Valley Camp Museum Ship

Another great day in Sault Ste Marie. Mem and I went to Curves this morning, then to the grocery store for chicken for dinner tonight. We had a day of relaxing and reading by the river - it was wonderful. Larry cooked chicken on the grill tonight for dinner. It was wonderful. Jim and Ralph decided to go to the Valley Camp Museum Ship just down the street from the campground. They spent the entire day there. Jim's story follows: The Valley camp is a 560 foot retired freighter (1/2 the size of modern freighters)that was built in 1917 and served for 50 years and has been dry docked and renovated for use as a museum of maritime artifacts. It was powered by a three stage triple expansion steam engine. Considerable space in the museum and attention was reserved for the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. As noted previously, the Edmund Fitzgerald, a 960 foot freighter of some repute went down in a major great lakes storm just off White Fish Point on Lake Superior. You may recall that the light house that we visited yesterday was the one at White Fish Point. It turns out that the Light House light was out that night and in a small way contributed to the demise of the Fitz (as it was known). 29 men went down with the Fitz and it became famous (literally hundreds of other boats including other freighters are on the bottom of Lake Superior) mostly because of the mysterious circumstances and unknown cause of its demise. (Gordon Lightfoot's song didn't hurt its fame either!) A couple of the mangled life boats from the Fitz were on display as well as a life preserver. There is no evidence that any measures were taken by the crew to save them selves and some think the Fitz went down in as little as 20 seconds. The captain never even had time for a distress call. It sank on November 10 1975 in 540 feet of water and has been a subject of controversy every since. None of the crew was ever found and there were no eye witnesses save another freighter (the Arthur Anderson) in the vicinity that was in radio contact. We saw two one hour movies on the subject which were extremely interesting. The movies recap the tragedy and the investigation that followed, it is a stark reminder of the unforgiving nature of Lake Superior and the many lives it has taken. Ralph and I took over 6 hours to tour the museum and read almost every plaque and saw every display(Linda was EXTREMELY grateful that Ralph went with me). It was very interesing seeing the crew quarters, bridge, engine room and many other details of the ship. Neither Ralph or I had been on a freighter before. It is quite different from other ships. It is awsome to think how small the crew is (29) people or less and how low the ship sits in the water when it is fully loaded. As previously noted, the freighters are loaded such that only one foot of clearence is left between the bottem of the lock and the bottom of the ship! We noticed that 1000 foot freighters going through the locks spray water on their decks which are baking in the sun. This is because uneven expansion (hot on top and cold on the bottom) can cause the ship to bow enough that the stern or bow might drag the bottom of the lock! All in all it was an awesome day!