Our day of leisure in Duluth was coming to an end for my wife, two young daughters and myself. We had been to the OMNIMAX to see "Special Effects", we toured the "William Irvin" with Captain Bob, we walked "The Lakewalk" and we dodged showers, once sharing space with two of the carriage horses and their drivers under the bridge by the Endion Station tourist office.
If you find this tale lacking, be advised that I seem to be easily entertained by both minutiae and happenstance and am impressed by that which others are either unaware of or bored by. :-)
The Kinsman Independent had left port with a load of wheat just moments before we crossed over the lift bridge. We had been shipwatching that afternoon, and a dredge had been working close by the lighthouse area. We wanted to check out the section of beach where the siphoned sand was being deposited via a large flexible pipe. The crowds near the Canal Park Marine Museum were probably mostly unappreciative of this important procedure. Of course, I had the advantage of using binoculars to identify and inspect the distant apparatus. As we crossed, I saw another ship was leaving, so I pulled over on the Park point side so we could watch the Atlantic Trader leave port. Another of the rain showers that had been moving thru all afternoon, was just advancing over the top of the cliff to the northeast and engulfing that part of town in a wall of water. Just as the Atlantic Trader's bow started under the lift bridge, the first drops began to fall on us. We abandoned our ship watching and ran for the van, our spirits only slightly dampened as the heaviest of the rain decided to hold off a few more minutes.
Although the line of cars heading north (waiting for the bridge to return to traffic mode) was quite long, our route to the beach was free and clear.
The work of the dredge was immediately obvious, as the beach area had expanded greatly since the last that I saw it. My awareness of the gushing slurry of sand and water emerging from the pipe was immediately distracted by a multitude of other events that occurred rather simultaneously.
I observed, in the space of but a few seconds, that the Atlantic Trader was just clearing the end of the piers at the canal, passing close by the busily operating dredge, and heading for open water. As my gaze shifted a few degrees to the right, I saw that the wall of water (which had retreated slightly from us for the moment) had hidden the north end of Duluth behind it's dark veil and was extending out over the lake reaching nearly to the Kinsman Independent which had been underway some ten minutes and had put but a few miles behind her. The three remaining salties that were anchored offshore all day (to escape harbor fees?) were realigning themselves, swinging their bows into the changing wind. As my eyes tried to take in as much of this activity as possible there was the flash of lighting over the lake directly above the K.I.
Although I was not looking directly at the ship at that precise moment, I would swear that she had been hit by the bolt. The ship was at a distance where I could easily cover its image with the tip of my thumb, and partly obscured by precipitation from the leading edge of the storm. Did she get a direct hit? Would there be any damage if it did? I will probably never know, but I hope all's well. I don't think I have ever considered the odds of lightning damage occurring to man or ship, though I am well aware of the dangers to smaller water craft.
Soon, the Kinsman Independent disappeared from view, and I watched a few minutes more as the Atlantic Trader merged with the concealing precipitation that was making its way inexorably towards our position on shore. The rain began again in earnest before we had made it back over the bridge to begin our journey home.