Door County Shores

Posted on September 8, 2021 by admin

In the outskirts of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, county seat and largest town on the Door Peninsula, is a simple sign on state highway 42/57 that says LIGHTHOUSES, with an arrow pointing to a side road. After that, you’re on your own if you want to see those structures, which are on the Sturgeon Bay Canal where it meets the Lake Michigan.

Getting to them involved a couple of wrong turns and passing by the intriguing side road to Leif Everson Observatory, marked by what looks like a model of the planet Neptune, with its Great Dark Spot and some Poseidean moons.

Eventually we found ourselves near the shore — and the lighthouses, but also a pier jutting out into the lake.

Besides the road and a small parking lot, most of the area is divided between private property and a Coast Guard station. Many signs warn you not to trespass on either, which hints at a history of miscreants showing up and making messes.

The Coast Guard station has a light: the Sturgeon Bay Canal Light, vintage 1899.
A little ungainly, but I suppose it gets the job done.

The concrete pier is a bit crumbled in places and its iron-and-plank superstructure is a bit rusty in places. The pier is open to the public. To get there, one treads the “public” half of a narrow footpath. More signs warn you not to step off it.

So if you are a mind to, you can go down the pier. We did.

The pier offers some nice views, including the Coast Guard facility and the private shoreline.

Even better is a view of the other light, Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Pierhead Lighthouse, which is the older of the two, dating from 1881.

The light is on a rock island of its own, connected to the pier by the iron superstructure. In other pictures, the light is bright red, and maybe it still is, in the right light. On Sunday morning, it looked dull red, but even so considerably more handsome than the Coast Guard’s tower.

One more thing: a survey marker way out near the tip of the pier.

Those two lights satisfied the tourist requirement that you visit at least one lighthouse in Door County. So on we went from there, pausing briefly in Sturgeon Bay for gas, and then up the other coastline — the two aren’t very far apart — to the 14-acre Frank E. Murphy County Park on Horseshoe Bay, a small patch of Green Bay.

It’s a pleasant little park, grassland and a beach.

A homely concrete pier juts out into Horseshoe Bay, and we went there too, taking in the wind and the waves.

Frank E. Murphy was a Door County lumberman, cattle breeder and fruit grower in the decades on either side of 1900, according to a sign at the entrance. His family donated the land for the park in 1934.

Another fact on the sign: the man credited with naming Horseshoe Bay in 1842 was Increase Claflin Jr. (1795-1868, pictured). His Find a Grave bio is just a touch hagiographic: “Increase Claflin was a splendid type of a pioneer, a most auspicious forerunner of Door County’s men. He was sturdy, reliable, fearless, intelligent, loyal and self-sacrificing. In the rare quality of his ancestors as well as in his own noble manhood, Door County could ask for no truer type of American virtue.”

The text sounds suspiciously like it was lifted from a 19th-century bio of the man, maybe a newspaper obit, as a reasonable use of the public domain.

Anyway, Increase needs to be brought back as a first name. Perhaps Gen Z parents will take it up.

Along the Niagara Gorge

Posted on June 3, 2021 by admin

What’s within walking distance of Niagara Falls State Park if you want a (relatively) inexpensive lunch? There’s a food court in an ugly building, but also Zaika Indian Cuisine, Taste of Nepal and Punjabi Hut on streets near the park, all of which speak to fairly recent immigration in this corner of western NY. When honeymooners visited Niagara in the early 20th century, or even most of the rest of the century, those were surely not options. We had the buffet on Saturday at Punjabi Hut, which was pretty good.

Afterwards, we spent a little more time at the park riding the Niagara Scenic Trolley, whose route was shortened during the pandemic, and then headed north by car on the Niagara Scenic Parkway. The road is fairly short — 18 miles or so — and goes from the town of Niagara Falls to Lake Ontario, but it is definitely scenic, except for the section that passes by the New York Power Authority plant on the river. Just north of the falls the parkway follows the river fairly closely.

The road was known as the Robert Moses Scenic Parkway until about five years ago. Looks like Confederate memorials aren’t the only ones getting the boot these days. So are those honoring urban planners with a taste for neighborhood-impinging expressways. (And what’s to become of this state park on Long Island? Time will tell.)

North of the town of Lewiston, the parkway still follows the river, but at a remove of a mile or so. It’s pretty enough, but I understand that the Niagara Parkway on the Canadian side, which follows the river quite closely, is the prettier drive. But one goes where one can go.

First stop: Whirlpool State Park. The intense current of the Niagara River rushes to this point and forms a enormous whirlpool at a bend. Been quite a while since I’ve had a good look at a natural whirlpool which, despite the name, looks like a choppy patch of water rather than the thing you see in a drain.

The view upriver. In the distance is the Rainbow Bridge. As I’ve said, nothing is very far from anything else in this part of New York state.

The flow into the whirlpool.

The whirlpool.

It doesn’t look like a particularly safe place for boats, but that doesn’t keep tourists from venturing there under the command of “highly skilled captains.” I’d hope so. I don’t know whether the jetboats are running now. We didn’t see any. The cable car that dangles over the whirlpool, the Whirlpool Aero Car, and which launches from the Canadian side, looked immobile, still shut for the pandemic.

Then there’s the story of Capt. Joel Robinson, skipper of the Maid of the Mist in 1861, who shot the Niagara rapids and whirlpool. Niagara Falls Info tells the story:

“In 1861, due to a financial crisis and the American Civil War, the Maid of the Mist was sold at public auction to a Canadian company. The deal would go through if the boat could be delivered to Lake Ontario. To get to Lake Ontario, the Maid of the Mist had to be navigated through the Great Gorge Rapids, the Whirlpool, and the Lower Rapids.

“On June 6th 1861, 53-year-old Captain Joel Robinson undertook this risky mission along with two deck hands…[McIntyre and Jones]. With both shores lined with onlookers, Captain Robinson and crew rode the Maid of the Mist into one of the world’s most wild and dangerous whitewater rapids.

“The first giant wave that struck the boat threw Robinson and McIntyre to the floor of the wheel house. It also tore the smoke stack from the boat and Jones was thrown to the floor of the engine room. The tiny boat was now at the mercy of the massive waves crashing against it. The boat was carried at approximately 63 km/h through the rock strewn rapids. Soon the Maid of the Mist was propelled into the Whirlpool where Captain Robinson was able to regain control of the boat.

“Captain Robinson had great difficulty maneuvering the Maid of the Mist from the grip of the Whirlpool… The 5 kilometre journey through the rapids and the Whirlpool was well executed, although they lost the smoke stack. Captain Robinson was the first person to accomplish the impossible [obviously not, just difficult] task of taking a boat through the dangerous waters.

“The frightening experience of this journey caused Captain Robinson to give up a career that he loved. He retired into near seclusion and died two years later at the age of 55.”

In modern terms, sounds like he suffered from PTSD. In 19th-century terms, I figure people said he was spooked by the ordeal. No mention of the aftermath for the deck hands.

Not long after visiting Whirlpool State Park, we spend a while in the pleasant town of Lewiston, New York, whose equally pleasant riverfront isn’t at the top of a gorge, but at river level. Not far from the river is the Freedom Crossing Monument, an ensemble of bronzes by Susan Geissler commemorating those escaped slaves who crossed into Canada.
Elsewhere in Lewiston is the variously named Earl W. Brydges Artpark State Park, or Earl W. Brydges State Artpark, or simply the Artpark, a venue for summertime musical entertainment. It also includes some other standard features of a park, such as playground equipment and picnic tables, as well as an Indian mound. I expect there haven’t been any events there in more than a year, but maybe that will pick up soon.

All very interesting, but what struck me was the parking lot. It’s large and undistinguished except for the paintings on its surface. When I pulled into the lot, I took them for children’s chalk drawings, maybe left over from a kids’ event, but soon I noticed they were paintings, and extensive in scope across the lot.

More parking lots such be decorated like this. The end of the line for the Niagara Scenic Parkway is near Old Fort Niagara State Historic Site, which overlooks the mouth of the river on Lake Ontario. The fort itself, which is ringed by an iron fence, was closed by the time we got there. But the rest of the grounds were open. While Yuriko napped in the car, I looked around.

The Old Fort Niagara lighthouse.
This particular light dates from 1871, but the fort had more primitive lights much earlier than that, ca. 1781, which count as the first lights on the Great Lakes.

The old fort also has an old cemetery. Small, but a dignified spot for those who died during here the War of 1812. The fort was scene of a bloody bit of business during that dimly remembered war. Good to see that the stones were ready for Decoration Day.Erected to the memory of unknown soldiers and sailors of the United States killed in action or dying of wounds in this vicinity during the War of 1812.

Niagara Falls State Park

Posted on June 2, 2021 by admin

Something I didn’t know until I visited there on Saturday: Niagara Falls State Park in New York is considered the oldest state park in the nation, established in 1885 as the Niagara Reservation. Creation of the park was an early success for Progressivism, spearheaded by Frederick Law Olmsted. Him again. The wonder is that he isn’t more widely known for his terrific landscape artistry, which anyone can see.

A victory for the Progressive movement because, as I’ve read, before that private landowners around the falls monopolized access. You’d think that wouldn’t be much of an issue in the 19th century, but the falls have been a tourist attraction for a long time. In the park we saw a sign that noted that on his grand tour of the U.S. in 1825, Lafayette came to see the falls. But the real tourism boom began after the falls became a public place with easy access.

We arrived on Saturday around 9 a.m. and found a place to park right away in lot no. 1. Good thing, too, since later in the day we noticed a long line of cars waiting to park. Even that early there were a fair number of people in the park, but by early afternoon the place was mobbed.

It didn’t matter once you’d ditched your car. The park holds crowds well because it’s large, encompassing a long stretch of shore along the Niagara River upriver and downriver from the falls, and the islands that divide the falls into three: the relatively small Bridal Falls, the mid-sized American Falls, and the mighty Horseshoe Falls, most of which is Canadian.

Created at the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago or so, the falls have an estimated existence span of another 50,000 years. So we’re witnessing a geological blip. How many countless mighty cataracts of this kind have come into being only to erode away over the billions of years of liquid water on Earth? And what about crashing falls on other worlds?

From the U.S. side, your first view is of the American falls, looking to the south. The buildings in the background are part of the town of Niagara Falls, Ontario. This is a shot with the tourist infrastructure edited out.

Left in.

Bridges cross from the shore upriver a bit to Goat Island, the main island in the channel. For a few moments, you can forget you’re surrounded by the intensity of the Niagara River.

But not for long. More views of the American Falls are easily found. Looking north over the drop, with the Rainbow International Bridge in the background, seeming not nearly as high as it is.

Spray. It wouldn’t be the last time.

A curiosity on Goat Island: a statue of Tesla.

“Gift of Yugoslavia to the United States, 1976,” the Tesla Memorial Society of New York says. “Nikola Tesla designed the first hydroelectric power plant in Niagara Falls. This was the final victory of Tesla’s Alternating Current over Edison’s Direct Current. The monument was the work of Croatian sculptor Frane Krsinic.”

A standing Tesla was installed on the Canadian side more recently, in 2006, according to the society. More about Tesla and Niagara is here.

Go far enough on Goat Island and you’ll reach Terrapin Point, which offers a view of Horseshoe Falls, which is what most people think of when they think of Niagara Falls. It’s wider than the other falls combined, and drops more water, as much as 90% of the 100,000 or so cubic feet of water per second that flows over the three falls during the summer. The rate is controlled by engineering, and is lessened at night and during the spring and fall, when fewer tourists are around, so that more of the flow can be used to generate electricity at those times.

Naturally, lots of people were gathered to take a look. And pictures.

There’s a good view of the Canadian side from there as well, when the mist doesn’t obscure it. Looks like there’s reconstruction going on over there, near the edge. I remember standing next to the Horseshoe Falls at that point 30 years ago, and it looks like that observation deck is missing for now.

The Canadian town looks more prosperous than the U.S. town from that vantage, and indeed it is for various reasons. Sad to say, beyond the tourist enclave, Niagara Falls, New York is another one of the small cities of the industrial North that has seen better times.

Canada, as it happens, was still mostly closed to visitors over Memorial Day weekend, which would be an ordinary weekend there. Later in the day, we saw the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge on the U.S. side, and only one lane for traffic was open, and no one was in it.

The bridge is visible from Terrapin Point, since it isn’t far downriver from the falls. A striking bit of work across a gorge.

After our Goat Island wander, we wanted to do the Maid of the Mist boat ride. That was something I skipped in ’91, and wasn’t expecting much more than a ride along the river with a nice view of the bottom of the falls, to complement the views of the tops. We waited in line about half an hour to get on one of the two boats, which made me think of waiting around for a ride at Disneyland. A thing that you do as a tourist. I grumbled a little about the price. I didn’t realize what was ahead.

This is one of the boats, the James V. Glynn. We rode on the other one, the Nikola Tesla. Him again. Mr. Glynn is a long-time Maid of the Mist chairman.

Tourists have been riding Maid of the Mist boats since 1845, another indication of how long tourists have been coming to Niagara Falls, though intermittently until 1885 and every year since then. The boats were steam and then diesel powered and now, as the company is eager to point out, all-electric with no emissions, launched into service only last year. As people get on and off, the boats are recharged at the dock.

The company gives you bright blue thin plastic ponchos and off you go, for a 20 minute or so trip. It isn’t the quantity of the time aboard that counts, but the quality. First you pass by the American and Bridal Falls, which are impressive in their flow and in the huge boulders piled at the bottom.
The ship then passes into the curve under Horseshoe Falls. I didn’t think it would get as close at it did. The roar is enormous. The spray is continuous. The curving walls of water, taller than walls of water should be, fill your senses. The place is enthralling. I haven’t been as captivated by a natural phenomenon (well, partly engineered) since I saw the total eclipse a few years ago.

No wonder people have been paying for over a century and a half for this little boat ride. It was worth the effort to get to Niagara Falls, all by itself, and all of the $25.25 each to be escorted under the spectacular cataract.

I wasn’t in the mood to take pictures during most intense moments, like during the eclipse. Except one.
One of three or four selfies I’ve taken since that concept was popularized. Hit the nail on the head with that one.

Sink the Bismarck!

Posted on January 12, 2021 by admin

I was surprised recently to find Sink the Bismarck! on YouTube, gratis, no commercials even. Did the copyright lapse? So over the last few days I’ve been watching it as time allows. I think I rented it on VHS in Japan nearly 30 years ago, but I’m not sure; might have seen it later.

Considering that the ships are obviously models, this is a movie that’s improved — to modern eyes, used to better effects — by being on a small screen. Much of the story involves talking, and occasionally the exposition pops through (especially at the beginning), but on the whole it’s fast-moving and, in its way, suspenseful. The main actors all do well, especially the leads.

Also, it’s reasonably accurate in terms of its history, though since the movie came out in 1960, it wasn’t up to speed on the fact that British intelligence had cracked German codes, or that the men on the Bismarck scuttled her at the very end. No matter, it’s been a good diversion from the pace of work and the woes of the nation.

Getting Around Europe, Summer 1983

Posted on June 23, 2019 by admin

June 3, English Channel

Woke and had a good breakfast at our Harvich [England] B&B. After some confusion caught a bus to the Parkeston Quay, where we had no trouble boarding a huge ferry, the Prinz Oberon. It had five decks, with shops and restaurants for the elite, a cafeteria for the everyone else. We ate in the cafeteria — I had some industrial white fish — and then watched a sweet and sour Bert Reynolds movie, Best Friends, in the ship’s tiny movie house. As usual, Bert Reynolds can’t act.

Afterward Rich and I had a talk with a 10-year-old English boy named John, who knew all sorts of dirty jokes, and told us them. He had his Dutch mother with him, who habitually closed one eye when she talked, which was mostly about the perils of Amsterdam. Things aren’t what they used to be, everybody’s nasty now, etc.

June 16, Lüneburg, West Germany, to Copenhagen

At 12:30, Rich, Steve and I went to the youth travel agency and they told us, and we somehow understood, that the next train to Copenhagen was in 50 minutes or so. We bought tickets and dashed off to the bahnhof. And I mean dashed — Rich was worried about getting lost on the way and Steve had to meet us there, because he had to meet French Girl for a moment about something or other. I wonder that we ever got on the train, but we did.

For a while we were on the wrong car. Only some of the cars are put on the ferry, like a snake swallowing mice. One of the conductors told us that, and we went to the right car with a few minutes to spare. The crossing was brief, but we didn’t know that, so we ordered lunch. We had to eat fast.

Arrived in Copenhagen, spent some time figuring the subway out, then rode to part way toward a hostel we knew to be nearly out of town. Then we walked the rest of the way, only to find they had no space. But the kindly clerk at the hostel recommended another place that did have room — near the main train station we had just come from. We took a bus back into the city. Beds were available at the close-in hostel.

July 1, Lüneburg to Bremen

Rode a morning train from Lüneburg to Hamburg-Harburg. Some punkish fellows sat across from me: colorful pants & leather jackets with steel studs & short, almost crewcut hair with a mandatory earring each. One wore a digital watch.

At Hamburg-Harburg, I had 40 minutes to wait. I met a fellow, more conventionally dressed and only a little older than I am, who spoke British English so well I wasn’t sure whether he was British or German for a few minutes. Turned out he was from near Lübeck. His book for the ride was an English-language edition of The Lord of the Rings. The German translation, he told me, is “rubbish.” We talked about a number of other things as well. He told me he didn’t like the prospect of Pershing IIs stationed in West Germany, but he thought they were necessary.

July 14, Vienna to Rome

In the afternoon, we boarded our train. In my compartment was a family of four Hungarians and an Italian. Slept on a top bunk from 10 to 7 or so. Sometime in the night we crossed the border and so I woke in Italy. By that point no one had asked for a passport or a ticket. Arrived Rome at about 2. No one ever did ask for a passport, but the conductor eventually got around to checking my ticket.

July 22, Campania, Italy

Steve and I boarded the bus to Avellino in mid-morning yesterday and I remember having a fine ride – no hint of things to come. The Campanian scenery was pleasant, a lot of rolling countryside, though the air was more polluted than I would have expected. We got to Avellino, expecting to find a station, but instead a large parking lot full of buses functioning as the station. We asked a driver which bus connected with our destination, Mirabella, the small town where Steve has relatives, and he told us where to wait for it.

I felt nauseated in the hot sun waiting for the connecting bus. That bus wasn’t especially late — a notable thing in Italy — and my condition got worse during the bouncing, twist-and-turn ride deeper into the country (for Mirabella is a very small town). We arrived at a street corner in Mirabella, and immediately after unloading our packs from under the bus, I said to Steve, “I think I’m going to throw up.” Which I did right away. First on the sidewalk, then another wave in the gutter.

July 30, Florence to Innsbruck

The midnight train out of Italy was, of course, crowded, but at least we found seats. We had to disturb a mother and daughter already asleep to get those seats, and then more people boarded the car. After Bologna, the rest of the night passed more quickly than I expected in a fitful sleep sitting up, and by daylight I woke up tired in the Italian Alps. It was a good sight after the flatter, dustier parts of Italy we’d passed through earlier. Arrived Innsbruck about 9. Mucked around the station a while and then walked no short distance to a hostel run by a small church.

Aug 7, Down The Rhine

Today we took a slow boat down the Rhine. As good as it sounds. We started out this morning on the train to Mainz. Unfortunately, we forgot to change trains, and so ended up in Frankfort. But no problem. A friendly Ⓘ staffer helped us find a train to Rüdesheim, where we waited for the boat to Koblenz.

At this point, the Rhine cuts through steep hills, all very green and many overgrown with grapes. Castles stand on a few of the hills. We sat on the pea-green deck under a warm afternoon sun, watching the hills and castles pass by and listening to the other passengers, mostly children at play on the deck. Now that was an afternoon.

The Aerial Lift Bridge

Posted on August 7, 2018 by admin

There’s a large sand bar between St. Louis Bay and Lake Superior that runs a long way southeast from downtown Duluth, and east of the city of Superior, Wis. Only seven miles southeast from Duluth does the bay finally meet Lake Superior via a natural channel.

Once Duluth was a going concern, its city fathers decided that that arrangement would never do, since it slowed shipping down, the only thing that made Duluth a going concern in the first place. So the city dug the Duluth Ship Canal through the spit in the early 1870s, opening up St. Louis Bay to Lake Superior, conveniently at the city’s waterfront.

Eventually, a bridge across the canal was deemed necessary too. So what we now call the Aerial Lift Bridge opened for traffic in 1905. It’s an impressive work of steel from a distance.
As well as from closer up.

Even more, standing underneath one of its tall towers. Definitely a grand relic of the Machine Age.

The lower level of the bridge is a roadway. When ships need to pass under the bridge, the lower level is raised about 135 feet, after traffic has cleared off, of course. We stood below and watched the process. This is the lower level before rising.

This is the lower level in its raised position.

When the Aerial Lift Bridge was built, it was an oddity known as a transporter bridge. Instead of raising the road, passengers and vehicles crossed in what were essentially large gondolas. That was impractical in the long run, so by 1930 the bridge had been converted into its current form.

There’s some tourist infrastructure in the shadow of the bridge. Warehouses and other old buildings have been redeveloped in recent years into a retail-restaurant-attraction district known as Canal Park, which is north of the bridge and adjacent to downtown Duluth. Reminded me some of Navy Pier in Chicago, though Canal Park is shorter and not as crowded.

We took a walk out to one of the lighthouses at the end of the canal, the Duluth North Pier Lighthouse.

At water’s edge near the canal, we watched a remarkably skilled stone-skipper, a kid of maybe 12. He was skipping stones across the water six or seven or eight or more times that I could count, one stone after another after another. Here he is, in black, looking for more stones.

The kid had the wrist action for it. If there’s such a thing as pro stone-skipping — and for all I know, there is, since we live in a world where people are pro video gamers — I bet he could go pro.

Sightseeing at the Jetties Cafe 60-Odd Years Ago

Posted on May 13, 2018 by admin

Here’s a postcard I acquired at a Missouri antique mall not long ago. To judge by the automobiles in the image, early to mid-1950s.

The image doesn’t seem odd, not at first, but the caption on the other side tells a different story:

“Aliens who have entered the United States illegally are being returned to Mexico on this ship passing the Jetties Cafe on Padre Island, Port Isabel, Tex. Usually a smaller boat follows the ship to pick up aliens who prefer to ‘jump ship’ before it clears the channel.”

As postcard subjects go, that’s one of the odder ones I’ve seen. A casual scene of mass deportation. Maybe it was a strange card even 60+ years ago. Or maybe it counted as topical, referring to a not-well-remembered action by the Eisenhower administration.

The publisher was Frank Whaley Post Cards of McAllen, Texas, and this card is numbered FW-457. A casual look reveals that he seemed to specialize in South Texas. Apparently he was successful enough to own a couple of postcard vans.

The USS Batfish

Posted on June 1, 2017 by admin

A park in Muskogee, Okla., might seem an odd place to find a submarine, but that’s where the USS Batfish makes its home as a museum ship.

Note the walkway leading to the top of the vessel. That’s the access point for visitors, as Lilly and I were on the afternoon of May 13.
Note also the water around the hull of the Batfish. I suspect that was because of a rainy spring, not a permanent feature. Soon we stood on top of the Batfish. I’d never stood on a submarine before. The fencing was clearly added for the safety of tourists. I’ll bet that during active service, either you maintained your footing or you didn’t.
I walked onto the sub thinking that was it, a look at the outside. Then we noted that both hatches, one forward, the other aft, were open. You can go inside.

The interior is well maintained, well lighted, and pretty much like crawling around in a cave made of steel. On display were such features as glowing torpedo tubes.
To make your way through the vessel, you pass through a series of hatches like this. I assume they’re watertight. Submarines clearly aren’t meant for fat men.
I didn’t feel claustrophobic, exactly, just boxed in. It’s difficult to imagine the fortitude necessary to spend months at a time in such a steel box, with sudden drowning all too real a possibility.

Plenty of narrow corridors.
And limited comforts.
I understand that the food was generally better on subs than the ordinary run of ships, as one way to compensate for other discomforts. I hope that was true.

A forest of pipes.
And controls. Many, many controls and dials.
As a warship, the Batfish had a good run, completing seven war patrols from late 1943 to the end of the war. She clearly took the cinematic Patton at his word, making some other poor dumb bastards die for their country. Most notably by sinking three Japanese subs in a 76-hour period in February 1945.

After the war, the vessel hung on until 1969, when it was struck from the Naval Vessel Registry. Apparently Oklahoma submarine vets, aided by state politicos, managed to obtain it for display from the Navy in the early ’70s, though the task of getting to its current site in Muskogee, near the Arkansas River, was a long and tedious process, as described here.

There’s also a small museum in a building near the submarine, and not far from the sub, a poignant display with plaques honoring each U.S. submarine, WWII and other eras, that didn’t return. On eternal patrol, as the submariners put it.

A Lot of Tall Ships

Posted on August 3, 2016 by admin

Last Saturday, Navy Pier, Chicago: Pay your money, get your wristband, and pretty soon you can board the likes of this.
Even better, this.
The first ship is brig Niagara out of Erie, Pa., while the next one is El Galeón Andalucía, out of Cadiz, Spain.

Every three or four years, Chicago hosts a tall ships festival. The formal name of this year’s event was the Pepsi® Tall Ships® Chicago 2016, complete with registered trademarks symbols flying like pennants. I’m sure PepsiCo paid big bucks for the naming rights, but I can’t help feeling that the drink of choice among seafarers on tall ships should be rum. Bacardi ought to look into it.

Pepsi® Tall Ships® Chicago 2016 is part of a larger movement of sailing ships through the Great Lakes this year, known as the Tall Ships Challenge®. (There’s that trademark again, but I refuse to use all caps.) The event is organized by the Tall Ships Foundation and includes visits to Great Lake ports this summer, as well as races between the participants.

Even now, the ships are on their way to Green Bay and then Duluth. Next year, other ships will visit Atlantic ports, and presumably after that Pacific ports, and so on. Guess the visits count not only as seafaring — an end unto itself — but are also for publicity and fundraising. The tall ships probably cost a lot to maintain, now that the supply of cheap Jack Tar labor isn’t what it used to be.

The participating ships were docked at Navy Pier. All were available to board and look around, while some offered rides on the lake for an extra (and fairly high) fee. All together, we boarded eight of the ships, or more than half: the Niagara and the Andalucía, but also the Pride of Baltimore II, Denis Sullivan, Madeline, Mist of Avalon, Playfair, and the Draken Harald Hårfagre.

Coolest of all was the galleon. Everybody seemed to feel that way, since that ship had the longest line to board. It was worth the wait of about 30 minutes. How often do you have the chance to board a Spanish galleon and look around? Not often.

The vessel, completed only in 2010, is a 170-foot, 495-ton wooden replica of a galleon that was part of Spain’s West Indies fleet, or, as Wiki puts it: “El Galeón Andalucía es la reproducción de un galeón español del siglo XVII.”

The other ships had their interests as well, including the Niagara and the Pride of Baltimore II —
— and especially the Draken Harald Hårfagre, a re-creation of a Viking ship. The light was wrong for me to get a good side image of the vessel, but there are plenty of pictures of her.

Apparently there was some kind of kerfuffle about the Draken Harald Hårfagre in U.S. Great Lakes waters. Something about leaving behind a swath of destruction, pillaging as they went by — Cleveland, Detroit, Mackinaw City, Green Bay… No, that wasn’t it.

The ship’s problems are more pedestrian than that: not being able to pay a pilotage fee. The Sun-Times reported before the tall ships event: “While docked in Bay City, Michigan, the crew of a 115-foot vessel found out last week that they were required by law to have a pricey navigational pilot on board while traveling the Great Lakes in U.S. waters.”

Maybe that’s an onerous requirement. I’m not competent to say. But you’d think that the owners of the ship might have known about it before entering U.S. waters. Anyway, apparently they raised enough scratch to get to Chicago, and I’m glad. It was another cool ship to tour.

In fact, we got a guided tour by one of the crew, the only ship to provide that.
As a 21st-century replica, certain things about the ship would have been unfamiliar to, say, Erik the Red. Such as the hidden diesel engine, or the hidden stove and toilet aboard. Modern safety regs don’t allow as many crew as the ship would need to actually row it, so the oars are mostly for show, though the crew uses the sails as propulsion if it all possible. Also, in the spirit of modern Scandinavian egalitarianism, the crew’s half men and half women.

Manto Mavrogenous, Face on the 2-Drachma Coin

Posted on January 13, 2016 by admin

Among many other things, coinage is (or can be) educational. Take Manto Mavrogenous (Μαντώ Μαυρογένους), for instance. Until recently I didn’t know who that was. Then I acquired a demonetized 2-drachma piece, which has her portrait on it, so I had to find out more. I still don’t know that much — it would take more digging than I want to spend on the matter right now — but I learned some some basics, from the likes of this site and this one.

Such as that she participated in an important way in the Greek War of Independence, especially by outfitting rebel forces at her own expense, and encouraging other wealthy Europeans to support the cause. Apparently she was the subject of a Greek movie in 1971, but her story cries out for a big-budget biopic in our time, with a few changes, of course. It’s one thing for her to be Demetrios Ypsilantis’ lover, but the script can also spice things up with a love triangle that involves Lord Byron as well, played by some handsome English actor. Did she ever really meet Lord Byron? Details, details.

The Hellenic Republic thought enough of her to put her on the 2 drachma coin from 1988 to 2001, which was retired when the country traded for euros (and a peck o’ trouble).
It’s a nice little coin, and unlike many copper-plated coins of recent vintage, such as the U.S. cent since 1982, it’s actually copper. The nautical design on the obverse (at least, I think it’s the observe) makes sense in the context of Manto Mavrogenous’ contributions to kicking Ottoman butt, a good bit of which involved raising and paying for ships to fight near Mykonos.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: ships