The Marigold, Red Cliff, the drowning dream, the black and white photo of the four officers…who was that man? As a good friend once said, “these coincidences is comin’ mighty fast.” I knew these were all connected, but still had no idea who that man in the photo was with the determined stare. Incredibly strong feelings convinced me that I knew him like a brother, worked with him, but wasn’t him…yet I continued to have the drowning dream. I wasn’t watching someone drown, it was me sinking. Something wasn’t adding up.
 
It was 2000, memorable by so many for being the year we all survived Y2K. I knew it as the year devoured by that ship. As the events stacked up my interest level became a relentlessness obsession, a firestorm of strange luck.
 
Reading what “The ‘Unholy’ Apostles” noted about the Marigold had triggered the fixation. I became a manic, researching any possible scrap about the ship and explosion. My investigating skills were almost average before the insanity struck, but quickly developed laser precision. I chased after every conceivable source, flooding museums and libraries with letters requesting information. I attacked newspapers for old editions, knowing that the explosion would’ve been big news at the time. I even ransacked the US Coast Guard archives. The Internet wasn’t safe either and I networked across it for any hint of information someone might have.
 
Responses were slow in the beginning, but once my requests were fulfilled, picked up to a blinding pace. I received photocopied packets of ship histories and occasional crew photos. There were cargo manifests, engineering plans, log entries, WWII commendations, the federal decommissioning telegram, crew lists. Nothing was duplicated and I quickly amassed a significant gathering of data. They were similar in scope, but differed in detail.
 
One afternoon an envelope from the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Public Library arrived. Within was a collection of photocopied pages. One such paper held the city’s newspaper account of the explosion. The photos displayed a man standing next to an acetylene tank that came up to his chest. Another showed the Marigold at sea, the captain’s photo was inset in a corner. Yet another picture was of a white, wooden rowboat along side of the remains of a light buoy, the top half missing. I stopped at the rowboat…it looked like the one in my dreams.
 
The article read: “Three officers of the light tender Marigold…were killed Wednesday when an acetylene gas cartridge…exploded as it was being placed in the White bay light buoy off Bayfield, Wis. The buoy, with its top blown off…with a boat from the tender making fast a line so it could be lifted to the Marigold’s deck, Capt. A. Gustafson of the Marigold, who was called from the buoy a moment before the explosion…The blast killed Louis DeVrendt, first officer; John Sipniewski, second officer; and Rudolph Potestio, quartermaster.”
 
Names! I had names! I could hunt for information on them now! I was shocked at the brilliant luck. Just as shocking was to see the error. There was no such person as “Rudolph Potestio”. He never went by that name.