October 30, 2013
A fireboat built by the Canadian boat manufacturer MetalCraft Marine was placed into service at the Port of St. Louis in Missouri. This vessel, which is owned by the St. Louis Fire Department (STFD) and operated by that department’s marine division, was named after local sports hero Stan Musial (1920-2013).
The Pennsylvania-born Musial, whose nickname was “Stan the Man,” played as both an outfielder and first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals between 1941 and 1944 and again from 1946 to 1963. He achieved renown as one of the most formidable and consistent hitters in baseball history. Musial was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969 in what was his first year of eligibility for that honor. He died at his home in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue just a little over nine months before the STLFD marine division started using the fireboat that bears his name.
Measuring 44 feet (13 meters) in length, the fireboat Stan Musial can pump as much as 7,000 gallons (2,600 liters) per minute from her water cannon and travel up to 38 knots (44 miles or 70 kilometers) per hour. The Mississippi River port where she is based is one of the busiest inland water ports in the United States. (The accompanying photo of the fireboat on the Mississippi River was taken in 2016.)
Photo Credit: LewisT34 (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)
For more information on the fireboat Stan Musial, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Musial_(fireboat)
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