It was ten years ago that KBJR-TV news reporter Julie Pierce made her famous slip-of-the-tongue while referring to the 1,000-foot motor vessel Walter J. McCarthy Jr. The video clip above, viewed more than 200,000 times in the past decade, also shows KBJR misspelling “McCarthy” on its graphic; so it goes.
The lake freighter had struck a submerged object while pulling into a slip at Hallett Dock No. 8 in Superior. The engine room flooded and the ship’s stern settled to the harbor’s shallow bottom.
Cold weather slowed efforts to “plug the hole” in the laker’s hull, resulting in another humorous phrasing by local media. Check out the Duluth News Tribune headline below, captured from a 2008 internet screenshot by an alert Perfect Duluth Day reader.
