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Eastern Great lakes Lighthouses Ontario Erie & Huron by Roberts & Jones SoftCove
Eastern Great lakes Lighthouses Ontario, Erie and Huron by Bruce Roberts & Ray Jones
Soft Cover
88 pages
Copyright 1996
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION page 1
Chapter One LIGHTS OF THE GATEWAY LAKE Ontario page 5
Chapter Two LIGHTS OF THE WARRIOR LAKE Erie page 23
Chapter Three LIGHTS OF THE THUNDER LAKE Huron page 43
Chapter Four LIGHTS OF THE IMPERIAL COAST The Canadian Shores page 59
BIBLIOGRAPHY page 83
LIGHTHOUSES INDEX page 84
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON LIGHTHOUSES page 85
PHOTO INFORMATION page 87
Among the thousands of vessels that have been lost on the Great Lakes was the very first European-style trading ship to sail the lakes' wide, open waters. In 1679 the French explorer Sieur de La Salle and a party of fur traders built a fifty-ton sailing ship, pushing it off into Lake Erie from a rough-hewn shipyard near where the city of Buffalo, New York, now stands. This was no crude, overbuilt canoe. Christened the Griffin, it was more than sixty feet long and had five cannon arrayed below the deck. La Salle and his fellow adventurers intended to make themselves rich by filling the Griffin's holds with muskrat and beaver pelts gathered by French trappers.
The Griffin proved a worthy ship, weathering more than one fierce storm on the outbound leg of its maiden voyage to the far reaches of the Great Lakes. Eventually, La Salle disembarked to continue his explorations (and discover the upper Mississippi River). As he watched the Griffin sail away eastward, La Salle was confident that the ship and her treasured cargo of furs would safely reach their destination. But neither the Griffin nor her crew was ever heard from again. Probably, like so many other unlucky ships that came after, she was smashed by a sudden, sharp autumn gale. Some believe that her rotting ribs lie near the Mississagi Straits Lighthouse on Lake Huron. If the lighthouse had been there to guide the Griffin when it sailed into the straits more than 300 years ago, perhaps commercial shipping on the Great Lakes would not have gotten off to such an unfortunate and ominous beginning.
AMERICA'S INLAND SEAS
Ontario. Erie. Huron. Michigan. Superior. These are no ordinary lakes. First consider their size. A journey from Cleveland, Ohio, on the southern shore of Lake Erie, to Duluth, Minnesota, on the western reaches of Lake Superior, will cover more than 700 miles-and on this trip the traveler would not traverse the 307-mile length of Lake Michigan or the 193-mile length of Lake Ontario.
The lakes are so large that they are easily recognized from space. They have been seen and identified by astronauts standing on the moon.
Taken together, the Great Lakes comprise by far the largest body of freshwater on the planet. They form what is quite literally an inland freshwater sea. As such, they invite comparison to the Earth's other great seas: the Red, the Black, the Baltic, the North, the Caspian, the Aral (actually much smaller than Lake Superior), and others. But the most interesting and instructive comparison to be made is with the world's most famous sea, the Mediterranean.
Born in a desert, the Mediterranean was once an enormous, sandy basin with a mostly dry, sun-scorched floor. When Spain parted from the African continent several million years ago, the Atlantic poured through the Strait of Gibraltar, also known as the "Gates of Hercules," and turned the desert into a sea. The Mediterranean retains some of the qualities of a sunny desert even today. It evaporates more water than it receives from its rivers. Thus, should the movements of the continents ever close the strait, the Mediterranean would eventually dry up and become once more a parched basin. In contrast, if some geological upheaval were suddenly to reverse the flow of the St. Lawrence River (and the upper Mississippi), the watery abundance of the Great Lakes would inundate the entire Midwest.
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