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November 258 Telescope Staging Saga The annals of lake history touch lightly upon the strange career of the BELIE STARLING. Her early departure from the lake scene has left her colorful story in obscurity. Little does she deserve this wanton neglect. For the BELIE STARLING dominated lake history in a grand manner, the like of which may never be seen again. At the end of her lake career, the BELLE STARLING was already one of the oldest boats afloat. The STARLING began life as a runaway glacier. As such, she still holds the all-time Great Lakes record for mixed cargoes: forty thousand tons of ore, limestone, sand and fossils. On her third trip down in the Second Ice Age, she overshot Buffalo and carved out the Erie Canal basin, coming ever so close to launching herself upon a salt water career. Indians tamed the STARLING and made her the largest dugout canoe in history. She was rigged as a quarantine, which is a four-masted birch-barkentine, just as a turpentine has only two masts. The STARLING was virtually unsinkable, and she carried the treacherous reefs along with her. But while legend magnifies other ships, the STARLING consistently shrank over the seasons as the hot summers melted her down. This explains why the ship registries over the years show such annoying discrepancies in listing her dimensions. The STARLING came into her own in the fur trade. Beaver swarmed aboard her at Duluth, to be bagged by resourceful Frenchmen when she slid into Montreal. When the beaver finally got wise, they put her out of this business by damming up the Niagara River for good. As the first cross-river ferry between Detroit and Windsor, the STARLING ran back and forth along a cable stretched between the two shores. For a short while she plied upriver to Sarnia after the GRIFFIN came through on its historic voyage and fouled its anchor in the cable. Skindivers recently found this cable-entwined anchor beyond Point Edward in Lake Huron where the GRIFFIN's men had hacked it off to free their ship. After this find, some historians concluded that at last the final resting place of the GRIFFIN1s bones should be near at hand, but this writing should clarify the matter. War came to the lakes, and the STARLING turned to sterner duties. Her fantail boasted of high poop deck cabins whose appeal to commodores was not unlike the tailfin rage of our time. Up forward, to