They Sank The Mohawk

I have never quite managed to get  over my irritation at the Mohawk giveaway to Lee County to make room on the Truman waterfront in Key West for the new marina planned for the area where the old cutter was moored. The USCG Cuuter Mohawk was built before World War Two and served on North Atlantic convoys, a most dangerous profession. To have survived all that and end up sunk anyway seems dastardly to me. This time last year they did the foul deed:

Reader SingingTo JeffreysTune in Southwest Florida sent me a note from the News Press in Fort Myers on the subject so I did a little poking around on the Internet and came up with these rather sad pictures. 90 feet down, 30 miles off Sanibel Island...Its supposed to be a diving attraction in the style of the ship sunk south of Key West. Vandenberg Sinking though I can't imagine going thirty  miles to float around in those rather murky Gulf of Mexico waters...

I was quite fond of the Mohawk and its history. The ship was a superb museum and I enjoyed visiting it greatly. It pains me to think of all this now being nothing more than an aquarium USCG Mohawk.  They told us it wasnt worth $400,000  to refurbish the ship but the final irony is that the US Navy has reclaimed the waters off Truman Waterfront and the upscale marina planned for the seawall that housed the Mohawk cannot be converted into a Spottswood dream marina. All this carnage was for nothing.

The Evolving Truman Watefront

The Mohawk has gone, dragged off to an unhappy fate to be sunk off Samibel Island to make way for a fancy new marina and shopping center planned to occupy the waterfront.


The floating museum is no more, a survivor of World War Two, packed with memories and mementoes of a fascinating life afloat. The space behind the canon is where the Mohawk used to be.


Now it is just empty waterfront.


No doubt the old Navy Warehouse will be the next to go, plans for a farmers market and a tree filled lark have been swept aside in pursuit of a high end development.


The worst of all hazards is to be in the way of Progress.


The old launch that used to sit here, blocked up, has vanished.


I was glad to see quite a few people visiting the remaining floating museum, the Ingham, a rather newer Coastguard Cutter than the venerable Mohawk.


It was a ninety degree afternoon and I had nom clue where to stash my dog were I to take a leisurely tour of the ship.


So I contented myself with watching from afar.








Cheyenne seemed more impressed by the force of the sun,


...unlike the brave visitors on the ship.


She ducked into the shady grass for a rest.


I like the bright white sunlight of summer.


Even the parking lot was full


The common complaint is not many people come by here so they might as well build the expensive marina. It's time tom prove them wrong before the Ingham suffers the same ignominious fate of the Mohawk.



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USCGC Mohawk Dying By Degrees

It's still there the little old survivor of World War Two.


Not for long though, as this ship is to be sunk soon and very deliberately. And not a word about it on the Mohawk's website!


They needed four hundred thousand dollars to refurbish this survivor of Atlantic Convoys. But the Mohawk is an inconvenient ship.


The Mohawk is blocking development of this valuable waterfront which the locally influential Spottswood family wants to use to create an upscale marina with shops and offices.


The Mohawk and the marina combined would limit the waterfront space which needs to be kept open to allow US navy ships to maneuver in the basin which belongs to them. So bit by bit the Mohawk is being disassembled prior to being towed to Sanibel Island.


There the Mohawk will be sunk to encourage diving off Sanibel Island.


Key West will get a nice marina development funded by the city with profits for the Spottswoods and so it goes. Glorious gentrification.


They don't tell the truth either. "Closed for Sinking."


The same signs will go up around the exclusive marina no doubt.


There should be enough room for the other coastguard cutter on the seawall.


I have no doubt the Ingham would be sacrificed if it proved necessary for the marina development's future.


Meanwhile life, and sailing, goes on outside the Navy basin.


I saw an old yellow Lab struggling manfully to totter along despite the failing hind legs.


Just like the Mohawk, except here not discarded when too old. Nor should the Mohawk be discarded. Bastards.




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