Chapter 55

We still had to fly the route from Pentwater to Detroit ... twice. 16.6 fathoms is 100 feet and six fathoms is 35 feet. The biggest Lake freighters draw 30 feet because of the size of the Soo Locks. Flying the magnetometer at the 100 foot and 35 feet lines should expose any anomalies ... most of the general area of the lake bottom is high in iron concentrates scrapped up and dumped by the Laurentide Ice Sheet as it retreated. With a range of over 700 miles and a target distance of 650 miles we should be able to fly around the Straits and down to Detroit without having to refuel. Should is the operative word here.

"We'll get around to it," Grace told the USGS headman. "We're just a little sick of flying"

"It seems all we've done this summer is eat, fly and sleep ... it's gotten old." I was agreeing with Grace.

He wasn't saying anything ... just looking.

I couldn't stand it, "What?"

"The department ... all of us ... well, we're amazed and gratified that you went this long without telling us to fuck off. And the results ... if they weren't top secret ... well ... need to know and you don't."

"You're not going to tell us?"

"Nope. But you're getting quite a bonus for the lower lake survey. I can tell you that there's a whole hell of a lot more aircraft than were reported lost. War propaganda. There's so much still covered by the War Powers Act. Even your survey won't be released until 2005." He sighed, "The coastal surveys are extremely important to commerce and those will be released in chart form as soon as they can be printed."

"We're going to Detroit tomorrow and flying back Friday. We'll see you then."

Having finished the lower lake flying, our new coordinating airfield was Ludington. We thanked everyone at Meigs and flew the hundred foot line, by the official charts, from Chicago to Ludington. The weather was perfect and we could see bottom for a major portion of the flight. The effluent from the industrialized areas was disgusting but there were miles of pristine waters.

There have been somewhere between 6000 and 25000 ships lost on the lakes, October through the end of November is the worst of the storms but don't think the rest of the time was all pearly white sand and mild weather. Holland Michigan, sometime in July and the year somewhere between 1970 and 1980 my second life remembers falling asleep on the beach in well over 80 degree calm lovely weather and waking up two hours later to 40 degrees and 60 mile an hour winds. That fast, the weather went from wonderful to all fucked up in two hours. I was washing imbedded sand out of my skin for days. My girlfriend said I felt like sandpaper.

Many of the ships were never found, so the exact number of shipwrecks in the Lakes is unknown; the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum approximates 6,000 ships and 30,000 lives lost, while historian and mariner Mark Thompson has estimated that the total number of wrecks is likely more than 25,000. In the period between 1816, when the Invincible was lost, to the sinking of the Fitzgerald in 1975, the Whitefish point area of Lake Superior alone has claimed at least 240 ships.(Wiki) What with the steel mills at Gary indiana, the lower lake has its fair share of hulks.

"Blown ashore, dragged anchors and run ashore, fire in the engine room and run ashore, rammed in heavy for and run ashore to save the crew, capsized and drifted ashore, foundered in plain sight near Milwaukee ... drifted ashore off Grand Haven" Grace and I were looking for the hazards to navigation.

Ludington, Manistee, and Portage. Outside of Portage, we called: