Free Republic

The USS Conestoga left the Navy yard at Mare Island, Calif., on Good Friday, 1921, bound for Pearl Harbor, with a complement of 56 sailors. It cleared the Golden Gate at 3:25 p.m. and steamed into the Gulf of the Farallones in heavy seas. Conestoga was a rugged oceangoing tug that had once hauled coal barges for a Pennsylvania railroad. But 17 years after its launch in Baltimore, it had undergone hard use and had a reputation as a “wet boat,” one that shipped water easily. At 4 p.m. that day, as the San Francisco light ship recorded big waves...

I thought you would be interested in the following message. =============================================== Dear Friend: Protecting our oceans makes good economic and environmentalsense.  Our oceans not only provide food and recreation butalso help to regulate our water quality and climate.  Someareas of our ocean are particularly vital, supporting anabundance of fish and marine mammals.  One of these areas isfound just off the coast of Mendocino, Sonoma, Marin, and SanFrancisco counties. I recently joined Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey at a pressconference to highlight our legislation to provide greaterprotection to a larger portion of California’s coast.  Her billin the House, and mine in the Senate,...