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:
“Child with continuing cling issued his No in final fire,
Kissed back the colored maid,
Not wise enough to freeze or be afraid.
Conscious of kindness, easy creature bond.
Love had been handy and rapid to respond.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“And the immortal music of Chopin
Which we had been discovering for several months
Since we were fourteen years old. And coffee grounds,
And the wonder of hands, and the wonder of the day
When the child discovers her first dead hand.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)