The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

NOV. DEC., 1971 Page 156 a trip with him. I was not at home, but my wife answered for me...I would! Borrowing a station wagon from Peter Sikemos, concession operator on the end of the Point, the Captain drove out to our home. When I re- turned I packed my camera, an extra sweater, a change of clothes, and was away. We returned the station wagon, boarded the power lifeboat that had been made fast and left in charge of Ginger, the captain's dog, then put off for the steamer. In the gather- ing dusk of the evening sky it loom- ed as a large indistinguishable bulk on the southern horizon. I had not previously met the captain. Over the hum of the motor, on the trip out, I discovered our mutual interest...not only is he a working lake captain, he is a ded- icated Great Lakes marine buff as well (and an INSTITUTE member of long duration). He had decided to provide me with a contemporary view of the mod- ern shipping scene from the eminence of his wheelhouse. Sometime soon, he said, he expected to be in Lorain, Ohio, where United States Steel Roger Blough, the 850 foot freighter is being fitted out. And over at Erie, Pennsylvania, Bethlehem Steel was readying the Stewart S. Cort, a thousand- footer. We stopped alongside a yellow drum buoy. "I put this here every year so I don't run aground on the Old Dummy", Captain Leonard explained. "Here.. We'1l put the lead line over." The depth was fourteen feet. He handed me the Line and: as oh. Ws cedeand dropped it I could feel the solid clink of the metal striking on the rocks in the old crib. (The Dummy Lighthouse was constructed in 1888 approximately two miles south and slightly west of the tip of Point Pelee. Its wooden superstructure built on the solid, stone -filled crib, which still remains, burned towards the end of the last cent - ury). The lead line was reeled in and again we headed for the steamer. I was sitting facing aft the better to carry on a conversation with Captain Leonard who was steering. "Well...here she is !" Suddenly he swung the lifeboat in an arc. We crossed the steamer's bow. She was at anchor straining backward on her chain in the wind. I had seen pictures of her. I had, like thousands of others, glanced casually at her bulk on the broad horizon, but nothing had prepared me for the sudden confrontation with this broad, squat, machinery- studded steam-belching monster from which torrents of water were pouring thunderously like twin waterfalls on each side of a watershed. This was my first closeup of the steamer Charles Dick...occupation: sand- sucker. A hand signal from the captain brought a sudden cessation of the cataract pouring over her starboard side and we pulled alongside a ladder lashed to the ship's rail. slinging my duffle bag around my neck I climbed aboard and was dir- ected aft to a companionway leading to the main deck. Six crew members materialized, fastened block and tackle to the lifeboat and, hoisting it into the davits, made it secure. "Our guest cabin is being painted '...1'11 put you in my stateroom, and Itt sleep im one of the crew s bunks when they are on watch," ex - plained the captain. "Come on up forward." He turned and casually started forward along a catwalk st - retching the length of the well deck between the roof of the after cabins and the bridge deck forward. The catwalk flooring was a succession of grids made of metal mesh suspended fifteen feet above the well deck. A steel cable offered protection as a hand rail on the outside. My progress, understandably, on this frist trip forward, was slight - ly slower than that of my host. To my right, below me, was the open lake; to my left, below me, were the cavernous hopper holds into which torrents of water were being direct - ed from overhead flumes. The pumps