Baltimore is now America’s 17th-biggest port by tonnage—a respectable rank, if a far cry from the early days of the United States, when shipping made the city the third-most-populous in the country—and may well drop further down the list if the harbor remains inaccessible. (Maryland Governor Wes Moore has yet to comment on when the port might reopen for business.) But Baltimore is a city defined by water. The Gwynns Falls and the Jones Falls trickle through our parks. The Inner Harbor is our Times Square; our economy is tied up in trade and transportation. Ships are in the city’s bones. The brackish harbor is in its heart. ...

Baltimore Harbor is one of the city’s most important links to the rest of the world; to cut it off is to clog our blood supply. Moore has already said that the bridge will be rebuilt to honor this morning’s victims. We can still get out of the city with trains and cars. But this morning, Baltimore feels that much more claustrophobic.