Speaker 1: This is our American stories. In nineteen thirteen, the Sixteenth
Speaker 1: Amendment was passed and Woodrow Wilson became president. But tragedy
Speaker 1: also struck the Great Lakes. Here's our own Monte Montgomery
Speaker 1: with more on that event.
Speaker 2: In sixteen seventy nine, the Great Lakes were changed forever
Speaker 2: for the first time as Lesals Griffin departed from Port,
Speaker 2: becoming the first ship to ever sail on the Great Lakes.
Speaker 2: And in eighteen forty one, the Lakes were yet again
Speaker 2: changed when the Vandalia set sail, the first propeller driven
Speaker 2: ship to do so. An industry took off, and by
Speaker 2: nineteen thirteen the Great Lakes had become a major and
Speaker 2: still developing transportation hub. Here's Rick Mixer of Lake Fury
Speaker 2: with more.
Speaker 3: That in nineteen thirteen, we're talking about a mix of
Speaker 3: different types of transportation on the lakes. The sail was
Speaker 3: still somewhat viable. Most of those old sailing vessels, the schooners,
Speaker 3: had been turned into barges and were being towed by
Speaker 3: the more efficient steamers that didn't have to wait for
Speaker 3: the winds to be correct. But there were no highways
Speaker 3: at that time, so everything had to be moved, especially
Speaker 3: these amazing commodities we have on the Great Lakes, coal,
Speaker 3: iron ore, grain, All of this stuff was moved in
Speaker 3: huge amounts, bulk amounts on these freighters and barges. There
Speaker 3: were literally thousands of ships on the Great Lakes, hundreds
Speaker 3: that were regularly being used, many that were also laid up.
Speaker 3: It would go by the flow of how much iron
Speaker 3: ore needed to be moved, or later in the season,
Speaker 3: as you got the grain cargoes coming in, the coal
Speaker 3: that had to be stocked up for the winter time,
Speaker 3: so you'd see more ships come out. And many of
Speaker 3: those ships weren't in perfect condition. They were whatever could float.
Speaker 3: They could get these cargoes in before the lakes froze
Speaker 3: up and then all that commerce stopped. There weren't a
Speaker 3: lot of safety regulations. I mean, the ultimate safety is
Speaker 3: in the captain himself. He makes the call that will
Speaker 3: bring his ship and his crew in. Every one of
Speaker 3: the captains on the Great Lakes are the most experienced meteorologist.
Speaker 3: I would replace anyone on television with a ship captain
Speaker 3: because their lives literally depend on their ability to be
Speaker 3: able to read the storm. But there were bonuses and
Speaker 3: incentives that sometimes helped to fight against that common sense
Speaker 3: that put many of these ships on the bottom.
Speaker 2: And on November sixth, nineteen thirteen, those incentives were working
Speaker 2: against the better judgment of many captains trying to get
Speaker 2: one last run in before the end of the season.
Speaker 2: For large storm was brewing on the Great Lakes, a
Speaker 2: storm that would go down in history as the big
Speaker 2: blow for simply the nineteen thirteen storm.
Speaker 3: The nineteen thirteen storm is one of the few storms
Speaker 3: where we had a dozen ships lost with all hands
Speaker 3: everybody vanished. We don't see that very often on hurricanes,
Speaker 3: much less on the Great Lakes. And we also had
Speaker 3: storms and especially snow that paralyzed many of the largest
Speaker 3: cities on the Great Lakes, including Cleveland. So now couple
Speaker 3: that with the fact that today we're still missing three
Speaker 3: of those wrecks. We don't know where they're at, actually
Speaker 3: leads into an amazing story that I think it still
Speaker 3: is interesting to tell today. The nineteen thirteen storm really
Speaker 3: started off of Lake Michigan, and as it swept up
Speaker 3: it devastated two wrecks that were there, the Louisiana, which
Speaker 3: was actually a vessel that made it into the safety
Speaker 3: of Washington, Bay on Washington Island, and it met up
Speaker 3: with the Halstead that had already been pushed ashore, and
Speaker 3: the crew would have been fine except some kind of
Speaker 3: a lantern or something fell over to cause fire on
Speaker 3: board and they had to abandon ship. So the Louisiana
Speaker 3: burned right to the waterline right there as one of
Speaker 3: the first casualties of the nineteen thirteen storm. Then just
Speaker 3: north of there, that's where the Plymouth vanished, was seven
Speaker 3: Lives being towed by a very underpowered tug. The Plymouth
Speaker 3: was one of the vessels that was empty when it
Speaker 3: was lost. It was going up to the straits of
Speaker 3: Mackinaw to pick up a cargo of cedar posts, and
Speaker 3: it was pulled by a very small tug called the
Speaker 3: James Martin. There was a bunch of legal disputes that
Speaker 3: were happening with the company that was actually ordering the logs,
Speaker 3: the Hubal Company. This was to the point of them
Speaker 3: actually libeling the ship, meaning they put a lawsuit against
Speaker 3: the Plymouth, and the only way to protect it, to
Speaker 3: make sure that they wouldn't be scuttled for insurance or
Speaker 3: somehow damaged, you know, to protect their interest, they moved
Speaker 3: an under sheriff who became a US marshal, and Chris
Speaker 3: Keenan came on board the ship to guard it. They
Speaker 3: were towing from Menominee and they got up around the islands.
Speaker 3: The storm hit and it came out of the south
Speaker 3: at first, so they moved around Saint Martin's Island and
Speaker 3: had dinner there and basically had everybody aboard the Plymouth
Speaker 3: where there was more room. And once the storm exposed
Speaker 3: their safe harbor, where now it's coming out of the
Speaker 3: north and starting to build to sixty miles an hour,
Speaker 3: they all jumped onto their respective ships. And they asked
Speaker 3: Keenan if he wanted to come on board the tug
Speaker 3: and he thought his chances were better on the Plymouth.
Speaker 3: He said, no, I'll stay on board this. He knew
Speaker 3: the ship had been rebuilt, it had just been recockt
Speaker 3: They really thought, because it was larger, that that would
Speaker 3: be the safer vessel. But as they pulled through the
Speaker 3: straits and they got just below Poverty Island, a massive
Speaker 3: storm hit them. At sixty miles an hour. The tugboat
Speaker 3: had to order the schooner to drop its anchor, a
Speaker 3: three thousand pound anchor to lock it into place so
Speaker 3: they could take off and reach safety. There was just
Speaker 3: no way they could pull through those waves. Afterwards, they
Speaker 3: came back to find the plymouth, and they found nothing,
Speaker 3: but later on a bottle washed ashore and man of
Speaker 3: Steem and eventually Chris Keenan's body. The bottle spelled out
Speaker 3: exactly what had happened during that horrible storm, and.
Speaker 2: The message in the bottle was written by Keenan, the
Speaker 2: unlucky Marshall.
Speaker 3: He wrote, Dear wife and children, we were left here
Speaker 3: by McKinnon, the owner of the tug Martin. He never
Speaker 3: said goodbye or anything to us. Basically, they laid out
Speaker 3: that they lost another man during the night and that
Speaker 3: the Hubole company owed him thirty five dollars. So it
Speaker 3: was this note of just tragedy, of this despair of
Speaker 3: being lost, but also enough to tell his family, hey,
Speaker 3: by the way Hubel owes money.
Speaker 2: And as it turns out, messages and bottles weren't that
Speaker 2: rare in nineteen thirteen, or the stuff of urban.
Speaker 3: Legends if you think about it. In nineteen thirteen, there
Speaker 3: was no radio, There was no way to get a
Speaker 3: message out, and many of them had obviously galleys on
Speaker 3: board that would have bottles, and mustard bottles have been used.
Speaker 3: Pickled bottles have been used, but certainly wine bottles too
Speaker 3: have been used to put these messages in, and many
Speaker 3: times they'll put who's on board. Sometimes they would put
Speaker 3: you know, we're disappearing forever and a goodbye to their family.
Speaker 3: And we also saw you know, blame in some of
Speaker 3: them as well. But during the nineteen thirteen storm, at
Speaker 3: least four messages came ashore, and the majority of them
Speaker 3: were found to be not real. The one that came
Speaker 3: from the Plymouth, though, was written on a coal receipt
Speaker 3: that was actually from the coal company that gave coal
Speaker 3: to the Plymouth, so it lend a lot of authenticity
Speaker 3: to it. And also when the family saw it, they
Speaker 3: really believed it was Chris Keenan's handwriting as well, except
Speaker 3: for a bottom part that had been written by another
Speaker 3: crewman and he had noted in there. I felt so
Speaker 3: bad that another man had written this for me. So
Speaker 3: this is one of those those true notes that came
Speaker 3: out and really an eyewitness account from you know, twelve
Speaker 3: ships that vanished without any kind of a survivor. This
Speaker 3: was the voice that they finally got from what exactly
Speaker 3: happened during one of these devas dating sinkings, but.
Speaker 2: The storm wasn't yet done.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, the storm rushes past that lake,
Speaker 3: goes all the way up into Lake Superior. That's when
Speaker 3: it sinks the HB. Smith. It puts the Turret Chief ashore.
Speaker 3: The L. C. Waldo was also pushed ashore on keewan
Speaker 3: of Peninsula, and then Leefield was lost with all hands
Speaker 3: up by Pick Island. The biggest story on Superior at
Speaker 3: the time was the HB. Smith. The Henry B. Smith
Speaker 3: was a large freighter, one of the largest lost in
Speaker 3: the big storm. Captain billy Owen was in Marquette. The
Speaker 3: legend and all the newspaper articles that I've read said
Speaker 3: that billy Owen had been criticized for having lake cargoes
Speaker 3: all season, and if you read the stories coming out
Speaker 3: of Marquette, it really kind of plays out that Owen
Speaker 3: was furious when the iron ore froze because of a
Speaker 3: rain missed ice storm that kind of came in and
Speaker 3: froze all of the iron ore into the cars that
Speaker 3: they The captain ran out and said, you've got to
Speaker 3: you know, heat up those cars, actually put flame to
Speaker 3: the train car to get that cargo into his boat,
Speaker 3: and then when the storm hit, he ordered to have
Speaker 3: the Smith to be literally tied to the dock so
Speaker 3: that they could withstand the storm and still take the
Speaker 3: cargo so he could get it down in a timely manner.
Speaker 3: Now people do talk nowadays that maybe most of those
Speaker 3: stories weren't true, but there were a lot of boasting
Speaker 3: headlines about how he feared no storm and took off
Speaker 3: without even battening down all of his hatches, and as
Speaker 3: soon as the big snow squall came in, the ship
Speaker 3: vanished and we didn't find it for nearly one hundred years.
Speaker 1: And you're listening to Rick Mixter tell the story of
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirteen storm that took down a dozen ships.
Speaker 1: When we come back more of Rick Mixter on our
Speaker 1: American stories, and we returned to our American stories and
Speaker 1: the story of the nineteen thirteen storm. When we last
Speaker 1: left off, the storm had laid waste to Lake Michigan
Speaker 1: and Lake Superior and had already sunk many ships, including
Speaker 1: the barge Plymouth and the large freighter HB. Smith. Let's
Speaker 1: return to the story.
Speaker 2: After ravaging Lake Superior. The storm would soon turn to
Speaker 2: Lake Huron, where the bulk of the ship sunk in
Speaker 2: the storm and meet their ends. One ship that did
Speaker 2: not sink, though, was the HB Hoggod with Ed Konnabby
Speaker 2: at the helm.
Speaker 3: Ed Caonabby was a local guy from the Thumb who
Speaker 3: basically got sick of farming and went on board the
Speaker 3: ships and moved very quickly up to Wheelman. I locked out.
Speaker 3: I mean, as a journalist, you know, you start, you know,
Speaker 3: going through the storm itself and then trying to hit
Speaker 3: all of the anniversary newspapers. And that's where I found
Speaker 3: ed was you know, during the fiftieth anniversary and then
Speaker 3: the sixtieth anniversary, there were stories about this one guy
Speaker 3: that was part of the storms. But when I called him,
Speaker 3: his daughter told me that he had had a stroke
Speaker 3: and that he really probably didn't remember much about it,
Speaker 3: but she thought that he, you know, it would be
Speaker 3: worth a try. So when I went to go talk
Speaker 3: to him, he was very very hard of hearing, and
Speaker 3: I had to, you know, I was shouting questions to him,
Speaker 3: and finally his daughter had to shout tell him about
Speaker 3: the storm, and he told such a riveting story that
Speaker 3: the hair on my arm stood up straight. So he
Speaker 3: was at the wheel when the HB Hagood is going
Speaker 3: up and down the lakes. If you read the stories
Speaker 3: of the ships that survived, that was the way that
Speaker 3: they did it. They would stay out in the middle
Speaker 3: of the lake as best they could, because running aground
Speaker 3: would be devastating, and they would turn around, which was
Speaker 3: the most difficult part in the storm, and they would
Speaker 3: head back down the lake and then just keep trying
Speaker 3: to keep their nose into the wind as best they
Speaker 3: can can until the storm was over, hoping that it would,
Speaker 3: you know, eventually fade out. Well, this storm went sixty
Speaker 3: miles an hour for sixteen hours straight. So back and
Speaker 3: forth the HB Hawgood went until finally they got to
Speaker 3: the bottom of the lake and the captain ordered them
Speaker 3: to turn around again. He could see the lights of
Speaker 3: Point Edward. He knew he was close to Port Huron
Speaker 3: going into the Saint Clair River, but he was not
Speaker 3: going to turn around.
Speaker 2: Cannaby had other ideas. Here's ed with what he did instead.
Speaker 4: He said, got its different order heading into the wind
Speaker 4: yessh but I really scared. I sat a chef. Oh no,
Speaker 4: you don't no, there's larga of wors and to ship.
Speaker 3: Control, they literally pitched up on the beach near where
Speaker 3: a hotel was, so out of all of the ships
Speaker 3: that were lost during the nineteen thirteen storm, it was
Speaker 3: good news for the HB. Hawgood to be so close
Speaker 3: to civilization. That wasn't the case for many of the
Speaker 3: other ships.
Speaker 2: Like the Charles S. Price.
Speaker 3: The Price had gone up and had gotten the storm
Speaker 3: and somehow turned turtle and the air that was still
Speaker 3: inside the vessel allowed it to float, So the bow
Speaker 3: was floating, but the stern was dragging on the bottom
Speaker 3: in about seventy feet of water, and it wasn't hard
Speaker 3: to see this giant what looked like a whale of
Speaker 3: a black bottom boat out there, and the newspapers guessed
Speaker 3: for days on exactly what freighter it was. And they
Speaker 3: couldn't get out there because the storm was still kind
Speaker 3: of brewing, so as it calmed down, they finally hired
Speaker 3: a diver named Baker to go down there, and he
Speaker 3: dove down and realized that it was so murky because
Speaker 3: of the storm tossed waters that he couldn't see, so
Speaker 3: he felt the letters and it was Charles S. Price
Speaker 3: upside down that he felt. He came back on board
Speaker 3: and wouldn't tell them the name until he got paid.
Speaker 3: That's how much he trusted the newspapers the ship itself.
Speaker 3: We still wonder what happened, but as we look at
Speaker 3: the course of the HB. Smith, and we look at
Speaker 3: several other ships that survived the storm by turning around.
Speaker 3: As they turned around, if they were iced or heavy
Speaker 3: on top of their decks, which we've seen many big
Speaker 3: storm victims, especially from nineteen thirteen, we've seen frozen pictures
Speaker 3: of the ice that's accumulated on the decks, making them very,
Speaker 3: very top heavy, regardless of the cargo that's below it.
Speaker 3: And as they try to make that turn to try
Speaker 3: to you know, as they run out of the lake
Speaker 3: and they want to come back down again, they make
Speaker 3: that turn, they exposed themselves to winds that will push
Speaker 3: these long, thin ships over. And that's what we think
Speaker 3: might have happened, that it might have tried to turn,
Speaker 3: and as it tried to turn, it rolled right over.
Speaker 3: We also know from the eyewitness accounts that there were
Speaker 3: thirty five foot seas that were there. So add in
Speaker 3: a top hand vessel that was never designed to carry
Speaker 3: that much ice weight on top and a wind and
Speaker 3: waves that were banging off of each shoreline in confused directions,
Speaker 3: and it could be easily imagined that one of those
Speaker 3: freighters would flip over, and the Price actually did. It
Speaker 3: sat there and floated forever and well, it floated for
Speaker 3: over a day, and many newspapers got pictures of it,
Speaker 3: and then it slowly sank down to the bottom, so
Speaker 3: they always knew where the Child's Price was.
Speaker 2: The Price was just one of the many ships that
Speaker 2: sank during the nineteen thirteen storm. In total, twelve ships
Speaker 2: would end up on the bottom of the Great Lakes,
Speaker 2: and countless others, like the Hawgood, would be beached and
Speaker 2: battered on the shore. The storm was a truly horrific event.
Speaker 3: The legacy of the storm is that over two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty sailors lost their lives, and the reality is
Speaker 3: that without radio or without you know, really good accounts
Speaker 3: of who was actually on board these ships, there was
Speaker 3: times when sailors would just jump on board and there
Speaker 3: would be no real, you know, real record of them
Speaker 3: being on so we'll never know the exact amount of
Speaker 3: people lost, or the names of everybody who was lost
Speaker 3: but to think of it in the terms of two
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty sailors, that's two hundred families that didn't
Speaker 3: have loved ones that came home from that storm. It
Speaker 3: was devastating to them. And then add in the devastation
Speaker 3: that was felt by towns like Godrich where most of
Speaker 3: that destruction, especially those human bodies came ashore. It was
Speaker 3: horrible for them as well. And the pictures of the
Speaker 3: long funeral marches that would go to the grave marker
Speaker 3: that's now in god Rich, you can imagine what that
Speaker 3: must have felt for them as well. The headlines and
Speaker 3: the stories that came out of there, and the eventual
Speaker 3: stories that would be generated from those later on also
Speaker 3: add to the magnitude of what that storm was. It
Speaker 3: was one of the worst, in many cases called the
Speaker 3: King of storms on the Great Lakes. So it probably
Speaker 3: will never be equalled. We now have better weather forecasting,
Speaker 3: We have satellites that fly over the top of the ships,
Speaker 3: we have communication via satellite and via radio. It's just
Speaker 3: amazing what that technology is like today and forecasting. But
Speaker 3: we still have people that will try to batter the lakes.
Speaker 3: You know, there's always that one that believes that they
Speaker 3: can get in. Fortunately, or they are a thousand footers,
Speaker 3: they're a lot less susceptible to the waves. But you'll
Speaker 3: be surprised that, you know, even the biggest of all freighters,
Speaker 3: including the Edmond Fitzgerald, were lost just because the captain
Speaker 3: made a bad call. Nothing can be built that would
Speaker 3: withstand the fury of the lakes when they get their
Speaker 3: very worse, and unfortunately, that's what happens in November. As
Speaker 3: those lakes start to cool off and that warmth from
Speaker 3: the lakes meets the cold Arctic air, we get horrible snowstorms,
Speaker 3: and we get winds that just tear at chips in
Speaker 3: every direction and change on a dime. And that could
Speaker 3: happen again tomorrow. There's still so much many clues out there,
Speaker 3: and every time a ship is found, we start to
Speaker 3: add another chapter. So I don't think the final chapter
Speaker 3: has been written on the nineteen thirteen storm. It's over
Speaker 3: one hundred years old, but we're still discovering new things
Speaker 3: about it, and that's what makes it exciting.
Speaker 1: And you've been listening to Rick Mixter tell the story
Speaker 1: of one of America's great water tragedies. He also told
Speaker 1: the story of the wreck of the Amin Fitzgerald, which
Speaker 1: was riveting. And it's the rest of the story from
Speaker 1: the song you'd heard and the real story the Gordon
Speaker 1: Lightfoot song, of course, and one of our other really
Speaker 1: good water disaster stories. One of our best is also,
Speaker 1: of course, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, the worst
Speaker 1: naval disaster in American history. Mixture, by the way, you
Speaker 1: can find his work at Lakefury dot com. Listen to
Speaker 1: his podcast. And my goodness, it was a perfect storm.
Speaker 1: You had the f and ice formations on the deck
Speaker 1: of the ships, thirty five foot sea walls coming at them,
Speaker 1: and of course the wicked winds. Twelve ships down, all
Speaker 1: hands lost, two hundred and fifty souls lost. The story
Speaker 1: of the nineteen thirteen storm here on our American Story