Chris Winters shares his photo of the steamers WILFRED SYKES and CHARLES M. BEEGHLY as they take a last load of iron ore from the Canadian National pellet terminal at Escanaba, Michigan, January 2005. The pusher tug OLIVE L. MOORE is laid up in the foreground.
The WILFRED SYKES was built in 1949 at Lorain, Ohio, by the American Ship Building Co. for the Inland Steel Co. Her namesake was the President of Inland Steel. She is currently owned by Central Marine Logistics.
The CHARLES M. BEEGHLY was built in 1959 by the American Ship Building Company at Toledo as the SHENANGO II and renamed the CHARLES M. BEEGHLY in 1967. In 2010 she was renamed the HON. JAMES L. OBERSTAR honoring the former congressman of Minnesota. She is currently owned by the Interlake Steamship Co.
The tug OLIVE L. MOORE was built in 1928 at Manitowoc by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. as the JOHN F. CUSHING. She was renamed JAMES E. SKELLY in 1965 and OLIVE L. MOORE in 1966. She currently is owned by for Grand River Navigation.
February’s WMHS Book Club pick, The Curse of the Somers: The Secret History Behind the U.S. Navy’s Most Infamous Mutiny, draws from a rich historical record and the investigation of a ship’s sunken remains.
Author James Delgado focuses on the “greatest controversy” in the history of the U.S. Navy when the son of the Secretary of War had seemingly plotted a mutiny that would have turned the U.S. brig Somers into a pirate ship.
Members of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society interested in joining the Book Club and receiving information on book discounts may contact the Society at
wmhs@wmhs.org. The club holds Zoom meetings on the third Wednesday of the month.
Rose’s Ring: Inheritors pf Silence and Secrets by Monica Dougherty is the March election. The historical novel tells the story of a TV reporter who finds her story in the plight of Native Oneida people in Wisconsin, Joshua Glover, a runaway slave in Milwaukee, and the sinking in Lake Michigan of The Lady Elgin.
In this story, Jim Heinz takes you on a tour of Milwaukee’s well-known Forest Home Cemetery where many famous people now reside.
He touches on the lives of Edward Gifford Crosby who died on the TITANIC, Milwaukee shipbuilders Wolf and Davidson, Captain Frederick Pabst, Ben Froemming who built frigates, tug boats and cargo vessels for World War II, Edmund Fitzgerald whose vessel named after him ranks up at the top of recognition with the TITANIC, well known early local diver and inventor Max Nohl, Nels Peterson of the Life Saving Service involved in an 1873 local rescue, legendary North Point lighthouse keeper Georgia Green Stebbins and Jacob Wellauer who is a mystery. To join the tour, click here.
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