake-up & leave my cabin until 10AM!"), the profanity-laced BS'ing of the guys working the wheelhouses of the barges/tugs on the Mississippi River & their non-stop talking back & forth to help stay awake, phone patches from workers on the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and/or off of California, and the Navy-Marine Corps MARS Afloat Net, running phone patches for sailors aboard military ships back to their friends & families.
2.182 & I think it was 4.125 were good to sit-on because occasionally you'd hear fairly tiny US, Canadian & other Coast-Guard type stations not normally heard on MF/HF often.
Keep tuning around, & be sure to get into digital modes (there's plenty of digital voice on HF, though a lot is government stuff, encrypted & using non-public waveforms).