Okay, saw this on TV last night. The ship sunk in 1976. I wondered who did the lettering. They did a real good job cause it's still there. Posted by Susan Banasky (Member # 1164) on :
Obviously not water based paint....haha....sorry, couldn't resist!
Posted by bill riedel (Member # 607) on :
Check out the R, not very professional. Spacing need lots of work. Must have been One Shot to last so well, the old stuff with lead.
Posted by old paint (Member # 549) on :
it was built 1957, sunk in 75.that tells us it aint vinyl)))))) am sure it had been repainted since 1957. and buy the looks of the lettering it was not a sign painter that did it. so that eliminates 1 SHOT. maybe as most indutrial stuff get done............. they uses standard "stencil letters" for layout, some guy at the shipyard with a steady hand, filled in the letters with a marine paint.
Posted by Dale Feicke (Member # 767) on :
It's amazing at how well some of those old wrecks stay preserved in the lakes. Although some of them are very dirty and murky, some of them are quite clear.
I snorkeled, many years ago, in Lake Michigan near Traverse City; and the bay we were in had an old ferry boat that had sunk, some 25 years earlier. She was just lying there in 40 feet of water, clean as a pin.
In the ocean, it would have been completely overgrown, and the lettering probably would've been mis-spelled by now...... Posted by Preston McCall (Member # 351) on :
I saw a documentary on some military planes that had fallen into the Bermuda Triangle. The aluminum was deteriorating, but the lettering was still shimmering in the water current where the aluminum was gone. Amazing that the lettering held up better than the fuselage. I recall they were WW2 vintage planes. Probably One Shot?
Posted by James Donahue (Member # 3624) on :
I wouldn't be too quick to say it wasn't lettered by a pro. I don't know how it is in the boat industry, but in R.R. equipment, sometimes the guy who engineered the mechanical design insists on designing the lettering also. Very mechanical, no rules of letter construction; but hey they're the educated experts. Made a sign for a doctor like that one time. The sign layout was awful, and his landscaping was worse! Call it nephew art by 'degrees'. Degrees! Get It?? Ha ha ha, my jokes are so bad that if I don't laugh at them, nobody will. Oh well, Alicia's post made me go investigate the ship and wreck, probably read about it for an hour and a half. Interesting stuff, a number of credible sounding theories as to why the ship went down. It was traveling across the lake with another ship at the time. The other ship survived, and was asked by the (Coast Guard?) to turn around and look for the E.F.
Posted by Rusty Bradley (Member # 6938) on :
Oh no...not the Bermuda Triangle.
Posted by Don Hulsey (Member # 128) on :
I agree that it looks like the lettering was probably done by someone that worked on the ship, but I am not really surprised it has lasted so well. That ship has not seen sunlight for 40 years. Sunlight will do a lot more harm to paint than water.
Posted by Dave Sherby (Member # 698) on :
OP, how does that eliminate One Shot? I've seen it for sale in hardware stores and paint stores. Maybe that was part of the problem for taking the lead out. People were selling it to anybody so there's the possibility of lead paint on a baby's crib or on kids window sills.
Posted by James Donahue (Member # 3624) on :
I hope I didn't imply that there's much mystery surrounding the sinking. It was in a huge storm. The theories involve things like welds vs rivets, captain's negligence, bad hatch covers, etc. Everyone knows it was caused by the storm; but the final details are what's not agreed upon.
Posted by Kurt Gaber (Member # 256) on :
Very interesting topic Alicia... I'm from a small town on Lake Superior in the northern part of the state - Washburn, WI and our little town was very connected to this shipwreck. My childhood friend's father was on this ship when it went down in 1975. I was 10 and my buddy was 11. His mother was the secretary at the high school and this news really hit hard in our small community. There were 5 men of the 29 lost that were from our immediate area within an hour's drive. I did research papers about the wreck in high school and have read books about the shipwreck and just two years ago, we finally made it to the the shipwreck museum in northern Michigan. We saw actual items from the ship that floated ashore including life boats. Those images of the lettering... I wonder how old those were because those look like the photos they took when they sent down the ROV units in 1976 to verify the wreck. They dove again some 20-25 years later to recover the ships bell which is now on display at the shipwreck museum.
Posted by Dave Sherby (Member # 698) on :
Kurt. my uncle, a former doctor in Ashland, lives on the lake just around the corner from you. Their house is a couple hundred feet from the shoreline. It's not a steep hill but their house is definitely much higher than the lake, maybe as much as 30 feet. My Aunt said that during that storm, the waves were reaching their flagpole which was only about 30 feet from the house. They had never seen anything like it and they have lived there over 50 years.
Posted by Alicia B. Jennings (Member # 1272) on :
Hi Kurt, I saw footage, newly filmed footage on TV last week. I think it was storys on "How the Weather Changed History" Can't remember why the divers went down there to see the ship, but when they did, the very first thing I noticed was the ship's lettering still intact. The photo in this post was downloaded from a google search.
Posted by Dennis Kiernan (Member # 12202) on :
OP, when I was about 22 a guy hired me to paint a big decoration on the side of his lunch truck. I had no idea what sort of paint to use, so I went to the local paint store and they sold me a bunch of 1-Shot.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)