The Great Lakes / The Vessels That Plough Them: Their Owners, Their Sailors, and Their Cargoes, Together with a Brief History of Our Inland Seas

by James Oliver Curwood

A Remarkable Photograph Showing the Big Freighter “Stimson” in a Holocaust of Smoke and Flame.

In view of the action already being taken to bring about legislation to prevent collisions, it is interesting to note that no similar area of any ocean, if suddenly robbed of its waters, would expose to human eyes more sunken ships, or more valuable cargoes, than the Great Lakes. During the twenty years between 1878 and 1898, only one less than 6000 vessels were wrecked on the Inland Seas, and 1093 these were total losses. The loss of cargo during this period of a little more than one fourth of the years of navigation on the Lakes was nearly $8,000,000, and from this it is quite safe to figure that the total amount of property that has gone to the bottom of the Lakes, including only cargoes, would make a total of at least $15,000,000, involving the wrecking of 14,000 vessels and the total loss of over 2000 ships. Were these “total losses” strung out in a row, there would be a sunken ship at a distance of every half-mile over the thousand-mile length of the Lakes between Buffalo and Duluth. What a field for romance here! What material for the seeker of human achievement, of heroism, of sacrifice! Scores of these vessels disappeared as suddenly and as mysteriously as though some great power had smuggled them from the face of the earth, leaving naught behind to tell of the tragedies; hundreds of ships carried with them valuable cargoes which remain to this day for lucky fortune-hunters to recover from the depths; and in their going thousands of lives were snuffed out, and thousands of unwritten acts of heroism were played and never heard of, or forgotten.

How many remember the name of Captain James Jackson? Jackson is only one of a thousand heroes of the Inland Seas, and the deed which made him famous among Lake seamen is only one of a thousand of a similar kind. It happened one year in the closing days of navigation on Superior. The owners of the freighter W. F. Sauber had sent that ship from Duluth with one last load of iron ore under the command of W. E. Morris. Off Whitefish Point the vessel was caught in a fierce storm from the north. All night she weathered the gale, but with morning there came a blinding sleet with fierce wind and intense cold, and the breaking seas froze as they touched the upper works of the ship. Under the increasing weight of ice the disabled Sauber gradually settled. When thus the “little ice devils” of Superior gather upon a victim, it sometimes happens that no power of man can save the ship, and in this instance the crew of the doomed freighter realised that it was only a matter of a short time before the end would come. But strange things happen on the Inland Seas, as on the oceans.

Upon this day, so far as is known, there were just two vessels on Lake Superior, and fate decreed that they should meet off Whitefish Point. While the men of the Sauber were waiting for death, the steamer Yale was tearing her way through the gale toward the “Soo,” and as he passed Captain Jackson sighted the sinking ship. It was then that occurred that act which won him a gold medal and a purse contributed to by hundreds of sailors all over the Lakes.

After a Fierce Night’s “Late Navigation” Run across Lake Superior.

Notwithstanding the peril of his own situation, Captain Jackson brought his vessel to. For hours it was buffeted in the trough of the sea, which was too heavy for small boats to attempt a rescue in. Night came, and the freighters drifted to within a stone’s throw of each other. At dawn, when the Yale might have been safely in port, it was found that she, too, was gradually settling, and that the Sauber could not live an hour longer. Captain Jackson at once called for volunteers willing to risk their lives in an attempt at rescue; he himself went out in the first boat. If bravery was ever rewarded it was then. Every member of the Sauber’s crew, with the exception of the captain, was carried to the Yale. At the last moment Captain Morris attempted to lower himself into one of the boats—hesitated—then leaped back to the deck of the sinking ship.

“Go on, boys!” he shouted through the gale. “Good luck to you, but I’m going to stay with the old boat!”

This is heroism, sacrifice, faithfulness, as they are bred on the Inland Seas.

Thirty minutes later the Sauber went under, and immediately after the explosion of her deck, caused by the pressure of air and water, those who were still courageously waiting in a small boat heard the last cries of Captain Morris rising above the gale.