Tales from the old-timer Encyclopedia Britannica Dinosaurus?
About 10 years ago I made a great buy at a garage sale, an entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica, 12 volumes of the Micropedia and 29 volumes of the Macropedia, which had fewer entries but covered tremendous detail. A significant proportion of all of mankind’s scientific knowledge, history, the whole vast panorama of human achievements and disasters were contained in 12 volumes of the Micro books, about 1,000 pages each, and another 29,000 pages in the Macro books. This was a total of 41,000 pages of information, alphabetically arranged. The books were bound in beautiful leatherette. I got the whole set for $5, and the lady “threw in” a three volume set of Websters Third International Dictionary, the final arbiter for accuracy in meanings of words.
So now we shift to about three years ago when the US Coast Guard announced plans for creation of large firing exercise areas in the Great Lakes in anticipation of possible waterborne terrorist attacks on our lake ports or Great Lakes shipping. The firing zones were never created, as protests arose immediately. I thought that if the terrorists had boats of some kind, it would be better to head them off at the Welland Canal or as they made their way across New York State in the Erie Canal. Better yet, use aircraft to attack them, as we did to the Japanese Fleet in the Pacific War from 1941-45.
In connection with this Coast Guard preparation for sea battles with terrorists, I recalled the only naval battle that ever happened on the Great Lakes was the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812.
I grabbed Volume 7 of my trusty Micropedia, and found it: “Lake Erie, Battle of.” There was a five-inch entry, with considerable detail, and a picture of a painting by Thomas Birch in 1814, that reposes in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
A five-page summary from the internet contained size and tonnage of all ships involved, numbers of men killed or injured, commanders on both sides, exact data on their crew sizes, a summary far superior to that from my encyclopedia.
I got an item in the mail recently from my son-in-law, Mike Martin, daughter Janie’s husband, a several page history of the Boscobel, the 151-foot varnished beauty of a steamboat that was the pride of Peshtigo Harbor in the early 1880’s. The Boscobel figured in one of my Old-Timer columns a year or so ago, and Mike found this on the internet. The Britannica is silent about the Boscobel, which was renamed the Ottawa, and had many adventures on the lakes. It was built by the Miller Bros. in Chicago and launched May 5, 1881. At the time it was the largest towing tug ever built, and was the biggest and most powerful tug until its loss in 1909. It weighed 610.81 gross tons and 450.95 net tons. It was 151 feet long and 13.7 feet in depth of hold. Its 600 HP engine was built in Detroit by S. F. Hodge & Company. It was described as a long, rakish, piratical looking boat, with low-lying, open decks fore and aft. When its days with Peshtigo Lumber Company ended, it was bought in 1902 by James Thomas Reid of Reid Wrecking Company, who renamed it the Ottawa. Reid was described by author, Lachlen P. Morrison, as “an amiable pirate who would blarney you while robbing you blind on a wrecking job.” It finally sank in 1909 in Red Cliff Bay near Bayfield after being severely damaged by a fire aboard, and its hulk is still visible in the water there. The engine and valuable fittings were salvaged.
At the Wednesday, Nov. 11 Peshtigo School Board meeting, Media Specialist Jennie Polomis noted that encyclopedias are fast becoming obsolete, and the students have easy access to online information. Encyclopedias will no longer be purchased for the Elementary School Library, she said.
It’s the end of an era centuries long, we old folks will come to understand, but my trusty encyclopedia will still be at my fingertips as long as I live, and getting information “online” is too much for me. It’s a sad thing, in a way. I note programs at area libraries where staffers are trying to motivate kids to read books!
When we moved to Peshtigo in 1932, and lived with Grandma and Grandpa, Dad stayed in Kingsford for his job at the Ford Plant. He came to Grandma’s to see us every weekend, though, and always stopped at the Spies Library in Menominee and brought us a stack of books. I was only in second grade, but could read quite well, and my sister Avis was in fifth grade, and wild horses couldn’t have kept us from those books. Sister Donna was only 3, but she looked at the pictures.
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Yes
No
Undecided
