"There wasn't no sech lights then as there is now, for one thing, an' a skipper had to keep his eyes peeled an' his lead goin'. An', for 'nother thing, in the days I'm talkin' of, they was mostly all sailin' craft. Now I'm not sayin' nothin' in favor of steamers—I was raised on an ol'-time clipper. I will say that when a gale ain't too bad, a steamer kin handle herself more easy-like 'n a sailin' craft, when there ain't but a little seaway. But when she's blowin' good an' strong, an' the gale's got more heft 'n a steamer's screws, what use is her machines to her?"
"Not much," said the boy.
"Ye're sayin' it," the old keeper continued. "An' in the ol' days, when steamers first run on the Lakes, they weren't no such boats as ye see now. Our worst wrecks in them days were the steamers. This one, that your pappy wants me to tell ye 'bout, was a steamer an' a three-masted fore-an'-after she had in tow.
"This yarn I'm a spinnin' reely begins down at Marquette Breakwater. It was on the seventeenth day of November, an', let me see, it must have been in 'eighty-six, the same year my youngest was born. The winter had broke in early that year, not with any reel stormy weather, but jest a bunch o' pesky squalls. An' cold! We was in the boat mighty near every day, an' I used ter forget what bein' warm felt like. There was allers somethin' hittin' a shoal or tryin' to make a hole in the beach. It was squally an' shiftin', ye see. An' the mush-ice set in early."
Courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses.
Wrecks! And the Ice Between!
Steamer ashore near St. Joseph, Mich., under conditions all but impossible for life-saving, yet not a soul was lost.