November 19, 2024 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Ric Mixter of Lake Fury tells the story of the historic 1913 storm on the Great Lakes
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories. In nineteen thirteen, the Sixteenth
Amendment was passed and Woodrow Wilson became president. But tragedy
also struck the Great Lakes. Here's our own Monte Montgomery
with more on that event.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
In sixteen seventy nine, the Great Lakes were changed forever
for the first time as Lesals Griffin departed from Port,
becoming the first ship to ever sail on the Great Lakes.
And in eighteen forty one, the Lakes were yet again
changed when the Vandalia set sail, the first propeller driven
ship to do so. An industry took off, and by
(00:51):
nineteen thirteen the Great Lakes had become a major and
still developing transportation hub. Here's Rick Mixer of Lake Fury
with more.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
That in nineteen thirteen, we're talking about a mix of
different types of transportation on the lakes. The sail was
still somewhat viable. Most of those old sailing vessels, the schooners,
had been turned into barges and were being towed by
the more efficient steamers that didn't have to wait for
the winds to be correct. But there were no highways
(01:22):
at that time, so everything had to be moved, especially
these amazing commodities we have on the Great Lakes, coal,
iron ore, grain, All of this stuff was moved in
huge amounts, bulk amounts on these freighters and barges. There
were literally thousands of ships on the Great Lakes, hundreds
that were regularly being used, many that were also laid up.
(01:44):
It would go by the flow of how much iron
ore needed to be moved, or later in the season,
as you got the grain cargoes coming in, the coal
that had to be stocked up for the winter time,
so you'd see more ships come out. And many of
those ships weren't in perfect condition. They were whatever could float.
They could get these cargoes in before the lakes froze
up and then all that commerce stopped. There weren't a
(02:08):
lot of safety regulations. I mean, the ultimate safety is
in the captain himself. He makes the call that will
bring his ship and his crew in. Every one of
the captains on the Great Lakes are the most experienced meteorologist.
I would replace anyone on television with a ship captain
because their lives literally depend on their ability to be
able to read the storm. But there were bonuses and
(02:30):
incentives that sometimes helped to fight against that common sense
that put many of these ships on the bottom.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
And on November sixth, nineteen thirteen, those incentives were working
against the better judgment of many captains trying to get
one last run in before the end of the season.
For large storm was brewing on the Great Lakes, a
storm that would go down in history as the big
blow for simply the nineteen thirteen storm.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
The nineteen thirteen storm is one of the few storms
where we had a dozen ships lost with all hands
everybody vanished. We don't see that very often on hurricanes,
much less on the Great Lakes. And we also had
storms and especially snow that paralyzed many of the largest
cities on the Great Lakes, including Cleveland. So now couple
(03:22):
that with the fact that today we're still missing three
of those wrecks. We don't know where they're at, actually
leads into an amazing story that I think it still
is interesting to tell today. The nineteen thirteen storm really
started off of Lake Michigan, and as it swept up
(03:43):
it devastated two wrecks that were there, the Louisiana, which
was actually a vessel that made it into the safety
of Washington, Bay on Washington Island, and it met up
with the Halstead that had already been pushed ashore, and
the crew would have been fine except some kind of
a lantern or something fell over to cause fire on
board and they had to abandon ship. So the Louisiana
(04:03):
burned right to the waterline right there as one of
the first casualties of the nineteen thirteen storm. Then just
north of there, that's where the Plymouth vanished, was seven
Lives being towed by a very underpowered tug. The Plymouth
was one of the vessels that was empty when it
was lost. It was going up to the straits of
Mackinaw to pick up a cargo of cedar posts, and
(04:24):
it was pulled by a very small tug called the
James Martin. There was a bunch of legal disputes that
were happening with the company that was actually ordering the logs,
the Hubal Company. This was to the point of them
actually libeling the ship, meaning they put a lawsuit against
the Plymouth, and the only way to protect it, to
make sure that they wouldn't be scuttled for insurance or
(04:45):
somehow damaged, you know, to protect their interest, they moved
an under sheriff who became a US marshal, and Chris
Keenan came on board the ship to guard it. They
were towing from Menominee and they got up around the islands.
The storm hit and it came out of the south
at first, so they moved around Saint Martin's Island and
(05:05):
had dinner there and basically had everybody aboard the Plymouth
where there was more room. And once the storm exposed
their safe harbor, where now it's coming out of the
north and starting to build to sixty miles an hour,
they all jumped onto their respective ships. And they asked
Keenan if he wanted to come on board the tug
and he thought his chances were better on the Plymouth.
(05:25):
He said, no, I'll stay on board this. He knew
the ship had been rebuilt, it had just been recockt
They really thought, because it was larger, that that would
be the safer vessel. But as they pulled through the
straits and they got just below Poverty Island, a massive
storm hit them. At sixty miles an hour. The tugboat
had to order the schooner to drop its anchor, a
three thousand pound anchor to lock it into place so
(05:48):
they could take off and reach safety. There was just
no way they could pull through those waves. Afterwards, they
came back to find the plymouth, and they found nothing,
but later on a bottle washed ashore and man of
Steem and eventually Chris Keenan's body. The bottle spelled out
exactly what had happened during that horrible storm, and.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The message in the bottle was written by Keenan, the
unlucky Marshall.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
He wrote, Dear wife and children, we were left here
by McKinnon, the owner of the tug Martin. He never
said goodbye or anything to us. Basically, they laid out
that they lost another man during the night and that
the Hubole company owed him thirty five dollars. So it
was this note of just tragedy, of this despair of
(06:32):
being lost, but also enough to tell his family, hey,
by the way Hubel owes money.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And as it turns out, messages and bottles weren't that
rare in nineteen thirteen, or the stuff of urban.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Legends if you think about it. In nineteen thirteen, there
was no radio, There was no way to get a
message out, and many of them had obviously galleys on
board that would have bottles, and mustard bottles have been used.
Pickled bottles have been used, but certainly wine bottles too
have been used to put these messages in, and many
times they'll put who's on board. Sometimes they would put
(07:06):
you know, we're disappearing forever and a goodbye to their family.
And we also saw you know, blame in some of
them as well. But during the nineteen thirteen storm, at
least four messages came ashore, and the majority of them
were found to be not real. The one that came
from the Plymouth, though, was written on a coal receipt
that was actually from the coal company that gave coal
(07:29):
to the Plymouth, so it lend a lot of authenticity
to it. And also when the family saw it, they
really believed it was Chris Keenan's handwriting as well, except
for a bottom part that had been written by another
crewman and he had noted in there. I felt so
bad that another man had written this for me. So
this is one of those those true notes that came
out and really an eyewitness account from you know, twelve
(07:52):
ships that vanished without any kind of a survivor. This
was the voice that they finally got from what exactly
happened during one of these devas dating sinkings, but.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
The storm wasn't yet done.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
All of a sudden, the storm rushes past that lake,
goes all the way up into Lake Superior. That's when
it sinks the HB. Smith. It puts the Turret Chief ashore.
The L. C. Waldo was also pushed ashore on keewan
of Peninsula, and then Leefield was lost with all hands
up by Pick Island. The biggest story on Superior at
the time was the HB. Smith. The Henry B. Smith
(08:27):
was a large freighter, one of the largest lost in
the big storm. Captain billy Owen was in Marquette. The
legend and all the newspaper articles that I've read said
that billy Owen had been criticized for having lake cargoes
all season, and if you read the stories coming out
of Marquette, it really kind of plays out that Owen
was furious when the iron ore froze because of a
(08:48):
rain missed ice storm that kind of came in and
froze all of the iron ore into the cars that
they The captain ran out and said, you've got to
you know, heat up those cars, actually put flame to
the train car to get that cargo into his boat,
and then when the storm hit, he ordered to have
the Smith to be literally tied to the dock so
that they could withstand the storm and still take the
(09:10):
cargo so he could get it down in a timely manner.
Now people do talk nowadays that maybe most of those
stories weren't true, but there were a lot of boasting
headlines about how he feared no storm and took off
without even battening down all of his hatches, and as
soon as the big snow squall came in, the ship
vanished and we didn't find it for nearly one hundred years.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And you're listening to Rick Mixter tell the story of
the nineteen thirteen storm that took down a dozen ships.
When we come back more of Rick Mixter on our
American stories, and we returned to our American stories and
(10:12):
the story of the nineteen thirteen storm. When we last
left off, the storm had laid waste to Lake Michigan
and Lake Superior and had already sunk many ships, including
the barge Plymouth and the large freighter HB. Smith. Let's
return to the story.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
After ravaging Lake Superior. The storm would soon turn to
Lake Huron, where the bulk of the ship sunk in
the storm and meet their ends. One ship that did
not sink, though, was the HB Hoggod with Ed Konnabby
at the helm.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Ed Caonabby was a local guy from the Thumb who
basically got sick of farming and went on board the
ships and moved very quickly up to Wheelman. I locked out.
I mean, as a journalist, you know, you start, you know,
going through the storm itself and then trying to hit
all of the anniversary newspapers. And that's where I found
ed was you know, during the fiftieth anniversary and then
(11:06):
the sixtieth anniversary, there were stories about this one guy
that was part of the storms. But when I called him,
his daughter told me that he had had a stroke
and that he really probably didn't remember much about it,
but she thought that he, you know, it would be
worth a try. So when I went to go talk
to him, he was very very hard of hearing, and
I had to, you know, I was shouting questions to him,
(11:27):
and finally his daughter had to shout tell him about
the storm, and he told such a riveting story that
the hair on my arm stood up straight. So he
was at the wheel when the HB Hagood is going
up and down the lakes. If you read the stories
of the ships that survived, that was the way that
they did it. They would stay out in the middle
of the lake as best they could, because running aground
(11:48):
would be devastating, and they would turn around, which was
the most difficult part in the storm, and they would
head back down the lake and then just keep trying
to keep their nose into the wind as best they
can can until the storm was over, hoping that it would,
you know, eventually fade out. Well, this storm went sixty
miles an hour for sixteen hours straight. So back and
(12:10):
forth the HB Hawgood went until finally they got to
the bottom of the lake and the captain ordered them
to turn around again. He could see the lights of
Point Edward. He knew he was close to Port Huron
going into the Saint Clair River, but he was not
going to turn around.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Cannaby had other ideas. Here's ed with what he did instead.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
He said, got its different order heading into the wind
yessh but I really scared. I sat a chef. Oh no,
you don't no, there's larga of wors and to ship.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Control, they literally pitched up on the beach near where
a hotel was, so out of all of the ships
that were lost during the nineteen thirteen storm, it was
good news for the HB. Hawgood to be so close
to civilization. That wasn't the case for many of the
other ships.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Like the Charles S. Price.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
The Price had gone up and had gotten the storm
and somehow turned turtle and the air that was still
inside the vessel allowed it to float, So the bow
was floating, but the stern was dragging on the bottom
in about seventy feet of water, and it wasn't hard
to see this giant what looked like a whale of
a black bottom boat out there, and the newspapers guessed
for days on exactly what freighter it was. And they
(13:41):
couldn't get out there because the storm was still kind
of brewing, so as it calmed down, they finally hired
a diver named Baker to go down there, and he
dove down and realized that it was so murky because
of the storm tossed waters that he couldn't see, so
he felt the letters and it was Charles S. Price
upside down that he felt. He came back on board
(14:01):
and wouldn't tell them the name until he got paid.
That's how much he trusted the newspapers the ship itself.
We still wonder what happened, but as we look at
the course of the HB. Smith, and we look at
several other ships that survived the storm by turning around.
As they turned around, if they were iced or heavy
on top of their decks, which we've seen many big
(14:23):
storm victims, especially from nineteen thirteen, we've seen frozen pictures
of the ice that's accumulated on the decks, making them very,
very top heavy, regardless of the cargo that's below it.
And as they try to make that turn to try
to you know, as they run out of the lake
and they want to come back down again, they make
that turn, they exposed themselves to winds that will push
(14:45):
these long, thin ships over. And that's what we think
might have happened, that it might have tried to turn,
and as it tried to turn, it rolled right over.
We also know from the eyewitness accounts that there were
thirty five foot seas that were there. So add in
a top hand vessel that was never designed to carry
that much ice weight on top and a wind and
(15:05):
waves that were banging off of each shoreline in confused directions,
and it could be easily imagined that one of those
freighters would flip over, and the Price actually did. It
sat there and floated forever and well, it floated for
over a day, and many newspapers got pictures of it,
and then it slowly sank down to the bottom, so
they always knew where the Child's Price was.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
The Price was just one of the many ships that
sank during the nineteen thirteen storm. In total, twelve ships
would end up on the bottom of the Great Lakes,
and countless others, like the Hawgood, would be beached and
battered on the shore. The storm was a truly horrific event.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
The legacy of the storm is that over two hundred
and fifty sailors lost their lives, and the reality is
that without radio or without you know, really good accounts
of who was actually on board these ships, there was
times when sailors would just jump on board and there
would be no real, you know, real record of them
being on so we'll never know the exact amount of
(16:05):
people lost, or the names of everybody who was lost
but to think of it in the terms of two
hundred and fifty sailors, that's two hundred families that didn't
have loved ones that came home from that storm. It
was devastating to them. And then add in the devastation
that was felt by towns like Godrich where most of
that destruction, especially those human bodies came ashore. It was
(16:28):
horrible for them as well. And the pictures of the
long funeral marches that would go to the grave marker
that's now in god Rich, you can imagine what that
must have felt for them as well. The headlines and
the stories that came out of there, and the eventual
stories that would be generated from those later on also
(16:48):
add to the magnitude of what that storm was. It
was one of the worst, in many cases called the
King of storms on the Great Lakes. So it probably
will never be equalled. We now have better weather forecasting,
We have satellites that fly over the top of the ships,
we have communication via satellite and via radio. It's just
amazing what that technology is like today and forecasting. But
(17:12):
we still have people that will try to batter the lakes.
You know, there's always that one that believes that they
can get in. Fortunately, or they are a thousand footers,
they're a lot less susceptible to the waves. But you'll
be surprised that, you know, even the biggest of all freighters,
including the Edmond Fitzgerald, were lost just because the captain
made a bad call. Nothing can be built that would
(17:34):
withstand the fury of the lakes when they get their
very worse, and unfortunately, that's what happens in November. As
those lakes start to cool off and that warmth from
the lakes meets the cold Arctic air, we get horrible snowstorms,
and we get winds that just tear at chips in
every direction and change on a dime. And that could
(17:56):
happen again tomorrow. There's still so much many clues out there,
and every time a ship is found, we start to
add another chapter. So I don't think the final chapter
has been written on the nineteen thirteen storm. It's over
one hundred years old, but we're still discovering new things
about it, and that's what makes it exciting.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And you've been listening to Rick Mixter tell the story
of one of America's great water tragedies. He also told
the story of the wreck of the Amin Fitzgerald, which
was riveting. And it's the rest of the story from
the song you'd heard and the real story the Gordon
Lightfoot song, of course, and one of our other really
good water disaster stories. One of our best is also,
(18:44):
of course, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, the worst
naval disaster in American history. Mixture, by the way, you
can find his work at Lakefury dot com. Listen to
his podcast. And my goodness, it was a perfect storm.
You had the f and ice formations on the deck
of the ships, thirty five foot sea walls coming at them,
(19:06):
and of course the wicked winds. Twelve ships down, all
hands lost, two hundred and fifty souls lost. The story
of the nineteen thirteen storm here on our American Story
This is our American stories. In nineteen thirteen, the Sixteenth
Amendment was passed and Woodrow Wilson became president. But tragedy
also struck the Great Lakes. Here's our own Monte Montgomery
with more on that event.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
In sixteen seventy nine, the Great Lakes were changed forever
for the first time as Lesals Griffin departed from Port,
becoming the first ship to ever sail on the Great Lakes.
And in eighteen forty one, the Lakes were yet again
changed when the Vandalia set sail, the first propeller driven
ship to do so. An industry took off, and by
(00:51):
nineteen thirteen the Great Lakes had become a major and
still developing transportation hub. Here's Rick Mixer of Lake Fury
with more.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
That in nineteen thirteen, we're talking about a mix of
different types of transportation on the lakes. The sail was
still somewhat viable. Most of those old sailing vessels, the schooners,
had been turned into barges and were being towed by
the more efficient steamers that didn't have to wait for
the winds to be correct. But there were no highways
(01:22):
at that time, so everything had to be moved, especially
these amazing commodities we have on the Great Lakes, coal,
iron ore, grain, All of this stuff was moved in
huge amounts, bulk amounts on these freighters and barges. There
were literally thousands of ships on the Great Lakes, hundreds
that were regularly being used, many that were also laid up.
(01:44):
It would go by the flow of how much iron
ore needed to be moved, or later in the season,
as you got the grain cargoes coming in, the coal
that had to be stocked up for the winter time,
so you'd see more ships come out. And many of
those ships weren't in perfect condition. They were whatever could float.
They could get these cargoes in before the lakes froze
up and then all that commerce stopped. There weren't a
(02:08):
lot of safety regulations. I mean, the ultimate safety is
in the captain himself. He makes the call that will
bring his ship and his crew in. Every one of
the captains on the Great Lakes are the most experienced meteorologist.
I would replace anyone on television with a ship captain
because their lives literally depend on their ability to be
able to read the storm. But there were bonuses and
(02:30):
incentives that sometimes helped to fight against that common sense
that put many of these ships on the bottom.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
And on November sixth, nineteen thirteen, those incentives were working
against the better judgment of many captains trying to get
one last run in before the end of the season.
For large storm was brewing on the Great Lakes, a
storm that would go down in history as the big
blow for simply the nineteen thirteen storm.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
The nineteen thirteen storm is one of the few storms
where we had a dozen ships lost with all hands
everybody vanished. We don't see that very often on hurricanes,
much less on the Great Lakes. And we also had
storms and especially snow that paralyzed many of the largest
cities on the Great Lakes, including Cleveland. So now couple
(03:22):
that with the fact that today we're still missing three
of those wrecks. We don't know where they're at, actually
leads into an amazing story that I think it still
is interesting to tell today. The nineteen thirteen storm really
started off of Lake Michigan, and as it swept up
(03:43):
it devastated two wrecks that were there, the Louisiana, which
was actually a vessel that made it into the safety
of Washington, Bay on Washington Island, and it met up
with the Halstead that had already been pushed ashore, and
the crew would have been fine except some kind of
a lantern or something fell over to cause fire on
board and they had to abandon ship. So the Louisiana
(04:03):
burned right to the waterline right there as one of
the first casualties of the nineteen thirteen storm. Then just
north of there, that's where the Plymouth vanished, was seven
Lives being towed by a very underpowered tug. The Plymouth
was one of the vessels that was empty when it
was lost. It was going up to the straits of
Mackinaw to pick up a cargo of cedar posts, and
(04:24):
it was pulled by a very small tug called the
James Martin. There was a bunch of legal disputes that
were happening with the company that was actually ordering the logs,
the Hubal Company. This was to the point of them
actually libeling the ship, meaning they put a lawsuit against
the Plymouth, and the only way to protect it, to
make sure that they wouldn't be scuttled for insurance or
(04:45):
somehow damaged, you know, to protect their interest, they moved
an under sheriff who became a US marshal, and Chris
Keenan came on board the ship to guard it. They
were towing from Menominee and they got up around the islands.
The storm hit and it came out of the south
at first, so they moved around Saint Martin's Island and
(05:05):
had dinner there and basically had everybody aboard the Plymouth
where there was more room. And once the storm exposed
their safe harbor, where now it's coming out of the
north and starting to build to sixty miles an hour,
they all jumped onto their respective ships. And they asked
Keenan if he wanted to come on board the tug
and he thought his chances were better on the Plymouth.
(05:25):
He said, no, I'll stay on board this. He knew
the ship had been rebuilt, it had just been recockt
They really thought, because it was larger, that that would
be the safer vessel. But as they pulled through the
straits and they got just below Poverty Island, a massive
storm hit them. At sixty miles an hour. The tugboat
had to order the schooner to drop its anchor, a
three thousand pound anchor to lock it into place so
(05:48):
they could take off and reach safety. There was just
no way they could pull through those waves. Afterwards, they
came back to find the plymouth, and they found nothing,
but later on a bottle washed ashore and man of
Steem and eventually Chris Keenan's body. The bottle spelled out
exactly what had happened during that horrible storm, and.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The message in the bottle was written by Keenan, the
unlucky Marshall.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
He wrote, Dear wife and children, we were left here
by McKinnon, the owner of the tug Martin. He never
said goodbye or anything to us. Basically, they laid out
that they lost another man during the night and that
the Hubole company owed him thirty five dollars. So it
was this note of just tragedy, of this despair of
(06:32):
being lost, but also enough to tell his family, hey,
by the way Hubel owes money.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And as it turns out, messages and bottles weren't that
rare in nineteen thirteen, or the stuff of urban.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Legends if you think about it. In nineteen thirteen, there
was no radio, There was no way to get a
message out, and many of them had obviously galleys on
board that would have bottles, and mustard bottles have been used.
Pickled bottles have been used, but certainly wine bottles too
have been used to put these messages in, and many
times they'll put who's on board. Sometimes they would put
(07:06):
you know, we're disappearing forever and a goodbye to their family.
And we also saw you know, blame in some of
them as well. But during the nineteen thirteen storm, at
least four messages came ashore, and the majority of them
were found to be not real. The one that came
from the Plymouth, though, was written on a coal receipt
that was actually from the coal company that gave coal
(07:29):
to the Plymouth, so it lend a lot of authenticity
to it. And also when the family saw it, they
really believed it was Chris Keenan's handwriting as well, except
for a bottom part that had been written by another
crewman and he had noted in there. I felt so
bad that another man had written this for me. So
this is one of those those true notes that came
out and really an eyewitness account from you know, twelve
(07:52):
ships that vanished without any kind of a survivor. This
was the voice that they finally got from what exactly
happened during one of these devas dating sinkings, but.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
The storm wasn't yet done.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
All of a sudden, the storm rushes past that lake,
goes all the way up into Lake Superior. That's when
it sinks the HB. Smith. It puts the Turret Chief ashore.
The L. C. Waldo was also pushed ashore on keewan
of Peninsula, and then Leefield was lost with all hands
up by Pick Island. The biggest story on Superior at
the time was the HB. Smith. The Henry B. Smith
(08:27):
was a large freighter, one of the largest lost in
the big storm. Captain billy Owen was in Marquette. The
legend and all the newspaper articles that I've read said
that billy Owen had been criticized for having lake cargoes
all season, and if you read the stories coming out
of Marquette, it really kind of plays out that Owen
was furious when the iron ore froze because of a
(08:48):
rain missed ice storm that kind of came in and
froze all of the iron ore into the cars that
they The captain ran out and said, you've got to
you know, heat up those cars, actually put flame to
the train car to get that cargo into his boat,
and then when the storm hit, he ordered to have
the Smith to be literally tied to the dock so
that they could withstand the storm and still take the
(09:10):
cargo so he could get it down in a timely manner.
Now people do talk nowadays that maybe most of those
stories weren't true, but there were a lot of boasting
headlines about how he feared no storm and took off
without even battening down all of his hatches, and as
soon as the big snow squall came in, the ship
vanished and we didn't find it for nearly one hundred years.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And you're listening to Rick Mixter tell the story of
the nineteen thirteen storm that took down a dozen ships.
When we come back more of Rick Mixter on our
American stories, and we returned to our American stories and
(10:12):
the story of the nineteen thirteen storm. When we last
left off, the storm had laid waste to Lake Michigan
and Lake Superior and had already sunk many ships, including
the barge Plymouth and the large freighter HB. Smith. Let's
return to the story.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
After ravaging Lake Superior. The storm would soon turn to
Lake Huron, where the bulk of the ship sunk in
the storm and meet their ends. One ship that did
not sink, though, was the HB Hoggod with Ed Konnabby
at the helm.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Ed Caonabby was a local guy from the Thumb who
basically got sick of farming and went on board the
ships and moved very quickly up to Wheelman. I locked out.
I mean, as a journalist, you know, you start, you know,
going through the storm itself and then trying to hit
all of the anniversary newspapers. And that's where I found
ed was you know, during the fiftieth anniversary and then
(11:06):
the sixtieth anniversary, there were stories about this one guy
that was part of the storms. But when I called him,
his daughter told me that he had had a stroke
and that he really probably didn't remember much about it,
but she thought that he, you know, it would be
worth a try. So when I went to go talk
to him, he was very very hard of hearing, and
I had to, you know, I was shouting questions to him,
(11:27):
and finally his daughter had to shout tell him about
the storm, and he told such a riveting story that
the hair on my arm stood up straight. So he
was at the wheel when the HB Hagood is going
up and down the lakes. If you read the stories
of the ships that survived, that was the way that
they did it. They would stay out in the middle
of the lake as best they could, because running aground
(11:48):
would be devastating, and they would turn around, which was
the most difficult part in the storm, and they would
head back down the lake and then just keep trying
to keep their nose into the wind as best they
can can until the storm was over, hoping that it would,
you know, eventually fade out. Well, this storm went sixty
miles an hour for sixteen hours straight. So back and
(12:10):
forth the HB Hawgood went until finally they got to
the bottom of the lake and the captain ordered them
to turn around again. He could see the lights of
Point Edward. He knew he was close to Port Huron
going into the Saint Clair River, but he was not
going to turn around.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Cannaby had other ideas. Here's ed with what he did instead.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
He said, got its different order heading into the wind
yessh but I really scared. I sat a chef. Oh no,
you don't no, there's larga of wors and to ship.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Control, they literally pitched up on the beach near where
a hotel was, so out of all of the ships
that were lost during the nineteen thirteen storm, it was
good news for the HB. Hawgood to be so close
to civilization. That wasn't the case for many of the
other ships.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Like the Charles S. Price.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
The Price had gone up and had gotten the storm
and somehow turned turtle and the air that was still
inside the vessel allowed it to float, So the bow
was floating, but the stern was dragging on the bottom
in about seventy feet of water, and it wasn't hard
to see this giant what looked like a whale of
a black bottom boat out there, and the newspapers guessed
for days on exactly what freighter it was. And they
(13:41):
couldn't get out there because the storm was still kind
of brewing, so as it calmed down, they finally hired
a diver named Baker to go down there, and he
dove down and realized that it was so murky because
of the storm tossed waters that he couldn't see, so
he felt the letters and it was Charles S. Price
upside down that he felt. He came back on board
(14:01):
and wouldn't tell them the name until he got paid.
That's how much he trusted the newspapers the ship itself.
We still wonder what happened, but as we look at
the course of the HB. Smith, and we look at
several other ships that survived the storm by turning around.
As they turned around, if they were iced or heavy
on top of their decks, which we've seen many big
(14:23):
storm victims, especially from nineteen thirteen, we've seen frozen pictures
of the ice that's accumulated on the decks, making them very,
very top heavy, regardless of the cargo that's below it.
And as they try to make that turn to try
to you know, as they run out of the lake
and they want to come back down again, they make
that turn, they exposed themselves to winds that will push
(14:45):
these long, thin ships over. And that's what we think
might have happened, that it might have tried to turn,
and as it tried to turn, it rolled right over.
We also know from the eyewitness accounts that there were
thirty five foot seas that were there. So add in
a top hand vessel that was never designed to carry
that much ice weight on top and a wind and
(15:05):
waves that were banging off of each shoreline in confused directions,
and it could be easily imagined that one of those
freighters would flip over, and the Price actually did. It
sat there and floated forever and well, it floated for
over a day, and many newspapers got pictures of it,
and then it slowly sank down to the bottom, so
they always knew where the Child's Price was.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
The Price was just one of the many ships that
sank during the nineteen thirteen storm. In total, twelve ships
would end up on the bottom of the Great Lakes,
and countless others, like the Hawgood, would be beached and
battered on the shore. The storm was a truly horrific event.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
The legacy of the storm is that over two hundred
and fifty sailors lost their lives, and the reality is
that without radio or without you know, really good accounts
of who was actually on board these ships, there was
times when sailors would just jump on board and there
would be no real, you know, real record of them
being on so we'll never know the exact amount of
(16:05):
people lost, or the names of everybody who was lost
but to think of it in the terms of two
hundred and fifty sailors, that's two hundred families that didn't
have loved ones that came home from that storm. It
was devastating to them. And then add in the devastation
that was felt by towns like Godrich where most of
that destruction, especially those human bodies came ashore. It was
(16:28):
horrible for them as well. And the pictures of the
long funeral marches that would go to the grave marker
that's now in god Rich, you can imagine what that
must have felt for them as well. The headlines and
the stories that came out of there, and the eventual
stories that would be generated from those later on also
(16:48):
add to the magnitude of what that storm was. It
was one of the worst, in many cases called the
King of storms on the Great Lakes. So it probably
will never be equalled. We now have better weather forecasting,
We have satellites that fly over the top of the ships,
we have communication via satellite and via radio. It's just
amazing what that technology is like today and forecasting. But
(17:12):
we still have people that will try to batter the lakes.
You know, there's always that one that believes that they
can get in. Fortunately, or they are a thousand footers,
they're a lot less susceptible to the waves. But you'll
be surprised that, you know, even the biggest of all freighters,
including the Edmond Fitzgerald, were lost just because the captain
made a bad call. Nothing can be built that would
(17:34):
withstand the fury of the lakes when they get their
very worse, and unfortunately, that's what happens in November. As
those lakes start to cool off and that warmth from
the lakes meets the cold Arctic air, we get horrible snowstorms,
and we get winds that just tear at chips in
every direction and change on a dime. And that could
(17:56):
happen again tomorrow. There's still so much many clues out there,
and every time a ship is found, we start to
add another chapter. So I don't think the final chapter
has been written on the nineteen thirteen storm. It's over
one hundred years old, but we're still discovering new things
about it, and that's what makes it exciting.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And you've been listening to Rick Mixter tell the story
of one of America's great water tragedies. He also told
the story of the wreck of the Amin Fitzgerald, which
was riveting. And it's the rest of the story from
the song you'd heard and the real story the Gordon
Lightfoot song, of course, and one of our other really
good water disaster stories. One of our best is also,
(18:44):
of course, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, the worst
naval disaster in American history. Mixture, by the way, you
can find his work at Lakefury dot com. Listen to
his podcast. And my goodness, it was a perfect storm.
You had the f and ice formations on the deck
of the ships, thirty five foot sea walls coming at them,
(19:06):
and of course the wicked winds. Twelve ships down, all
hands lost, two hundred and fifty souls lost. The story
of the nineteen thirteen storm here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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