Ships and Men of the Great Lakes

by Dwight Boyer

Book Overview

Ships and men of the Great Lakes spans more than a century of Great Lakes history in a series of true, thoroughly documented dramas, most of them describing the misadventures of vessels and the men... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0396074464
• ISBN13: 9780396074465
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Dodd Mead
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

"The state of the weather is more difficult to assess in the courtroom than at sea..."

The Great Lakes have taken their share of unfortunate victims, the daily dramas and misadventures common to any seafaring venture, where the indomitability of nature presupposes the predictable. Illustrated with photographs and maps, this volume tells the stories of some of the brave souls who encountered the elements, some successful, most consigned to the anonymity of the seas, leaving behind a growing body of lore that speaks to man's continuing engagement with the elements. For more than a century these epic battles have been accounted, many before the technical advances that today's vessels enjoy. My own great-grandfather lost somewhere beneath these mighty waters, I thought to learn more of those, like him, who fought the good fight and lost, all of them ghostly neighbors in that vast, watery grave. Not a recent edition, Ships and Men of the Great Lakes was published in 1977, but time is insignificant in such matters, each tale adding to the history of the region's claim on its adventurers. Years ago, sailors spoke of "sailing through a crack in the lake", but in truth, most are lost to the violent storms, enormous swells and dangerous shoals, the regular hazards of any Great Lakes vessel. One of the most well known disasters befell the Edmund Fitzgerald, which disappeared in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975, scant moments after her captain radioed, "I am holding my own. We are going along like an old shoe. No problems at all." On the afternoon of August 9, 1841, the Erie departed, a steamer serving freight and passenger trade, a large number of hopeful immigrants on board. A brisk wind developed rapidly into a raging sea, the craft set ablaze by turpentine, carelessly placed too close to the boilers. In what became one of the great tragedies of the century, the wooden hull was consumed, leaving only fifty survivors, none of them children. Eventually, Charles Dickens would pen his "Helmsman of Lake Eerie", inspired by the folklore of the conflagration of the Erie. In 1908, the Soo City promised twenty-one carpeted staterooms, luxurious furnishings, stained glass windows and other trappings of wealth. Constricted by a fluctuating maritime economy, the Soo City set sail from Michigan City with a skeleton crew of fourteen men, far short of the usual twenty-eight required by law, destination New Orleans. Berthing after eleven days at Ogdensburg, New York, the vessel again set sail on November 11, but never even reached the security of New York Harbor, listed missing after ten days overdue. Detritus was later found off the westernmost point of Newfoundland, the ship a victim of a freak forty-eight hour storm, crew and passengers buried beneath roiling, mountainous seas. Chapter after chapter reveals such tales, the Sand Merchant, the City of Bangor, the Penobscot, all victims of inclement weather or fire, each decade with its own memorial to the forces of the deep. Well-researched, with an eye toward the real human tragedies involved, this