Great Lakes shipwrecks

Many a Midnight Ship: True Stories of Great Lakes Shipwrecks

(Riveting Stories of Maritime Tragedies on North America’s “Inland Seas”)

by Mark Bourrie (2005)

This book is a fascinating collection of stories, all of them terrible tragedies.

One of the worst events involving a single ship was when the Eastland capsized in the Chicago harbor in 1915. More passengers died on the Eastland than on the Titanic (the total loss on the Titanic was more because the Titanic had a larger crew).

Some of the disasters are mysteries. LaSalle’s ship Griffin disappeared with all hands in 1676 (?) after dropping LaSalle off along the shore of Lake Michigan. There is speculation that the ship sank in the Straights of Mackinac.

The worst storm in modern history was probably the hurricane of 1781. Hundreds of ships were lost in the Caribbean. The storm moved north, and unlike most hurricanes, actually hit the eastern Great Lakes. The British ship Ontario sailed into the path of this storm on Lake Ontario. The wreck has never been found.

The Great Storm of 1913 pounded the Great Lakes for four days in November. Some snow drifts in Detroit measured eight feet deep. Waves in the open lakes reached heights of sixty feet. Ships on Lake Superior disappeared with their crews. A boat towing a barge on Lake Michigan cut the barge loose, leaving the helpless men on the barge to die. A U.S. Marshall on the barge wrote a note damning those who abandoned him. The note washed up on shore in a bottle eleven days later.

The Armistice Day Storm of November 11, 1940 not only sank ships and killed sailors. 110 duck hunters froze to death in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Snow drifts twenty feet deep prevented them from returning home.

This book is a reminder of the awesome power of storms on the Great Lakes.