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By Fred Landon

Western Ontario Historical Notes, Volume 5, #2, 1947

These are busy days on the Great Lakes. From Duluth and Port Arthur and Fort William on Lake Superior, and from Chicago on Lake Michigan, and all between these points and Lake Erie there is a race on, and the competitors are numbered by the dozen. It is a race between the Great Lakes fleets and the weather. It is a struggle to get in one more trip before the ice comes to the rivers and the steamers have to tie up at their docks. This has been a season without grave mishap to the hundreds of vessels engaged in the Lakes trade, but all too often in the past the elements have won and good vessels have come to grief.

Owners have anxious hours when November comes to the lakes, for it is a month of storms. Navigation usually extends for a week or more into December but the risks are further increased by the formation of ice in the rivers and by the formation of ice on the vessels themselves as they plough their way through the great waves of the upper lakes. The toll is heaviest in the closing weeks of navigation.

This week brings the fortieth anniversary of a vessel loss late in the year that is remembered by many people in Western Ontario, and particularly remembered by citizens of Sarnia. In 1906, forty years ago this week, the passenger steamer Monarch ended her career on the wild shores of Isle Royale in Lake Superior. Though only one life was lost, the passengers and crew suffered greatly from exposure and were literally castaways on the island for three days until taken off by tugs sent out from Port Arthur.

The Monarch, built at Sarnia in 1888, was a popular vessel with the travelling public and during the summer season was never without a full passenger list. Even on this last trip in 1906 she had a number of passengers aboard when she pulled away from Port Arthur in early evening of December 6, 1906. Her Captain was Captain Edward Robertson and her engineer Samuel Beatty. The cargo was largely flour, a circumstance that was not without value when food was needed a few hours later.

About ten o’clock that night the purser met the chief engineer and remarked that the boat was making remarkable time for they were already abreast of Passage Island light. The engineer looked at his clock and quickly answered, “Well, we shouldn’t be. We aren’t due there for another twenty minutes.” It was only minutes later that there was a terrific bump that shook the whole ship. They were on the rocks of Isle Royale and water came racing from the forepart of the boat like a millrace. When the Monarch struck the bow ran high upon the shore, the nose being out of water. Soundings taken from the passenger gangway showed no bottom at ninety feet. The engineer kept the engines turning slowly ahead to keep the vessel from falling back, knowing that if she did she would go to the bottom. An attempt was made to lower the boats but the falls were coated with ice and when the boats did reach the water they vanished in the darkness. Spray drowned the dynamo, the lights went out and the fires being quenched the engines quickly stopped.

Fortunately the fore part of the ship was so tight against the shore that it was possible to get a man overboard. By swinging the line he managed to make a landing, though just as he did so the vessel slid backwards and the whole after end broke off and disappeared. It was possible, however, to get a line tied from the wreck to a tree and one by one the passengers and crew made their way to shore. Only one failed. A sailor who had been suffering for some days from temporary blindness became panic stricken and fearful that he would be abandoned. While attempting to descend the side of the boat by clinging to one of the fenders he lost his grip and fell into the icy water.

Captain Robertson remained on the wreck during the night but came ashore in the morning. Fires had been lighted and some bags of flour which drifted in provided a little food. The forty men and women found some shelter in the bush. All day Friday the crew kept large fires burning to provide warmth and to attract attention. But no vessel appeared and the fog over the lake prevented the lightkeeper on Passage Island from seeing the signals of distress. Saturday passed as Friday had without aid arriving. On Saturday night two immense fires were lighted and faithfully tended. The lightkeeper noticed these on Sunday morning and, the lake having calmed somewhat, he crossed over in a small boat to find out the cause.

One of the officers of the Monarch returned with him and that evening, when they saw the lights of a vessel bound down they went out in their boat and hailed the steamer, giving news of the wreck. It turned out to be the steamer Edmonton which promptly turned about and returned to Port Arthur with all speed. The tugs Whalen and Laura Grace were immediately sent out to bring in the wrecked people, all of whom had lost their belongings and had been three days on an almost uninhabited island in nearly midwinter weather. By the time they were rescued the wreck had largely broken up but this had one advantage. Some canned food drifted ashore. It was a welcome relief from the fare provided by the sodden flour.

Captain Robertson was in command of the Monarch during the whole of her sailing days. Rotund in face and body with cheeks the color of raw beef, under middle height; his close cut chin whisker shaped like a spade gave him a kind of Teutonic aspect, though he really was Scotch. He retired from the lakes after the loss of the Monarch. The sister ship to the Monarch, the old United Empire, continued in service for some years after 1906, being renamed the Saronic. The Monarch and United Empire were the predecessors of the larger steel ships, Huronic, Hamonic and Noronic. The Huronic is still in service after more than forty years of sailing but is now a package freighter running out of Sarnia. The Hamonic was burned in the summer of 1945. Only the Noronic remains of the upper lakes passenger fleet.

Whenever November comes about thoughts of lake folk turn to the great storm of 1913, the anniversary of which was recently noted in many Western Ontario newspapers. This storm stands out as by far the most disastrous ever recorded on the Great Lakes. It came close to home for the greater loss of life and of ships was in the lower area of Lake Huron. This wild storm broke on Sunday, November 9 though signals for “heavy gales” had been flying in all ports as early as the preceding Friday. Scores of bulk freighters were on the open waters when the real storm came. Those which were most lucky found shelter. But eight ships went down on Lake Huron and two more on Lake Superior and not one survivor from any of the ten vessels remained to tell the story of what had happened.

Newspapers which appeared on the morning after the storm were chiefly filled with stories of the damage done on land since as yet no word had come of the tragedy on the lakes. Throughout large areas of Ontario and Michigan telephone and telegraph communication was completely out before Sunday evening while trains and electric cars were stalled by the wet snow which in some places was four feet deep. The water rose from four to five feet above normal at the foot of Lake Huron and it was estimated that damage amounting to $100,000 was done at Port Huron alone.

On Monday morning an officer of the life-saving station above Port Huron saw, far out on the lake, what appeared to be the hull of a vessel, without masts or stack. It was rising and falling with the waves. He at once telephoned to the Reid Wrecking Company at Sarnia and a tug was sent out to investigate. The tug crew found the strangest wreck ever known on the lakes. A big steel freighter had turned turtle and was now floating upside down, buoyed up by the air within the hull. The bow was about thirty feet out of water but the hull was submerged so that it was not possible to tell the length of the vessel. Nor was any name plate visible. It was a mystery ship and it remained a mystery ship for nearly a week.

Meanwhile other evidence of the tragedy appeared on the lake shore above Sarnia. Bodies began to drift in, bearing a variety of names on the life preservers. Some were from the Wexford, others from the Regina, the Charles S. Price, the James Carruthers. For more than a week bodies continued to float ashore from the vessels mentioned and from others for which some measure of hope had been entertained. In all more than sixty dead sailors were found along the Lake Huron beaches. Not all were identified. The graves of some of the unidentified may be seen in the cemetery at Goderich.

During the anxious days that followed that stormy Sunday, efforts were being made to identify the floating hull. At first it was thought to be the Wexford, later there was reason to believe that it might be the Regina or the James Carruthers. By Friday there was a suspicion that it was the Charles S. Price of the Mahoning Steamship Company’s fleet. This was confirmed on Saturday, the 15th, when a Detroit diver went down and worked his way around the hull until he found the name plate, the Charles S. Price. There was no indication of a collision and there was no other vessel under the bow as some had thought might be the case. The Price finally sank from view on the 17th, eight days after she had turned over.

This storm of 1913 has always been thought of as particularly related to Lake Huron since the loss there was so much greater than elsewhere. Eight vessels went down in the southern portion of the lake and the lives lost there numbered 178. Elsewhere 57 sailors perished, making the total 235.

One of the strangest incidents in connection with the lake tragedy had to do with young John Thompson of Hamilton, Ontario, who read in a Toronto newspaper that his body had come ashore from the James Carruthers and had been identified by his family. He hastened to his home and actually found a coffin in his father’s house with preparations being made for a funeral. A sister of young John, on learning that bodies were coming ashore from the James Carruthers and believing that he was aboard that vessel, had sent word to the family at Hamilton. The father hastened to Goderich and was shocked to find a body which bore resemblance to his son, even to the extent of a remembered tattoo mark. Others also identified it as young John. The return of the boy was almost as great a shock as the news of his death. He had left the Carruthers prior to her last trip and had been aboard another vessel at the time of the storm.

What deeds of heroism marked the last minutes of men aboard the doomed vessels can only be conjectured. The body of Mrs. Walker, the stewardess of the Argus, came ashore wrapped in a heavy coat belonging to one of the engineers and with the captain’s own life preserver. But when the body of Captain Paul Hutch was washed upon the sand it was without a life preserver.

Navigation on the lakes does not mean the same thing as navigation of the deep blue sea. For one thing the season is short. When the ice goes out in the spring, usually about the end of April, a rush commences that never ceases until the early days of December when insurance rates are raised high and when the ice begins to form in the slower running parts of the St. Mary’s River.

Winter appears to be the natural condition on stern-browed Lake Superior.

The warmth of summer never hints at more than a temporary relenting. Cold equinoctial gales come in September. Snowstorms are likely in October. November is a winter month but the canals and harbors are kept free by ice-breakers and the grain comes down from Port Arthur and Fort William and the ore from other Lake Superior ports as long as navigation continues. But when December comes there is no longer any question as to the title to the grim upper lakes regions—they belong to the North.

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

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

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

The original article was printed using a typewriter. Italics have been added to the ebook where appropriate for ship names.

A cover was created for this ebook which is placed in the public domain.

[End of Some Great Lake Tragedies, by Fred Landon]