Final Years
The WSA then sold her to a private corporation for transporting bananas out of South America. In 1967, the ship suffered a broken crankshaft and was laid up for repair at Tampa, Florida. At that time, Eugene Kinney, McDonald's nephew and Zenith Corporation vice president who had grown up on the Mizpah and served as a naval officer in the South Pacific during World War II, learned of her plight and purchased her. Finding Mizpah's crankshaft irreparably damaged, however, Kinney scuttled her off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida, on 9 April 1968, along with another ship, the USS PC-1174, to serve as an artificial reef to prevent beach erosion.
Sitting in ninety-five feet of water with her hatches purposely removed to enhance her accessibility, Mizpah is now one of the chief attractions of an offshore scuba diver's area known as "The Mizpah Corridor".
Read more about this topic: USS Mizpah (PY-29)
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or years:
“So that the old joy, modest as cake, as wine and friendship
Will stay with us at the last, backed by the night
Whose ruse gave it our final meaning.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“[The election] ... was an event in which, so far as the personal side is concerned, the victory was to him who lost and the defeat to him who won. I can say that never in the last fifteen years have I had the peace of mind that I have since the election. I have almost a feeling of elation.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)