I don’t watch much TV, but this show about the sinking of the GTW carferry Milwaukee might be interesting.
(I grew up in Grand Haven, the destination that was never reached, and home to many of the crew.)
http://www.historychannel.com/deepseadetectives/?page=upcoming
See the book Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. The chief diver and investigator is the host of DeepSea Detectives
carl
saw the preview.will have tape in mr vcr
stay safe
joe
I’ve been watching the commercials for this show–as I am a huge History Channel fan, it’s about all I watch besides the NFL. I can’t wait the see this one.
Ron
On History here in Florida it on 2nite from 10 to 11PM[:)]
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Originally posted by CShaveRR
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Great program - some interesting historical footage. Might have been rather boring for anyone who doesn’t care for diving and stuff.
I’ve been out in my 14’ sailboat in 3-4 foot stuff - fun when you’re in control, but not if things go sour (although I’ve always kept it upright), and on a 440 footer in 10-12 foot swell. I can only imagine what they were encountering, and in the dark besides. Then to have the RR cars coming loose…
Anyone who thinks the Great Lakes aren’t inland seas (with all that implies) is in for a huge surprise.
Great show - I particularly liked the scenes from the museum ship and the remaining auto-truck car ferry that illustrated the problems.
dd
I can’t believe I missed it. [|(] [|(] [|(] I forgot all about it and sat with my wife watching stupid “Medium” which I loathe. When are they going to air it again (because History Channel always does)?
Ron
I was glad to see the show, but, like those Gee-whiz programs about the big new locomotives, things were either dumbed down or glossed over.
(Incidentally, one of the most credible-sounding people on the shows, Art Chavez, writes regularly about the ferries for the Pere Marquette Historical Society’s publications.)
I didn’t especially apprecieate the “150-ton” figure tossed off as the weight of a typical freight car–that’s more than the 286K that is causing problems on a lot of today’s railroads. Later in the show a 70-ton figure was mentioned for the car that went overboard–more realistic, but possibly still too high. (I’d heard about documentation of the cars on board back when I still lived in Grand Haven–they could have given a precise weight for that car…well, maybe they did!).
Questions: how did one car become uncoupled from the rest and go overboard? That wasn’t really addressed. Could they have attempted to lighten the load intentionally?
Also, they mentioned holding the cars with air, and jacking them to get some of the weight off the trucks. The times I saw ferries loaded, they both jacked the cars and tied them down. I can’t believe that they would depend on air alone to hold them in place, either–that’s a violation of one of the rules we have drummed into us at least once a week–there should have been at least a couple of handbrakes for each of those four tracks in the hold. Of course, this could be a “that was then, this is now” situation.
Another one of those possible “that was then, this is now” situations is the gate I’ve seen strung across the rear of the train deck, inside the sea gate, made up mostly of cables to restrain the cars in the event something should come loose. I suspect that this is primarily to protect the sea gate.
The Great Lakes are capable of producing monster waves that have broken and sunk ships much larger than the Milwaukee was. It probably shouldn’t have sailed that day.
Interesting show but I agree they raise more questions than they answer. Sometimes I think these shows are more about getting paid for wreck diving. The one on the Edmund Fitzgerald came up with nothing new.
It occured to me that if it went down stern first, the cars could have broken loose and crashed the gate during the sinking. If they were fully loaded, they would hit bottom before the ferry which would be slowed somewhat by trapped air. As you’ve been on one of these, how critical was side to side loading? If some cars on the starboard side went overboard, either on purpose or by accident, wouldn’t the ferry be more likely to roll over to port? The way the boilers were shut down suggests they knew they were in trouble and had a reasonable amount of time, as did the pursers message.
The loads do have to be balanced somewhat from side to side–this is far more important in the loading and unloading than it is in the actual sailing. I doubt that one load off any track would make that much of a difference.
I still have doubts about one car “coming loose” from other cars on the same track. In those days, the pins on most, if not all, couplers, required actual lifting, which was (and still is) a little harder to do than the under-coupler uncoupling employed on freight cars today. Still, stranger things have happened.