OK. I want to play too!
The fires were triggered by a meteor strike or low air burst....
;’) Hey, good idea... could have been a train of crud passing by the Earth, but that doesn’t seem likely. :’D
Cheap thrill for a second (while I was editing together the GGG Digest), but the dates don’t match. :’)
Explorers find 1780 British warship in Lake Ontario
Associated Press | Jun 13, 2008 | William Kates
Posted on 06/13/2008 4:20:50 PM PDT by decimon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2030843/posts
...the HMS Ontario, which was lost with barely a trace and as many as 130 people on board during a gale in 1780... Shipwreck enthusiasts Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville used side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible to locate the HMS Ontario, which was lost with barely a trace and as many as 130 people aboard during a gale in 1780... The sloop was discovered resting partially on its side, with two masts extending more than 70 feet above the lake bottom. “Usually when ships go down in big storms, they get beat up quite a bit. They don’t sink nice and square. This went down in a huge storm, and it still managed to stay intact,” Scoville said. “There are even two windows that aren’t broken. Just going down, the pressure difference, can break the windows. It’s a beautiful ship.” ...The Ontario went down on Oct. 31, 1780, with a garrison of 60 British soldiers, a crew of about 40, mostly Canadians, and possibly about 30 American war prisoners. The warship had been launched only five months earlier and was used to ferry troops and supplies along upstate New York’s frontier. Although it was the biggest British ship on the Great Lakes at the time, it never saw battle, Smith said... Hatchway gratings, the binnacle, compasses and several hats and blankets drifted ashore the next day. A few days later the ship’s sails were found adrift in the lake. In 1781, six bodies from the Ontario were found near Wilson, N.Y. For the next two centuries, there were no other traces of the ship... There are an estimated 4,700 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, including about 500 on Lake Ontario.