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June 2023 Newsletter
Spotlight: Wisconsin Representative Mike Gallagher
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Rep. Mike Gallagher’s selection as Chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party has global significance. What is less obvious but still highly important is the almost direct connection to Northeastern Wisconsin.
Congratulations are in order for Rep. Gallagher (R-WI). Even in the highly polarized world of Washington, D.C., the selection of the four-term representative has been highly praised. Rep. Gallagher is known as a serious, thoughtful legislator with a particular expertise in a military threat that ranks as one of the greatest facing our nation today.
Among the many threats posed by China that Chairman Gallagher will likely address is one with particular relevance to Northeastern Wisconsin — China’s well-documented maritime ambitions. While expanding its Navy is paramount, China’s strategy includes a massive effort to buy and expand commercial maritime assets around the world. China is buying up ports and terminals around the world and offering massive subsidies to its shipping companies and shipyards.
One remedy to China’s maritime ambitions with a direct tie to Northeastern Wisconsin is the Jones Act, the law requiring cargo transported between two points in the United States to move on American vessels. Those vessels must be U.S. crewed, owned, and built. Among those American vessels are the many ships built and maintained at Bay Shipbuilding in Sturgeon Bay, WI and other shipyards in the region. In fact, Northeastern Wisconsin represents one of the largest domestic shipbuilding clusters in the entire United States.
Numerous experts have pointed to the Jones Act as a bulwark against China’s maritime ambitions. Recently, Robert O’Brien, the National Security Advisor from 2019-2021, in an article titled “A Wakeup Call From China: What Congress Must Do Now,” wrote that “…for over 100 years, the Jones Act has given us a framework for sustaining our shipbuilding posture and it must not be abandoned now.” George Landrith, the President of Frontiers of Freedom, asked a more blunt question: “Who in their right mind would want to allow Chinese built, crewed and flagged ships to sail up and down the more than 20,000 miles of inland waterways?”
Of course, those inland waterways include much of the western side of Wisconsin, where the Mississippi River flows. And the same could be said about Great Lakes shipping – who would want Chinese ships replacing American ships on Lake Michigan?
O’Brien and Landrith are only the beginning. Former Cong. Ernest Istook, once the Chairman of the House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, has authored the treatise “The Jones Act Blocks China’s Plan for Global Domination.” The Navy League of the United States report on this subject is titled, “China’s Use of Maritime for Global Power Demands a Strong Commitment to American Maritime,” highlights challenges the U.S. faces in shipbuilding and the importance of the Jones Act stating, “America has been guided by the waterborne trades and the laws of maritime commerce since its founding. Shipbuilding and the generations of mariners in the shipping trades are pillars of our maritime and naval heritage. In that spirit, Americans have always gone to great lengths to protect the nation’s ports and sea lanes. Early on, American merchants abided by Navigation Acts fashioned by the English government to protect British Colonial interests. Today, American maritime law and the commercial maritime trades are informed by a set of laws, including the Jones Act.”
Wisconsin and the nation are fortunate to have Mike Gallagher working the issue of Chinese maritime aggression and goals for global domination of the sea. His strong leadership and support for the Jones Act will undoubtedly serve the best interests of American national security by strengthening our shipbuilding base, increasing the U.S.-flagged fleet of commercial vessels along with U.S. Navy combat ships.
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Photograph: Rep. Gallagher (R-WI)
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A Museum Beneath the Waves
By Russ Green, Superintendent of the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast NMS
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On August 16, 2021 NOAA designated the 962 square-mile Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary to conserve 36 historic shipwrecks with exceptional archaeological, recreational, and national significance. Co-managed by NOAA and the state of Wisconsin, the sanctuary expands on the state’s 30-year stewardship of these historic sites, bringing new opportunities for research, resource protection, education, and community engagement.
From permanent moorings at shipwrecks sites, to high-resolution lakebed mapping, to real-time wind and wave data buoys, the sanctuary seeks to facilitate recreation and deepen our understanding of Lake Michigan. In partnership with local communities, the sanctuary provides a national stage for promoting heritage tourism and recreation and safeguarding these resources for future generations.
For millennia humans have utilized the immense Great Lakes water highway. Sanctuary shipwrecks represent a cross-section of vessel types that played a central role in developing and expanding the U.S. between the 1830s and 1930s. The earliest vessels traded locally, creating essential economic and cultural links between Wisconsin’s developing lakeshore communities. Later, innovative sailing vessels and steel-hulled freighters transported America’s business and industry between the Midwest, eastern seaboard, and beyond. Passenger ships brought thousands of immigrants to Wisconsin, making possible the dramatic growth of the Midwest’s cities, industries, and farms.
Lake Michigan’s cold freshwater has preserved sanctuary shipwrecks as unique historical, archaeological, and recreational sites. These historic sites are a tangible connection to past generations whose tenacity and entrepreneurial spirit help build the nation. Twenty-one are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Research suggests that another 60 shipwrecks may lie undiscovered in the sanctuary.
The Office of National Marine Sanctuaries serves as the trustee for a network of underwater parks encompassing more than 600,000 square miles of marine and Great Lakes waters from Washington state to the Florida Keys, and from Lake Huron to American Samoa. The network includes a system of 15 national marine sanctuaries and Papahānaumokuākea and Rose Atoll marine national monuments.
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Discover the Great Lakes’ Maritime Landscape at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum
By: Catherine Green, Executive Director WMM
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For those of us with a connection to the Great Lakes, it’s easy to forget many (maybe most!) people in the region don’t realize the importance of this waterway to the communities in which we live. It may seem obvious that economic hubs like Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Duluth could only take hold on the shores of a vast transportation highway smack dab in the middle of the country. Yet, for many, the Lakes seem like a barrier to movement, rather than a facilitator of trade, immigration, and well, life in the upper Midwest.
That is why the Wisconsin Maritime Museum’s mission is to, “connect all people with Wisconsin’s waterways, by engaging and educating the public about the Great Lakes, Wisconsin’s maritime history, Wisconsin’s WWII submarines, and USS Cobia.” We strive to create an understanding of the importance of our maritime landscape – historic vessels, waterfronts, shipwrecks, artifacts, and archives – to our lives today. We do this through storytelling, incorporating artifacts, photographs, documents, oral histories, and lived experiences into museum exhibits, programs, and a whole range of interpretive practices.
For example, to explore Wisconsin’s submarine building heritage, visitors first learn that Manitowoc was a center of shipbuilding and innovation for a hundred years before WWII. This prepared the shipyards and support industries in region to answer the call to build 28 Gato- and Balao-class submarines for the US war effort. In fact, innovations in every aspect of the building, launching, and delivering of these vessels (ahead of schedule and under budget) to the WWII Pacific fleet speak to the character and determination of the people and communities that took that experience and continued to apply into maritime trade throughout the 20th century to today.
Walking through the compartments of USS Cobia, the centerpiece of our collection, experiencing a simulated battle in our Below the Surface exhibit, researching original blueprints from the freshwater submarines in our archives, or watching divers descend to wreck of the USS Lagarto for the first time in a museum-sponsored expedition to this lost Manitowoc submarine, the connection is forged with visitors. This place, and these people were and are extraordinary. Our maritime landscape – the health of the Lakes, its industry, and its shipping is a story we all share and, with which we can all find connection.
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