August 25, Monday – Westerly

I love the early morning travel. The rural road was deserted and the eastern rising sun created a long shadow of the RV, which I was being chased down the pavement. The northern maples and pine pushed to the shoulder of the road. When I reached the small settlement of Paradise, I had to make a decision as to continue twelve miles up a dead-end road to Whitefish Point or turn and continue down the main road. I pulled up in front of a burned out store and unhitched the land dinghy. I wanted to see the point and the heavily advertised Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. As I drove the Jetta on the empty road my mind was wondering. Suddenly a slim red fox jumped out of the sparsely wooded area and bounded across the road followed by a second one. I quickly shut the car down and coasted to the shoulder of the road. What a treat! I was savoring the experience and looked to see if any others were still in the woods to my left and there lying on a bed of moss in a patch of sunlight was a third fox. It looked at me as if asking, “What’s up?” I quickly checked my rearview mirror to see if any cars were coming that might scare it away then fumbled for my camera. When I looked up, it was gone. Again I had been confronted with the age-old dilemma of whether to enjoy the moment or to catch it on film. This time I sadly lost.
The end of the road parking lot was almost empty when I arrived at Whitefish Point. The point used to be a coast guard station plus the lighthouse. The lighthouse was now automated and was control from Sault Ste Marie.
I walked out to the beach in front of the lighthouse and looked southeast. I could see the wind farm on the Canadian side seventeen miles away. To my left looking northeast was just water; two hundred miles of open water to the other shoreline. Lake Superior is 350 miles long and 160 miles wide at its widest point making it the largest lake in the world. And here in front of me was the largest ship graveyard in all of the Great Lakes. All the ships converged off this point to slip into Whitefish Bay on their way “down bound” to the locks at Sault Ste Marie. Here they confront congested waters. Here they collided and sunk or were pushed by storms onto the low point.
The houses, which use to make up the Coast Guard station are now part of the Shipwreck Museum. I was impressed. The main building of the museum began with early history starting with Native Americans and worked its way up through time. Many of the displays were full-scale presentations with waxwork bodies depicting the event. In the corner suspended from the ceiling were three fully outfitted scuba divers descending to the wood ribs of a ship. The ceiling was painted blue giving the museum visitors a sense of being underwater. It was well done. There were many famous ship models and paintings of the same ship resting on the lake bottom of vessels. As in the museum in Sault Ste Maria the disaster of the Edmund Fitzgerald held the centerpiece. One wall was devoted to the names of the 29 crewmembers that went down with her. But the most powerful of them all was the huge brass bell taken from the deck of the sunken ship. It hung on its original triangular mount for people to touch and remember.
In another building was a small theater that showed an impressive video of ships in extreme storm conditions with waves covering the entire mid-ship. But the major part of the presentation was the detailed process of recovering of the Fitzgerald bell from 530 feet down in 1995. The recovery crew and divers wearing rigid Newtsuits were interviewed but the most moving were the people who were relatives of the ship’s crew who spoke. There was closure in bringing the bell home.
A third building that was attached to the lighthouse was the residence of the three light keepers and their families. The rooms were setup to represent the 1950’s. The thing that made me cock my head and look sideways was that I knew a lot of the commercial items in the period displays……………
The last small building showed the beginnings of the coast guard. Inside was a rescue beach cart setup with a cannon that fired a massager whip line to a beached ship in preparation for a heavier line to be hauled from the beach to the ship. This operation was for a breeches buoy for removing personnel from the stricken vessel. Next to the cart was an excellent seven-crew surfboat for rowing out. But the main feature was the man talking about what these men did. The speaker was an ex 30 year commercial fisherman. He came very personally involved with the small group in the building. Not only did he describe the pieces of equipment and how they were used but also spoke of his years on the water. He addressed the importance of the Whitefish Light; it was the light that all mariners looked for because they knew that soon afterwards they were safe from the furious forces of the lake. He remembered the night that the Fitzgerald went down. He related how I knew that the captain knew his ship was doomed because during the night of this horrendous storm the power was off and the light was dark. This giving light; this light of comfort and security was gone. I felt greatly moved by his passion.