HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ROY !

Today, to celebrate Roy's 62nd birthday, we went to Port Erie to the Maritime Museum. What a wonderful experience it was! We started out with Roy putting his face in a wooden cutout of Commodore Oliver Perry who defeated the British while sailing the US Brig Niagara in Lake Erie during the war of 1812.

We had a personal guided tour of the entire museum and our guide knew mountains of information about this apparently famous battle. In fact, we found out that Perry was the guy who immortalized the words, "We have met the enemy and they are ours". Here you can see a sample of the weapons of choice during that period.

Here our guide is explaining the finer points of the many steps necessary to load and fire a cannon. With a full crew of cannon operators, it took about 1 1/2 minutes to prepare and fire a single cannon.

I thought this particular display was interesting as it showed three dimensional figures representing sailors preparing the cannon for firing during the battle.

These photographs show the very large sails on display inside the museum.

This is the US Brig Niagara being made ready for winter on Lake Erie. The sails have been removed and much of the rigging has been put inside as winter is really hard on the ropes.

Even without the sails it is just beautiful!

This is a photograph sighting down one rail.

I can't begin to tell you the miles and miles of rope it takes to sail this.

After the tour we went in search of a nice place for coffee and cake. We found "Pufferbelly", a wonderful place decorated with vintage pieces of memorabilia related to fire departments and fire fighters. I must say they do know how to do chocolate! It was just a perfect way to celebrate Roy's birthday!