A Queen Loses Her Stacks

Linda’s Monthly Monday Morning Moaning’s for September 1, 2025

Some months ago, I wrote about the SS United States, the liner often called ‘America’s Liner’, when she was towed from her berth at Pier 80 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Mobile, Alabama in February of 2025, where she had been waiting for 30 some years. I have followed this ship for many years, with the ships manifest, memorabilia and photographic images, because it was on this ship my parents and I immigrated to this country from Great Britain in the mid 1950’s. She was the ‘Queen of the American’ fleet of liners during her time between 1954 and 1969, until air flights took the place of ships moving people from continent to continent.

As she will become, the world’s largest artificial reef, the story of the ‘SSUS’ will be told to thousands of divers from around the world as they explore her unique design and features. She will also benefit the surrounding ecosystem and become home to countless marine species that will thrive from the presence of her structure. A land based museum will be built to teach the many students, and general public about William Gibbs, an American Navel Architect and his creation. The winner of the Blue Riband, for the fastest transatlantic passenger crossing between Britain and the United States, she would continue to hold that title.

This article today is about the removal of the smoke stacks (funnels) that will be used as a part of the land based museum. For the present time the ship is docked in Mobile, Alabama. Her story will continue but in another form and in a different way.

Moving the last stack by barge.

The Queen without her iconic stacks.

Now she waits, her propeller, while having been removed and placed on her deck 30 years ago, will be stored along with her funnels. Her fuel tanks, are sterilized and anything harmful to marine life and the surrounding water is cleaned and made safe, she will then be moved out to sea, to become the world’s largest artificial reef.

Thank you to the SS United States Conservancy, for the updates and images and all they have done over these last many years, to find a new home and salvage her history for further study and enjoyment.

On that ‘wee note’ till next month, Monday, October 6, 2025.

Thank you for visiting and reading today. Please if you haven’t already, enter your email address in the subscription form below to receive my blog by email on the first Monday of each month.

Finding A Permanent Home

Linda’s Monthly Monday Morning Moaning’s for August 4, 2025

In 2020, my second book for Arcadia Publishing, ‘Macomb Township’ was published, culminating when finished, a very large learning experience for this author! Having moved to Macomb Township in 1980, at 21 Mile and Garfield Road, we built a house and along with my husband, we raised our two children, and lived there till 2007. Having found out after my first book on ‘Washington Township’ when I naively thought that EVERYONE wants a book about the area they lived in, I found that usually we have to get a bit older, before we really appreciate where we came from, and I was also, a perfect example of that mind set. It wasn’t until I had moved away and started the Macomb book, that I finally got to ‘learn’ about the township/area I had lived in for twenty-seven years! I had watched all the changes but never realized the significance of those changes.

While replenishing my Macomb books at the tax department at the township hall, where they have graciously offered to allow these books to be purchased, I sort of ran into a long time ‘friend’ once again. The ‘original’ township hall.

The original hall was built in 1919 for $1,600, and rested at 19925 23 Mile Road, it would serve the community until a ‘new township hall’ was built in the same location behind the original building in 1974. This was the township hall that we would use to pay the taxes, etc. The original hall, shown above was sold to a farmer/nursery on Romeo Plank Road just north of 23 Mile Road, and used as a shed for machinery for the next almost forty some years.

‘Old Township Hall’ with the “New Hall’ behind it

While the township would eventually purchase the Wade Nursery property, the ‘old township hall’ was again part of the Macomb Township, on property that was slated for a park area. Renovations took place, with the vision of a learning center for the hall that resembled so much of a late century school house. The township was kind enough to allow the use of the newly renovated ‘township hall’ to host the book launch of the book that was bringing the history in vintage images to life in the middle of covid, safely, with masks, no less! Before long this property was again sold, and the hall was once again moved, this time to it’s permanent home in the expanded township complex on Broughton Road off of 25 Mile Road, along with the recreation center, library and newest township hall.

The 1919 era Macomb Township original Hall T it’s new home.

On this ‘wee note’ till next month Monday September 1, 2025.

Thank you for visiting and reading today. Please if you haven’t already, enter your email address in the subscription form below to receive my blog by email on the first Monday of each month.

‘Lighthouses of the Southern Atlantic and Gulf States’

Linda’s Monthly Monday Morning Moaning’s for July 7, 2025

I have been very fortunate to have had six previous local history books published by Arcadia Publishing since 2019, and nothing compares to the feeling when the first package of finished books are delivered to my door. All the work, research, time, love, and aggravation in bringing this ‘new baby’ to life, Arcadia will then compensates you by giving you the first five copies that are printed, and don’t mistake my thoughts, this is what you wait for!

Working on these books, takes about 6 to 8 months of my time, when all your time is focused on getting the written work on the page and for me with the lighthouse books, making sure the right lighthouse goes with the correct postcard. And getting the written material correct! Then you wait for roughly 6 months, for Arcadia to go through your written work and give you a copy of a rough draft of what your book will look like. You then go through their draft, answer their questions as to why you might have done, such and such. You look for corrections and no matter how diligent you are in looking for mistakes, there is always some silly ones that need attention. After you have completed that portion, it is sent back to the publisher for another review, and when that is completed you are sent your last correct manuscript, and now it has to be as corrected as it is going to be, because it’s now going to print.

The publication date for ‘Lighthouses of the Southern Atlantic and Gulf States’ is the 29th of July. This is the last of the four lighthouse books I decided to bring to light. It covers as many lighthouses in vintage postcards for the different parts of the United States as has been possible to gather. The states covered in this book are Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and the Gulf States (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.)

The lighthouses on the Southern Atlantic coast are built and maintained with their sandy shores that create never ending continual erosion of the soil, and they have different difficulties, such as the years of the Civil War and the hurricanes than you would find on the Pacific coast lights with their high rocky cliffs and earthquakes. In Michigan, we have many pier lights in the water on the Great Lakes, as well as some on sandy beaches, where erosion also takes its toll. My hope is if you are able to get a chance to see with the different area books, how the landscape of the United States can change from coast to coast, and have an effect on the many lighthouses that have guarded the coastal waters in and around this country.

On this ‘wee note’ till next month Monday August 4, 2025.

Thank you for visiting and reading today. Please if you haven’t already, enter your email address in the subscription form below to receive my blog by email on the first Monday of each month.

Preserving a Legacy

Linda’s Monthly Monday Morning Moaning’s for June 2, 2025

Preserving a Legacy, The United States Lighthouse Society: For the past 40 years, the United States Lighthouse Society (USLHS) has been in the forefront of efforts to preserve this essential part of maritime heritage. The USLHS has built a comprehensive research library, both in the physical form and digital form. The library contains books, maps and documents that detail the history of lighthouses in America and around the world. The Society’s mission goes beyond simple restoration, but seeks to keep the stories of these remarkable structures alive, for future generations to understand the vital role that lighthouses played in the safety and development of coastal communities.

Part of the mission of the USLHS is to offer national grants specifically for lighthouse preservation. These grants have enabled the restoration of many lighthouses, many of which have been in danger of being lost forever.

Long before the invention of the compass or modern technologies, early seafarers went on voyages using the most primal of tools, the sun, stars, the wind and the sea tides. The North Star holds it position in the northern sky about the earths axis, in a fixed position. But even before the tools for sea faring voyages improved, navigation remained very dangerous. The sea was open to hidden reefs and shoals, the rocky coastlines, unpredictable weather, and treacherous currants. But because of these hazards to navigation, it is the reason lighthouses began to rise as the guardians of the coastlines.

Each lighthouse is positioned to warn mariners of these hazards, while also providing a point of reference that could mean the difference between life and death at sea. As the technology advanced the lighthouse evolved from simple bonfires to towering stone structures with powerful Fresnel lens, that had the ability to project their light across miles of open water. They would always be a symbol of hope to the seafaring mariners.

So why do lighthouses continue to capture the heart and minds of people all around the world? They are symbols of solitude and community, standing along on rocky cliffs or the sandy shores, yet always offering a guiding light for those in need. Through their work, the USLHS, whether through research, restoration or education, it ensures that the legacy of lighthouses remains an essential part of our nation history.

I want to give thanks and my great appreciation to the people at ‘The United States Lighthouse Society’, their 40th Anniversary edition of ‘The keepers Log’, Number Four, 2024, for the information as written here today. When ever visiting a lighthouse, and if from Michigan you can’t go very far in any direction with out running into one of them, in your thoughts, and remember this group when every you see a lighthouse still standing.

On this wee note, till next month Monday July 7, 2025.

Thank you for visiting and reading today. Please if you haven’t already, enter your email address in the subscription form below to receive my blog by email on the first Monday of each month.

A Michigan Mystery

Linda’s Monthly Monday Morning Moaning’s for May 5th, 2025

With my long love of history, I am always looking for that next great read and hopefully with some sort of an mystery attached. A few years ago I came across just the book I was looking for.

Northwest Orient Airlines, Flight 2501 was a DC-4 with operating service between New York City and Seattle, Washington, when it disappeared during the night of June 23, 1950. Flying from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and from there a new crew would take over and complete the flight to Spokane and Seattle. This flight had 55 passengers and 3 crew members that night. When the flight passed Battle Creek in Michigan at 11:51p.m. it was approaching the edge of a squall line, heading straight for Lake Michigan and sitting in the path the plane was heading for.

Northwest Airlines DC-4

When flight controllers last heard from the crew, at 12:13 a.m. near Benton Harbor, the crew had been asking for clearance to descend from 3,500 feet to 2,500 feet, because of a severe electrical storm, but request was denied due to what was thought, at the time to have been other air traffic at a lower altitude, in the vicinity. At 12:15 a.m. the Captain acknowledge the denial and signed out. Flight 2501 was never heard from again.

Some of the people lost that night

The day had been hot, and the evening brought little respite from the heat, and many lakefront residents were out near the lake taking in the breeze to cool off before bed, when at 12:20 a.m. an airplane could be heard over head, soon an unusual flash was seen several miles off shore. They did not realize they had witnessed what at the time would be the worst aviation accident in the country till that ime. When the flight did not arrive in Milwaukee, the Coast Guard was alerted and the search and rescue operation was begun.

Over the next days the US Coast Guard recovered fragments of the airplane, its cargo, and passengers. Area beaches were closed to spare people from encountering any remains not already recovered. After five days all recovery was stopped.

Members of the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association (MSRA), on the 53rd anniversary of the accident wrote a commemorative article on the subject of the flight and the piece was brought to the attention of Clive Cussler, and adventurer novelist, who has in the past used his book royalty’s to finance searches of sunken ships. A joint venture was proposed to see if wreckage from the down plane could still be found. By the end of 2013, 10 expeditions had been launched and 600 square miles were covered, with no sign of the wreckage, although not discouraged Clive Cussler believed that “A wreck will not be found until it wants to be found”. Over the passed few years, further side scan sonar attempts have been made when leads are discovered. Remains have been buried in Riverview Cemetery in St Joseph, Michigan and Lakeview Cemetery in South Haven, Michigan.

Valerie van Heest, is MSRA co-director and author of the book, shown above, ‘Fatal Crossing’, this is truly one of the most well written and interesting books I have read, and I can’t suggest it enough, if you like a good strong story that will hold your interest till the end. The book weaves a captivating portrait of the victims, and vividly recreates the last few hours of Flight 2501, such as after the dinner meal was served, the flight attendant passed out two cigarettes to each of the passengers that cared to have a smoke. This is a very deep dive into the past. I have written here but a very small taste of what this book is all about, I hope it will peak some interest in others, to see if my praise is correctly written about this very interesting book.

Thank you, with great appreciation to V.O. van Heest at http://www.in-depteditions.com published 2013, and ‘Lost Over Lake Michigan’ by V.O. van Heest for May-June 2014 edition of Michigan History Magazine.

On that ‘wee note’ till next month, Monday June 2nd, 2025.

Thank you for visiting and reading today. Please if you haven’t already, enter your email address in the subscription form below to receive my blog by email on the first Monday of each month.