Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2014 All Rights Reserved USGenNet Data Repository Please read USGenNet Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ =========================================================================== Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== Toledo Blade Friday, October 10 , 1952 [p. 1] IN SUNDAY'S BLADE GHOST SHIPS OF THE LAKES In the years since the first vessle was launched on the Great Lakes, an astonishing number of sloops, brigs, schooners and even big steam vessels have vanished with- out a trace in these freshwater seas. In Sunday's Blade, staff writer Dwight Boyer writes the eerie tale of as much as is known of the last voyages of the ghost ships of the Lakes. It's a long time since most of these ships disappeared, but many are the weird tales of their being sighted on stormy nights at sea. Here's an enthralling story of the grey ghosts of the Great Lakes riding the endless waves of the past. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Toledo Blade Sunday, October 12, 1952 [Sec. 6, p. 1] PHANTOM VESSELS RIVAL THOSE 'SEEN' ON OCEAN By DWIGHT BOYER Blade Staff Writer EVERY salt water sailor alive has heard the strange and eerie tale of the MARY CELESTE, a fine big American brigantine from whose decks the entire crew unaccountably disappeared. When found, the ship was some 700 miles west of Gibralter. Sails were set, clothing and personal be- longings, even the pipes of the crewmen were in their proper places. No sign of violence or disorder could be found but the ship's papers and the lifeboat were missing. Everyone aboard when the ship sailed from New York including the captain's wife and 2-year-old daughter had vanished. While the mystery of the MARY CELESTE has never been solved, she was but another in a long list of sea mysteries, although in most cases neither ship or crew lived to tell about it. The steamer PRESI- DENT sailed from New York with 136 persons aboard and was never sighted again. A big steamer of the Collins line vanished at sea with her entire complement of 288 including crew and passengers and only four years later the British training ship ATLANTA left Bermuda with 290 seamen and never made port again. Shortly before the turn of the century, the big White Star Line vessel NORONIC disappeared without a trace on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York. The U.S.S. CYCLOPS, a huge ship of 19,300 tons displacement, last sighted in the vicinity of the West Indies, never made port again. In 1923 the Mallory line steamship SWIFTSTAR made the west- ward passage through the Panama Canal and then simply vanished with all hands. * SUPERSTITIOUS salt water sailors called them "ghost" ships - ships that sailed forever on the uncharted seas of time and many are the weird tales of these "ghost" ships being sighted on stormy nights at sea. These great disasters, because of the mystery and conjecture surrounding them, captured the imagi- nation of the public and were subject to countless newspaper stories. Yet, while these "ghost" ships were writing grisly pages into the log of salt water sailing, Great Lakes seamen, hundreds of miles from tidewater, were busy trying to solve their own mysteries of disappearing ships and lost men. It is a matter of record that ever since LaSalle launched the GRIFFIN, first com- mercial vessel to sail the lakes, an astonishing number of sloops, brigs, schooners and big steam vessels have vanished without a trace in the fresh- water seas even as their "ghost" ship counterparts on salt water. Ships coming down through the Soo locks in late September of 1924 were handed a brief but ominous message. It read: "Ships are requested to be on the lookout for the steamer CLIFTON, three days overdue at Port Huron with 25 men aboard! Signed Lynn Brothers Marine Reporters The CLIFTON, one of a great fleet of whaleback or "pig" boats launched in the 1890's, had passed Mackinaw at 10:20 a.m. on the previous Sunday with her holds laden with crushed stone. A gale had lashed Lake Huron on Sunday night but the sturdy CLIFTON had survived a score of autumnal storms in past years and was considered a good heavy weather ship. Her master, Capt. Emmet Gallagher, was a man with years of experience in lake sailing. For several days, A. R. Schneider, general manager for the CLIFTON'S owners, remained close to his telephone in vain hope that word would come that the ship had taken shelter in some remote bay or had been delayed by engine trouble. Finally, how- ever, part of the CLIFTON'S pilot house was found floating off Thunder Bay by the Canadian ship GLENCAIRN and the CLIFTON was chalked up as another ship "lost with all hands!" * NONE OF the 52 persons aboard the big 340-foot Grand Trunk carferry MILWAUKEE lived to tell of what happened aboard her on that terrible October night in 1929 when she went down somewhere between Milwaukee and Muskegon, Mich. The big car- [Sec. 6, p. 9] The big car-ferries on Lake Michigan usually operate all winter long and are built especially for bad weather and ice but the MILWAUKEE simply vanished. Experienced lake men can only conclude that in some manner her cargo of 28 boxcars of merchandise must have torn loose from their restraining clamps as the ship rolled in heavy seas and either roared out through her stern gate or shifted suddenly enough to cause the vessel to capsize. Lake Michigan, too, holds the hulk of the passenger steamer CHICORA. She steamed out of St. Joseph, Mich., with Chicago as her first port of call and 26 passengers in her cabins. No one will ever know what happened for the CHICORA vanished without a splinter of wreckage or a single clue as to her fate. Another large ship to disappear in Lake Michigan was the steamer ALPENA, which dropped from sight mysteriously a few hours out of Chicago with 60 passengers. Near her, somewhere on the bottom of the lake is the steamship TELEGRAPH, last seen churning up Lake Michigan with smoke belching from her stack and making good time. Legend has it that she was boarded and destroyed by "King" Strang and his fellow Mormons from Beaver Island. If Strang added piracy, as he was suspected of doing, to his other bizarre accomplishments, he covered his tracks well. No trace of the TELEGRAPH was ever found! Captain Martin Anstruther, having served his time under sail, retired to his home at Conneaut, O., to spend the rest of his years in retirement. Fond of a morning stroll, the captain found himself at the docks one cold December morning in 1909. The bustle of activity caused him to pause and watch as a puffing locomotive shunted loaded cars into the big MARQUETTE & BESSEMER CARFERRY NO. 2. It was a familiar scene to the captain but it had always fascinated him. Even on this cold blustery day he waited until the last car was aboard and the stern gate closed. The smoke from her sister ship, the NO. 1, which had left the harbor two hours earlier was but a smudge on the horizon. * AT 10:25 the NO. 2 cast off her lines and steamed away from the dock. Captain Robert McLeod, standing on the bridge wing, waved to his old friend, Captain Anstruther. "I waved back to Bob," Anthruther (sic) said later, "little realizing that he would never bring his ship back to port again." The storm that came booming down from the north shortly after the carferry sailed was typical of those that harass vessels on Lake Erie. Even as the No. 2 cast off, rescue ships were still looking for survivors of the steamer CLARION which had foundered off Pelee Point three days earlier. Within an hour the NO. 2 and every vessel on the lake were fighting for their lives. Sixty hours after she sailed from Conneaut, the NO. 1 limped into Port Stanley after a trip that normally required 6 hours. Behind the sheltering arm of Long Point, over 30 battered ships lay at anchor, grateful for a respite from the death-dealing winds! Hours passed with no word of the NO. 2. Finally, the NO. 1 and two big tugs set out to scour the lake for her. For a full day and night they covered the lake from Southeast Shoals to Buffalo with no sign of the carferry! It was with a heavy heart that manager Alfred Leslie of the company's offices in Walkerville, Ont., posted a notice on the yard bulletin board con- ceding that "the ship was undoubtedly lost with her entire crew of 32." There was snow on Lake Superior that December night in 1927 when the Canadian package freighter KAMLOOPS disappeared. She was sighted from the pilot house of another vessel near Isle Royale as the snow lifted for a moment but that was the last seen of her. Another sturdy package freighter such as the KAMLOOPS was the BANNOCKBURN, a ship built in Scotland and named for the gallant Scots who died in the battle of Bannock- burn. She sailed from Duluth on a winter's evening with a crew of 22 and disappeared as completely as the KAMLOOPS. Though rescue ships combed the lake for days, the BANNOCKBURN was never found. * IN THE SPRING of 1909, a party of Toledoans searched the shoreline of Lake Superior looking for wreckage of the big ore freighter D. M. CLEMSON which left Duluth in November of the previous year. Several Toledo men were among the crew of 24 aboard the CLEMSON and the searching party included relatives looking for some trace or clue as to the vessel's fate. For weary days they walked the beaches along the wild upper peninsula of Michigan but the only item found was a wooden hatch cover which may or may not have been from the CLEMSON. It was shortly after Lake Michigan swallowed up the carferry MILWAUKEE in 1929 that the big gravel and sand carrier ANDASTE, a converted whaleback freighter, went down with all hands. Again, searching ships and planes covered every mile of the lake in hope that the ANDASTE had been driven ashore or had taken shelter in some re- mote bay or inlet. But once more the Great Lakes had claimed another ship and her crew, leaving no clue as to her last resting place. The W. H. GILCHER was a spanking new steel steamer, the pride of her owners and one of the largest vessels operating on the lakes. Commanding her was Capt. Lloyd H. Weeks, a master of long experience and under him was a capable crew of 16. It came as a shock then when the GILCHER steamed to an unknown fate in Lake Michigan. It may be more than a coincidence that the schooner OSTRICH with a crew of six under Capt. Elroy McKay and laden with 3,000 tons of coal vanished during the same night. Lake sailors surmise that the two ships might have collided and sunk but it seems unlikely that the new and big GILCHER would go down so quickly that her crew would have no time to lower boats and life rafts. Scarcely had the two craft been given up for lost when the steamer NASHUA, loaded with lumber from the Georgian Bay area and bound for Toledo dis- appeared in Lake Huron. Somewhere in Lake Erie between Cleveland and Buffalo lies the tug CORNELL. She had been sold and was on her way to the new owner's dock when she went down in a sinking that has never been explained. Days later a lone lifeboat was found by searching craft. It contained the body of one man and he had frozen to death. A watch was kept on the southern shoreline but not a particle of wreckage came ashore and the reason for her sinking is a mystery to this day. * ONE OF the finest ships of her time was the big schooner PERSIA. About the fastest sailing vessel afloat on the Great Lakes, she was the envy of every freshwater skipper. Some thought she was strong and big enough to survive in any weather but in an autumn storm of 1869 she vanished on Lake Huron with all hands! No wreckage came ashore and no bodies were ever found but long after she went down Great Lakes sailors were singing her funeral dirge: Around Presque Isle the sea gulls scream. Their dismal notes prolong, They're chanting forth a requiem, A saddened funeral song. They skim along the waters blue And then aloft they soar In memory of the PERSIA'S crew Lost off Lake Huron shore! Toledo was the first port of call for the schooner SOUTH AMERICA when she sailed from Buffalo on a fine spring morning in 1843. Down in her hatches were 750 barrels of salt that were consigned to the Toledo docks. Captain Brady planned to load general merchandise at Toledo for upper lake lumbering towns. Like many other ships before her, the SOUTH AMERICA simply sailed into eternity. The schooner MAUMEE VALLEY was once the pride of Toledo. A sleek vessel that was always kept freshly painted, the MAUMEE VALLEY with her spit-and-polish maintenance program reminded lake sailors of a sportsman's yacht instead of the coal and ore carrier that she was. Her captain was Eugene Winchester, pioneer Toledo mariner and a well known figure all over the lakes. In the 1880's, Captain Winchester sold his interest in the MAUMEE VALLEY and transferred to another vessel. Two years later, the MAUMEE VALLEY, her holds heavy with coal slid gracefully down the river into Lake Erie and an unknown fate. Shortly after her departure a sudden storm swept the western end of the lake and when it subsided the MAUMEE VALLEY and her crew were gone forever. Sometime before her passing an iten- erant marine artist painted a picture of her, a picture that became the prized possession of Capt. Eugene Winchester. Eventually, the painting was handed down to his son, Mark Winchester, prominent Toledo attorney who still values the painting very highly. * MANY YEARS ago a big Dutch windjammer disappeard myster- iously in the Atlantic. For a half century, superstitious sailors of many nationalities claimed to have sighted her "ghost" riding the waves of the Atlantic with a "bone in her teeth" and a skeleton crew in her rigging. The "Flying Dutchman," as she was called, made the news dispatches year after year as wide-eyed sailors told of seeing her scudding before the wind on midnight seas. Like their salt water brethren, early lake sailors were adicted to the same superstitions, fancies and beliefs pe- culiar to their calling. There are tales of missing lake vessels, sighted on stormy nights from gale-swept pilot houses. The KAMLOOPS, "Flying Dutchman" of Lake Superior, was supposedly sighted a year after she disappeared, beat- ing toward the Soo off Caribou Island. A steward tossing potatoe peelings from the fantail of a steamer on Lake Huron told of sighting a mysterious ship without lights that skimmed by in the darkness off Thunder Bay - a ship that bore a remarkable likeness to the schooner WATER WITCH, missing many months and believed to have gone down in Saginaw Bay. The full-rigged 3-masted schooner WELLS BURT became the "ghost" of Lake Michigan after she went down with all hands. Deckhands on a lumber barge told of seeing the ghost of the coal laden schooner romp past them on a foggy night while off Death's Door near Washington Island. The HARTFORD went down with her crew off Big Sandy station in Lake Ontario but sailors who gathered in the waterfront taverns of Oswego, N.Y. swear they saw her months later with sails filled and running before a northeast wind far out in the lake. Lake Erie's "ghost" ship was a strange prelude to the fabu- lous mystery of the MARY CELESTE and first came to life in 1841. The schooner DEWITT CLINTON, Capt. John Francisco master, came upon an unmanned vessel some 20 miles south of the Canadian town of Port Stanley. As in the case of the MARY CELESTE, no sign of human life could be found although there was food in the galley, clothing hung in the racks and the master's slip- pers were beside his bunk. Unlike the MARY CELESTE, the mystery ship showed signs of having had a rough trip. Both masts were shattered and the bowsprit was badly sprung yet the anchor which would normally have been dropped to keep the vessel from going ashore was lashed firmly in place. Oddly enough the ship bore no name. It is possible that her head- boards could have been carried away in a storm but the transom, where the ship's name and home port are traditionally lettered had no markings whatever. The lifeboat was gone and so were the log book and ship's papers. Whoever abandoned the vessel took all identifying papers with them and perished in the lifeboat for no report of her sinking was every made. Captain Francisco was unable to take the vessel in tow but salvaged her 700 pound anchor and cast her adrift. In the weeks that followed he warned many ships of the prescence of a derelict in the lake. Before long, the story of the find became the chief topic of conversation in taprooms from Buffalo to Duluth. There were some who called her "Franciso's Folly" but to the unbelievers Captain Francisco merely pointed to the huge "spare" anchor of his ship, the DEWITT CLINTON. Before the season was over, a score of men claimed to have sighted the "ghost" of the mystery ship. One saw her near Grubb's Reef. Another report had her off Waverly Shoal and still another sailor swore that he had seen her two miles off Long Point drifting westward. True or false, these stories are as mysterious as the vessel herself. No one lived to re- port her abandonment, no owner came forth with a story of woe about her loss and no insurance underwriter was ever called upon to pay a claim on her. And so they go - grey ghosts of the Great Lakes riding the endless waves of the past - bound for a mysterious port they will never make on a voyage from which they will never return. ========================================================================== Dwight Boyer (18 November 1912 - 15 October 1978) Great Lakes maritime historian and reporter. Was a staff writer for the Toledo Blade from 1944 - 1954 and The Plain Dealer from 1954 - 1978. Books by Dwight Boyer include: Great Stories of the Great Lakes - 1966 Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes - 1968 True Tales of the Great Lakes - 1971 Strange Adventures of the Great Lakes - 1974 Ships and Men of the Great Lakes - 1977