The below normal temperatures yesterday would have made a chilly walk along the lake shore and it is not a lot warmer today yet. And you would want to be quick grabbing a pretty rock out of the water since the water temperature is only 37ºF today.
Chilly Beach Walk
With the daylight decreasing each day in addition to the very cloudy weather, I have needed to have the lights on more often in the house to work. I’m glad that the candlepower from the light bulbs are stronger than the old oil lamp.
Old Oil Lamp
A “date that will live in infamy” is how President Franklin D. Roosevelt described Japanese attacks on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor in a speech to the joint session of Congress on the day after the attack on December 7, 1941. Of the more than 2,400 Americans killed in the attack, almost half of those who died were aboard the USS Arizona. This February, the last surviving officer of the USS Arizona, died at the age of 100 and there are now only eight crewmen from the Arizona still living.
Since I haven’t been to Hawaii to visit the USS Arizona Memorial, I have no pictures of it but this old fishing boat might not seen damage from war, but has been worn down from years of hard work and the icy waters of Lake Superior.
Boat Battling Age
Forty years ago, the freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior during the gales of a November storm. About 40% of all the Great Lakes shipwrecks have occurred in November.
The last contact with the freighter’s captain was at 7:10 pm, when Captain McSorley reported, “We are holding our own.” She sank minutes later. No distress signal was received, and ten minutes later, the freighter Anderson, who was following the Fitzgerald, lost the ability either to raise Fitzgerald by radio or to detect her on radar.
It was almost twenty years after the Fitzgerald sank before its 195 pound bell saw the surface again after being raised 500 feet on July 4, 1995. A replica bell inscribed with the names of the 29 crewmen was lowered in its place as a permanent grave marker. The original bell is displayed at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point.
The Edmund Fitzgerald Bell
The freighter, SS Edmund Fitzgerald, left the port of Superior, Wisconsin at 2:15 pm on the afternoon of November 9, 1975 with a cargo of 26,116 of taconite ore pellets headed for towards Detroit, Michigan. The freighter sank the next day, with the loss of the entire crew, during a Lake Superior storm when she was about 15 miles from reaching the Whitefish Point Light.
Didn’t Reach Whitefish Point
