Boatnerd Discussion Forum

No, there were no deaths or injuries. My dad ordered everyone forward to go back aft, with the exception of the Mate on watch and the wheelsman. He did say on impact that they braced themselves in the pilothouse and got "thrown" around a bit. 10 weeks earlier, I was onboard for most of the summer and the stateroom where I slept was demolished.

Were there any casaulties in that collision? Looks like anywhere around the bow would have been a very bad place to be in that crunch.

suLeo,

1964 is correct. My dad was the skipper on her when it happened.

Mike

The correct date is 1964. After the collision, the Cole was laid up at Lorain. We laid the James A. Farrell up near her in December at the US Steel plant up the Black River. She was eventually repaired at the American Shipbuilding facility.

In today's news photos, there are some interesting pictures of the Thomas F. Cole after a collision with a saltie. I was curious what the fate of her was since she looks like a early 1900's 600' freighter and I wondered if she would've been repaired after that amount of damage at that age, or just scrapped.

So I entered her name into the Bowling Green database (Looks like she was repaired and sailed until the recession that ended the career of so many ships in the early 80s), and they had her collision down as 1964 (Which sounds more correct to me, I have trouble picturing them having done the repair work during the 1000' era of the 70s to a ~70 year old hull).

So I was curious which date was correct.

Thanks
-Leo