The Wrangell Port Commission held its monthly meeting on Feb. 7 to hold a public workshop on the Mariners' Memorial. Members of the community have been working towards a memorial for Wrangell sailors lost at sea for almost two decades, according to the Mariners' Memorial group website. Some progress has been made towards the memorial, with the ground being broken at the proposed site last December. The workshop was called together to discuss the details of the memorial.
One of the details that was discussed heavily was who, exactly, should be eligible to be memorialized. It was pointed out in the meeting that there are a lot of people on the water in Southeast Alaska. There are fishermen, charter boat and tour guides, Navy and Coast Guard, recreational sailors, and even just explorers out on kayaks. It was also added that there are many people originally from Wrangell, who no longer live in the area, but still sail quite regularly.
"When you're on board the ship, you're part of the crew," Commission member John Martin said. Everybody's together. When you're on the water with the gillnet fleet and somebody's in trouble, everyone is together. I would hesitate to categorize this too much."
The question was raised of who the memorial was mainly for. A hypothetical example was given of a tourist in an unfortunate kayaking accident be given a plaque next to one of a fisherman lost at sea. It was agreed by the majority of those in attendance that the memorial should not categorize or exclude people unnecessarily, but there was still the question of how to list those lost at sea, and in what kind of order. There were several proposed methods of listing people. One idea raised was to list the names of those lost by the year they went missing. Another idea was to list people under the names of the ships they served on. A third idea was to have an individual wall of the memorial reserved for a specific type of mariner. For example, the central wall of the memorial would be reserved for fishermen, while the others were for charter boat operators or recreational sailors.
After some discussion, it was decided that everyone would try to make a list of people they would like to see named in the memorial. They will hold another workshop in the near future to begin narrowing down the lists and begin workshopping other details of the memorial.
"Start broad, then we can shave this down," Commission member John Yeager said.
After the workshop concluded, the Commission held a meeting. During this meeting, they discussed the ongoing renovations to Shoemaker Bay Harbor, the upcoming cruise ship season, and looking into the potential costs of retrofitting Heritage Harbor with a new water heating system. Another topic of discussion revolved around potentially increasing rates to cover the harbor department's costs for infrastructure. No decisions were made regarding this in the meeting, however. It was decided to organize a workshop and to meet with the borough assembly to discuss the possibility. More about the Mariners' Memorial can be found online at http://www.wrangellmarinersmemorial.com.
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