Hanging Out at the Wooden Boat Show in Biloxi
Spent the weekend covering the Wooden Boat Show in Biloxi.
Great stuff.
Besides the 1930s era 59-foot Zoric/Mystic shown in this weeks Warship Weds. Here are a few more.
Charles Penny of LaComb LA cutting a rug in his 1949 18-foot long Davis Power Runabout
The 48-foot terapin schooner Redwing, made by Allen Miller of Ocean Springs of Red Cedar.
The Bill Holland built 65-foot Biloxi schooner Glenn L Swetman, owned and operated by the Maritime Seafood Industry Museum since 1989.
The 1936 50-foot lugger Tamora. Now based in the Kiln Mississippi and owned by Robert and Gerri Gros, the Tamora was built by Wheeler Yachts in Brooklyn. The Wheeler Yacht Company was founded at the turn of the 19th century by Howard E. Wheeler, in Brooklyn NY. During WWI, like other yacht builders, the yard built sub chasers. When WWII came, the Brooklyn yard, which was at the foot of Cropsey Avenue, in Coney Island, was dedicated first to minesweepers and then to an astonishing series of 230 patrol craft for the Coast Guard. You can see the very similar patrolboat/cabin cruiser lines in this inter-war built yacht. Odds are she probably served in the USCGR during WWII but can not be verified.
Kel Tec KSG Shotguns
Kel-tec, the company who is best known for their inexpensive line of CCW carry handguns and utility carbines, has now entered the shotgun market in a big way. Instead of rehashing a 100-year old pump design, or making a break action, they went with something a little different, the Kel-Tec KSG. Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com
Can You Really GET your Inner Zombie
Normally I don’t parrot NPR, but this wasn’t bad…..
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/05/18/153025680/the-zombie-within Entitled the Zombie Within.
Death of a Monument
One of the last German still existing memorials in the Sedan area , erected 1915 on the grounds of the then german war cemetery, will most likely be demolished by order of the Sedan city councel. The back side has inscriptions of names from soldiers kia. The run down memorial is a threat to the public due to its condition. Currently there is an estimate available to secure the structure (18787 euro) the estimate for demolition is 11800 euro. Located at the Cimétiere Saint Charles in Sedan, it is rare because most German memorials erected in occupied France during WW1 were demolished at the end of the war. Despite the 1919 Versailles Treaty Article 225, obliging France to care and maintain for German War graves and cemeteries, this one, apparently, will not reach its 100th birthday.
Like this:
Mystery Ship off the Gulf Coast
It seems that 200-miles offshore their is a mystery ship that NOAA is investigating. http://news.discovery.com/history/shipwreck-gulf-120517.html
“Some of the more datable objects include what appears to be a type of ceramic plate that was popular between 1800 and 1830, and a wide variety of glass bottles. A rare ship’s stove on the site is one of only a handful of surviving examples in the world and the second one found on a shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico,” Irion said.
Now thats an amazing thing to find at 4,000 feet off the Mississippi coast….
Historic events in the Gulf of Mexico that may have been responsible for the sinking include the War of 1812, events leading to the Texas Revolution, and the Mexican-American War.
“We explored four shipwrecks during this expedition and I believe this wreck was by far the most interesting and historic,” said Frank Cantelas, a maritime archaeologist with NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research.
Looks like a great dive right? Well the problem is that its 4,000 feet down.
That’s a long hard way to hold your breath.
Like this:
Open Carry
Open carry, act of carrying a firearm openly and not concealed by a shirt, vest, or jacket has become a hot potato in the past few years. It must be stated that this is not waving arms in the air that can lead to charges or brandishing a weapon and public endangerment, this is holstered carry for handguns and slung carry for long arms. The main preaching point of the exercise is that ‘a right unexercised is a right lost’. This harkens back to the old days when it was legal and often expected for an adult male to carry a firearm in public for both community defense as well as personal protection. The nation’s first carrying of a concealed weapon laws in many areas come from this, as those who carried hidden firearms were seen as unseemly and downright impolite. Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com
Like this:
Warship Weds May 23
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steampunk navies of the 1866-1938 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
- Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, May 23
Here we have the yacht Mystic. Launched in 1936 and finished 1939 at Covacevich Shipyard in Back Bay Biloxi she is a classic of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The Covacevich Shipyard was founded in 1896 by J. D. (“Jacky Jack”) Covacevich, an immigrant from Croatia, and was later operated by his three sons, A. W. ( “Tony Jack”) , Oral and Neal. The shipyard stopped building new vessels in 1982 but continued in the repair business until it was destroyed by Katrina in 2005.
As built she was named the Zoric. She was a 59-foot, 39-ton diesel driven fishing yacht that carried its passengers and owners as a yacht running charters to the Chandelier Islands. She has a 18.4-foot beam and a shallow water draft of just four feet.
In 1941 the navy and then the Coast Guard acquired her for coastal patrol for U-boats and as an emergency inshore minesweeper (if needed) in the 8th Coast Guard District. Robert Scheina’s USCG Cutters and Craft of WWII list her as a Coast Guard Reserve list the vessel as pennant number 949 from March 1942 until presumably the end of the war. While information on the ship during this time is sketchy, odds are she carried a couple water cooled machine-guns, a few depth charges, and a 4-6 man crew while in the corsair navy.
By the late 1940s she was used by the Louisiana State Wildlife and Fisheries Commission until at least 1953. The fleet of conservation boats numbered just five vessels to patrol hundreds of miles of coastline, and Zoric was the largest. While a mullet marshal boat she was “manned by a licensed boat captain and a cook, the latter also acting as a deckhand. Each of these, of course, is a fully accredited law enforcement officer.”
By 1991 the Zoric, now dubbed the Mystic, was in disrepair in Ocean Springs Mississippi in the old World War Two-era USAAF Crash Boat harbor. She was bought by maritime conservationist Matthew Hinton in 2009 and after a three year restoration at the Gautier, Mississippi Pitalo Shipyard she is again on the water close to what her 1939 appearance was.
The current owner wants to do eco-tours, sunset cruises, family trips out to the barrier islands and offer kayak trips on the 76-year old beauty.
Like this:
Man, stranded in the desert, makes a motorcycle from his broken car
From Hackaday
While traveling through the desert somewhere in north west Africa in his Citroen 2CV , good old Emile is stopped, and told not to go any further due to some military conflicts in the area. Not wanting to actually listen to this advice, he decides to loop around, through the desert, to circumvent this roadblock.
After a while of treading off the beaten path, Emile manages to snap a swing arm on his vehicle, leaving him stranded.
He decided that the best course of action was to disassemble his vehicle and construct a motorcycle from the parts. This feat would be impressive on its own, but remember, he’s still in the desert and un-prepared. If we’re reading this correctly, he managed to drill holes by bending metal and sawing at it, then un-bending it to be flat again.
It takes him twelve days to construct this thing. There are more pictures on the site, you simply have to go look at it.
Now thats a survivor….
I think i have to add this one to my Man-Card
Old Warrior Sailing Away
The Mohawk is inching towards her final resting place. The battered old coast guard cutter that LSOZI covered as a Warship Wednesday entry is on her last legs.
With no more money to keep the elderly 70+ year old ship around, she is being sunk as a reef in the next few days. The nonprofit museum that owned her donated the Mohawk to Lee County because it couldn’t afford the $400,000 needed to overhaul it. The ship has not been dry-docked since 1984 and is in rough condition below the waterline.
A USCG honor guard from her great niece, the current 270′ WMEC USCGC Mohawk received her colors and are caring for them.
She was involved in 14 attacks against German U-Boats.
• Her crew rescued 293 survivors from the U.S. Army Transport Chatham on
Aug. 27, 1942, and 25 survivors from the British freighter Barberry on Nov. 22, 1942, both of which had been torpedoed by German submarines.
• Acting as a weather ship in the North Atlantic, she was the last vessel to radio Gen. Dwight Eisenhower the weather would be clear enough to launch the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.
The local media is giving her some attention but overall her sendoff is sad and lonely.
I guess we are all alone in the end.
