These “last days of navigation”—the season when life and property are hazarded by crews and captains with a recklessness that thrills one’s blood—are justly dreaded, and I have been told by a hopeful few that the time is coming when proper legislation will send ships into winter quarters earlier than now. It is at this time that casualties multiply with alarming rapidity, the perils of Lake navigation becoming tenfold as great as those of the ocean. Heavy fogs hide the beacons that mark the danger lines. Blinding snowstorms blot out the most powerful lights. Driven by fierce gales, weighted by ice, with heaven and sea meeting in a pall that conceals the guiding stars ashore, scores of vessels continue to beat onward in the hope of adding one more successful trip to their season’s record.
The history of a Lake Superior tragedy is simple. One more trip from Duluth may mean thousands of dollars. The season is late—too late. But freight rates are high. No risk, no gain, argues the ship-owner, as he sends his vessel from port. Those are days of anxiety for captain, crew, and owner. In a few hours the clear sky may give place to banks of snow clouds. The air turns bitter cold. Darkness falls in the middle of the afternoon. The snow descends in dense clouds. It is far worse than the blackest night, for it shuts out the lights along the treacherous shores as completely as a wall of mountains. Upon the captain alone now depends the safety of the ship, for the Government’s attempts to aid him are futile. Perhaps his vessel is safely making her course miles from the coast. Or it may be that it is driving steadily toward its doom upon the dreaded Pictured Rocks. It was in this way that the steamer Superior was lost with all on board, and in the same way the Western Reserve beat herself to pieces within sight of the Big Sable light. And Superior has a harder fate in store for many of those who take the last ill-fated trip of the season. Sailors dread it more than the tragedy of dense snowstorms, when they run upon the rocks, for even there hope does not die; they dread it more than the fierce, sledge-hammer wash of Erie in a storm; more than the fearful dash for port in Lake Michigan, where ports are few; and this fate is the fate of “the little ice devils”—those masses of ice which freeze upon a ship until she is weighted beyond control.
In these days of late navigation—days of fierce battles with snow, ice, and wind, days of death and destruction as they are never known upon the salt seas—is material for a generation of writers; unnumbered stories of true mystery, true romance, and true tragedy, which, if fed to the nation in popular form, would be of immeasurable value to lovers of the literature of adventure. Into what a fascinating tale of mystery, for example, might the loss of the Queen of the West be turned! And, yet, here is a case where truth is in reality stranger than fiction, and possibly an editor might “turn down” the tale as too improbable. Recently I chronicled a true romance of the Lakes. I had dates, names of ships, names of people, and even court records to prove the absolute verity of my story, which was related in the form of fiction. I sent it to several editors who had published other stories of mine, and one after another they returned it, saying that while my proofs were conclusive, the story was so unusual in some of its situations that their readers would consider the tale as a gross exaggeration of anything that might occur on the Great Lakes!
Well, here is the story of the Queen of the West—only one of scores of Lake incidents equally unusual; and I hope that it will have at least some weight in showing that things can occur on the Inland Seas. In the late navigation days of 1903, the freighter Cordurus left Duluth on a “last trip down.” In mid-lake, the lookout reported a ship in distress, and upon nearer approach the vessel was found to be the Queen of the West, two miles out of her course, and sinking. Captain McKenzie immediately changed his course that he might go to the rescue, at the same time signalling the other vessel to lay to. What was his astonishment when he perceived the Queen of the West bearing rapidly away from him, as though her captain and crew were absolutely oblivious of their sinking condition, as well as of the fact that assistance was at hand!
A Ship that Made the Shore before she Sank. The Work of Raising her in Progress.
Now began what was without doubt the most unusual “chase” in marine history. Every eye on the deck of the Cordurus could see that the Queen of the West was sinking—that at any moment she might plunge beneath the sea. Was her captain mad? Each minute added to the mystery. The fleeing ship had changed her course so that she was bearing directly on to the north Superior shore. Added fuel was crammed under the Cordurus’s boilers; yard by yard, length by length, she gained upon the sinking vessel. Excited figures were seen waving their arms and signalling from the Queen of the West’s deck. But still the ship continued on her mysterious flight. At last Captain McKenzie came within hailing distance. His words have passed down into Lake history:
“You’re sinking, you idiot! Why don’t you heave to?”
“I know it—but I can’t,” came back the voice of the Queen of the West’s captain. “We’re almost gone and if we stop our engines for a second we’ll go down like a chunk of lead!”
Not stopping to consider the risk. Captain McKenzie ran alongside. The Queen of the West’s engines were stopped and her crew clambered aboard. Hardly had the Cordurus dropped safely away when the doomed ship went down. Her momentum alone had kept her from sinking sooner.