The Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook of Great Lakes Storm of 1913 by Fred Landon

This eBook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the eBook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the eBook. If either of these conditions applies, please contact a https://www.fadedpage.com administrator before proceeding. Thousands more FREE eBooks are available at https://www.fadedpage.com.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

Title: Great Lakes Storm of 1913

Date of first publication: 1954

Author: Fred Landon (1880-1969)

Date first posted: February 4, 2026

Date last updated: February 4, 2026

Faded Page eBook #20260210

This eBook was produced by: John Routh & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

By Fred Landon

The storm which swept over the Great Lakes region on Sunday, November 9, 1913, still stands as the most disastrous ever recorded in the history of these inland waters.^[1] The loss of life was appalling. More than two hundred sailors were drowned, one hundred seventy-eight on Lake Huron alone. On that lake eight vessels, several of them of the most recent type, disappeared without a single survivor. Two others were lost on Lake Superior, again with no one left to tell what had happened. Scores of other vessels were driven ashore or suffered serious damage. The wreckage on land ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars and crippled public services over large areas. Forty years after this storm it is still spoken of with almost awe at the magnitude of the death toll and the shipping losses involved.

November is nearly always a stormy month on the lakes and despite all the safety devices of today sailors continue to face it with a measure of trepidation. In November of 1905 there was a great storm on Lake Superior that has never been forgotten, and November in many other years has brought sad loss of lives and ships. Yet, curiously, November of 1913, save for this one storm, was a month much milder than the average for the time of the year with temperatures everywhere above normal. The severest weather came in the wake of the big storm with heavy and driving snows over northeast Ohio and western New York which drifted badly because of the high winds prevailing. The Monthly Weather Review for November, 1913, reported that while higher winds had been recorded in other disturbances none had continued so long, thereby causing extraordinarily high seas and consequent damage to shipping. Scores of boats which experienced the storm and survived it had to visit the shipyards during the following winter. The icy waters of Lake Huron were described by survivors as a seething mass such as they had never seen before and it is probable that those aboard the lost vessels did not even know where they were.

As early as the morning hours of Friday, November 7, there had been indication that weather conditions were troubled. The lower end of Lake Huron received the most extreme fury of the elements on Sunday. While fifty miles west of Whitefish Point on Lake Superior the Pittsburgh steamer Cornell, with the wind light from the southeast, suddenly encountered an unusually heavy northeast sea, and shortly afterward the wind backed to northerly, blowing a gale which lasted until Monday night. The Cornell sustained heavy damage and was kept off the shore with the greatest difficulty. Yet, curiously, at Duluth and the western end of Lake Superior there was no loss of life or property during this storm period.

Elsewhere there was no marked indication of stormy weather. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, in its morning edition on Sunday, November 9, contained the following weather prediction: “Local snows and colder. Monday fair and warmer. Brisk winds.” This, of course, was printed at an early hour but when citizens awoke on that Sunday morning they found light snow falling which grew ever heavier as the day advanced until street car service was blocked, telegraph and telephone service stopped by falling wires and poles, and street lighting off for the same reason. The city was soon without outside communication and a continued snowfall during Monday made the situation worse. On Monday afternoon, however, a wireless message came from Captain John Franklin Jones of the steamer Shenango to the Shenango fleet manager in Cleveland. It read: “A wreck lies in the direct course of downbound ships eleven miles north by N.E. of Fort Gratiot and seven miles from the west shore.” The Shenango fleet was at that time the only line equipped with wireless. This was Cleveland’s first word of the tragedy elsewhere and its first outside communication since Sunday afternoon.

The floating wreck on Lake Huron which Captain Jones reported had already been seen by others. On Monday afternoon George W. Plough of the Lake View Beach Lifeboat Station (now Port Huron Lifeboat Station) was searching the tossing waters with his glass when he suddenly saw, far out in the lake, what appeared be a hull. He could see no masts or stack as the object rose fell on the waters. He quickly communicated with the Reid Wrecking Company of Sarnia and a tug was sent up the lake to investigate. Captain Tom Reid, long experienced in such work, found the strangest wreck he had ever seen. It was a steel steamer which had turned turtle and was floating with its stern submerged but with its bow sticking out of the water about thirty feet. The hull was so covered with ice that no name plate was visible. Apparently the vessel had overturned during the storm and was now held afloat by the imprisoned air. During succeeding days the hull was repeatedly visited, but it was not until Friday, November 14, that its identity was settled. It was then found to be the Charles S. Price, of the Mahoning Steamship Company’s fleet, a nine thousand ton vessel 524 feet in length and built only three years before. The hull floated on the surface until the morning of November 17, eight days after it had overturned.

At the time the hull of the Price was discovered it was not known whether other vessels had been lost. But evidence of other losses soon came. On the Tuesday morning after the storm, Robert Turnbull, a farmer residing near the Canadian shore above Grand Bend, went to the beach and there saw what at first appeared to be a limb of a tree washing in and out with each wave. Soon he realized that it was not a limb but the icy frozen body of a man, the arms extended as if pleading for help. Securing assistance, Mr. Turnbull pulled the body up on the sand and a search soon recovered two other bodies and also a broken lifeboat. All three bodies bore life preservers with the name “Wexford.” A railroad conductor coming into Sarnia brought the first word that bodies were coming ashore up the lake. Hour by hour messages followed of other bodies being found farther north along the Canadian shore and that they bore life preservers from the Regina, the Wexford, the Charles S. Price and the James Carruthers. The tragedy was evidently more extensive than anyone had thought possible.

For more than a week bodies continued to come ashore and were removed to nearby communities in sleighs or wagons. Inquests were held, and as word went out through the press relatives and friends of sailors known to be on the boats lost or who might be on others whose fate was still undetermined thronged the area. Heart-rending scenes were witnessed during identification of the bodies which were laid on the floors of stores and other buildings.

Mrs. Samuel Brines of Detroit, seeking the body of her brother, Howard Mackley, the second mate of the Price, has graphic recollections of her visit to the village of Thedford, Ontario. She was accompanied by Mrs. Mackley who had seen the Price pass St. Clair on that Sunday morning headed toward Lake Huron. Mackley had saluted his wife and sister as he passed with a blast of the steamer’s whistle and they had waved to him. The weather on that Sunday morning was mild and cloudy but before night the streets were blocked with snow. The wife and sister were deeply disturbed as the hours passed, fearful of what might be happening on Lake Huron. Not until Tuesday morning did they have any definite word of the tragedy. On Wednesday they went to Thedford by train. There in a local furniture store, which was also an undertaking establishment, bodies covered with newspapers were laid out in a row on the floor. The two women quickly recognized one of the bodies. “That is Mr. Groundwater,” the young wife exclaimed. She knew the chief engineer as she had traveled on the Price.

They went later to an outbuilding where farm machinery was stored and there looked at other bodies that had just been brought in. There still was sand from the beach on the faces of the drowned men. Here they recognized a second body, that of Arz McIntosh, a wheelsman from St. Clair. He had wanted to leave the boat because of eye trouble but stayed on this last trip to make the money for a possible operation. Still another was recognized. Mrs. Mackley saw a body with a cook’s apron tied about it.

“It’s Mr. [Herbert] Jones, the steward,” she exclaimed in horror. “The ship is lost.” She was not able to identify any others. The body of her husband was not there and was never recovered.

Later Milton Smith of Port Huron, an engineer on the Price, who had left the boat at Cleveland before it sailed on its last trip, visited the Thedford morgue and at once recognized his former chief, John Groundwater.

“That’s big good-natured John,” he exclaimed. “How the boys all liked him.”

“Well this body had one of the Regina’s life preservers wrapped around his body,” said the coroner.

And therein lies one of the great mysteries of that awful Sunday storm. Did the Price and the Regina collide or come so closely in contact with one another that men passed from one deck to the other? That mystery will never be solved as there were no survivors from either vessel.

More than sixty bodies in all came ashore and all were identified except five. These “unknowns” were buried in the cemetery at Goderich. Their graves are marked by a tall dark red polished obelisk with an anchor carved on the top and bearing on one side the inscription: “A memorial to the unidentified seamen whose lives were lost in the Great Lakes disaster of Nov. 9th, 1913.” On the other side is the single word “Sailors.”

Apart from the Wexford, which had been built in a British yard in 1883 but was still regarded as seaworthy, all of the eight boats lost on Lake Huron were fairly recent additions to the lakes fleets. There were three over five hundred feet in length: the Isaac M. Scott, built in 1909; the Charles S. Price, built in 1910; and the James Carruthers, built at Collingwood in 1913 and therefore in its first year of service. The Scott and Price belonged to the Hanna operated fleet, the Carruthers was a Canadian boat. There were three boats over four hundred feet long: the Argus and Hydrus of the Interlake fleet, both built in 1903; and the John A. McGean of the Hutchinson fleet, built in 1908. The Regina, a Canadian boat built in 1907, was 269 feet in length and had a carrying capacity of three thousand gross tons. In addition to the eight boats lost on Lake Huron the Howard M. Hanna, Jr. and the Matoa were reported as constructive total losses.

Three of the doomed steamers were seen around midday on Sunday by Captain Arthur C. May of the steamer H. B. Hawgood which had entered Lake Huron from the St. Clair River early Sunday morning. About noon Captain May saw the Price just above Sand Beach “making bad weather.” Turning about to head back to the river he saw the Regina south of Harbor Beach and a little later saw the Scott some few miles above Fort Gratiot Light. Captain May himself ran into trouble for, missing the Huron lightship which had broken from its anchorage and gone on the shore, his vessel also went aground about two miles above the river mouth. The Howard M. Hanna, Jr. went ashore at Point aux Barques on Sunday evening, her master being unable to keep the vessel’s head to the sea. She lost her rudder and half an hour before she went ashore her smokestack went overboard. The lifesaving crew at Point aux Barques was able to rescue the crew of thirty-two men and one woman.

Two vessels were lost on Lake Superior with all their crews, forty-one in number. These were the steamer H. B. Smith of 10,000 tons capacity and the Leafield, a Canadian boat built in 1890 in a British yard but in service for years on the upper lakes. The barge Plymouth disappeared on Lake Michigan with its crew of seven, and Lightship No. 82 at Point Abino near Buffalo was also lost with its crew of six. Three vessels were constructive total losses on Lake Superior, the L. C. Waldo, Major, and Turret Chief. Their crews escaped. Three lives were lost, however, when the steamer Nottingham was wrecked on Parisian Island on Lake Superior. The steamer Louisiana was a constructive total loss on Lake Michigan but its crew survived the storm.

Some explanation of the turbulence on lower Lake Huron may be gained by examination of the lake currents and the prevailing winds on that terrible Sunday. The main current of Lake Huron follows the Michigan shore and extends the length of the lake, turning at the south end and passing up the east coast. There is also a return current passing not far south of Manitoulin Island and signs of a return current at the northwest end of the lake. The wind on that Sunday blew first from the northwest, then shifted to the north, and finally came from the northeast. In the later hours, therefore, the wind was coming from one direction while the lake current moved in an almost opposite direction. The whole body of water was thereby agitated, the Canadian shore offering no protection. Undoubtedly very unusual weather conditions prevailed on Lake Huron on that Sunday afternoon and night. Only most unusual conditions could account for the loss of such a vessel as the Price built only three years before; or the James Carruthers which had been launched at Collingwood on May 22 and sailed on its first trip on June 18, less than five months before it disappeared. These boats were equipped with all devices known at that time to ensure safety but they were not sufficient for this storm.

There was some disposition in marine circles to blame the Weather Bureau for not giving sufficiently early warning of the approaching gales. The Weather Bureau, however, promptly showed that its storm warnings had appeared as early as Thursday, November 6, and that they had been repeated on Friday and Saturday. Yet it seems true that the nature of this 1913 weather disturbance was such as almost to defy advance prognostications. An interview with a lake captain which appeared on the front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer on November 20 strongly criticized the practice of some companies of pushing their captains into taking chances. The storm and its disastrous effects were widely discussed in shipping and ship-building circles during the months following.

A question frequently asked is, could such a loss of lives and shipping occur today. As to the storm itself there is no doubt that it might recur in any year. As to the effects of such a storm upon shipping of today the answer must be that boats and their officers are now better equipped and should run less risk of getting into trouble. The human element need not be regarded as better today than in 1913 but science and invention have provided new safety devices that give greater protection than was available in 1913. In November, 1913, there was not much other than the compass, the chart, and the log trailing astern. Since then there have come the gyro compass, the depth sounder, the radio direction finder, radar, and ship-to-shore telephone connection. Radio-telegraphy was still in its early stages of development in 1913. The other aids were not yet developed.

The more recently built vessels of the 1913 period did not differ much from those of the present day, being of steel construction with double bottoms, screw propulsion, and other physical characteristics following present trends. The master of one vessel that was blown ashore on Lake Huron reported that on several occasions tremendous seas were running in one direction while winds of sixty to seventy miles velocity were blowing from an opposite quarter. It was also reported that because of the longer duration of the high wind velocity the seas were unusually high and made waves in groups of three without the ordinary trough which is usually present. Whether the ships of today, even with all their safety devices, could survive like conditions is a debatable question.

There was a gloom over all the lake shipping during the remaining few weeks of the 1913 season. Many boats were sent to winter quarters earlier than usual. Vessels continuing in trade kept their flags at half mast as they moved from port to port. There was an air of relief when the season came to an end without further loss of life or shipping.

[1]	From a talk given before the Marine Historical Society in June, 1953.

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.