Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2016 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. =========================================================================== Oswego Daily Times Oswego, N.Y., Thursday Evening November 13, 1913 DEAD NOW NUMBER OVER 150, DAMAGE APPROACHES $5,000,000 Big Steamer CARRUTHERS Is Given Up for Lost -- Carried Twenty-five Men, and Boat and Cargo Were Worth Nearly $1,000,000-- Twenty-five Boats Probably Wrecked. REPORTS FROM ALL THE UPPER LAKE PORTS TODAY SERVE BUT TO ADD TO THE HORRORS OF THE GREATEST STORM IN THE HISTORY OF SHIPPING. INSTEAD OF THE NIGHT BRINGING NEWS OF MISSING BOATS IN PLACES OF SAFETY, IT SEEMED TO ADD TO THE TOLL OF DAMAGE AND DEATH, BODIES FROM STEAMERS THOUGHT SAFE BEING PICKED UP ALONG THE SHORES OF HURON AND SUPERIOR. THE GREAT GRAIN CARRIER JAMES CARRUTHERS, THE FINEST SHIP EVER LAUNCHED FROM A CANADIAN SHIPYARD, HAS BEEN GIVEN UP AS LOST. THE BIG STEEL FREIGHTER JOHN A. MCGEAN, 8,000 TONS, IS ALSO BELIEVED TO BE LOST. TWO BODIES BEARING LIFEBELTS WITH THIS NAME ON THEM WERE PICKED UP OFF PORT HURON. SO FAR THE NUMBER OF DEAD HAS REACHED AN ESTIMATED TOTAL OF 150, WITH MANY MISSING BOATS EITHER TO BE HEARD FROM OR FINALLY MARKED OFF AS "SUNK." PROPERTY LOSSES ON STEAMERS AMOUNT TO $3,000,000 OR MORE. DETAILS OF MORE LOSS OF LIFE AND PROPERTY ARE COMING IN DAILY AND THE WORST MAY NOT BE KNOWN FOR SEVERAL DAYS YET. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All Hope Abandoned Search for the For the CARRUTHERS. Wrecks Started Toronto, Nov. 13. - With the mute Cleveland, Nov. 13. - Systematic res- evidence of disaster cast ashore by the cue work was started by the big steam- water of Lake Huron, in the form of ship companies. The steamer JOHN W. GATES broken spars, life buoys and hatches left here this morning bound for Lake bearing the name of the JAMES CAR- Huron and will search that body of water RUTHERS, and having received no word ready to give aid, should it arrive in from the vessel since Sunday, the offi- time, to any stranded or shipwrecked cers of the St. Lawrence and Chicago vessels. Wrecking vessels from other Navigation Company, the owners, have ports have also been sent to aid life abandoned all hope that the largest savers and tugs in pulling damaged boats Canadian freighter on the Great Lakes from reefs. has weathered the terrible gale, and No doubt remained today that the believe that the ship has gone down CHARLES S. PRICE, 9,000 ton coal freight- with all on board. er of the Hanna fleet, foundered in Lake In the opinion of the officers of Huron, with a crew of twenty-eight. Fif- the company the CARRUTHERS was either teen bodies believed to have been members rammed amidships or its back was of the crew have been washed ashore. broken on a submerged reef during the gale. The vessel was of steel ------------------------------------------ construction, and was especially pro- vided with double bulkheads in case Bodies from the of collision. McGEAN Found. It was valued at $400,000 and was carrying 470,000 bushels of wheat, Port Huron, Mich., Nov. 13. - Two roughly valued at a dollar per bushel. bodies wearing life belts from the steel This makes the monetary loss almost freighter JOHN A. McGEAN were picked up $900,000. on the shores north of Port Huron today The cargo was fully insured and was and local wreckers are now working on consigned to Port Colborne. the theory that the overturned derelict The crew of the CARRUTHERS numbered in Lake Huron near here is that vessel. twenty-five and it is believe all were The McGEAN is a 432-foot boat with fifty- lost. two foot beam and was one of the finest freighters on the lakes. The boat carried -------------------------------------- a crew of twenty-eight men under Captain C. R. Nye, Cleveland. Calvin Smith was Fifty-one Bodies chief engineer. The McGEAN was built in Are Recovered. 1908, and sailed out of Fairport. Port Huron, Nov. 13. - The bodies of Port Huron, Mich., Nov. 13. - Eighteen fifty-one of the victims have been re- more bodies from the steel freighter covered, most of them having been McGEAN were picked up on the Canadian washed up on the Canadian shore of shore near Goderich, Ont., at 9:30 this Lake Huron. Only two of these have morning. been identified, both from the ill- fated steamer REGINA. The others, it is assumed, went to their death when the steamers McGEAN, JAMES CARRUTHERS, CHARLES S. PRICE, WEXFORD and an un- known lumber carrier foundered. Reports from isolated communities along the Michigan and Canadian shores show that the number of frozen and battered bodies is hourly growing larger. --------------------------------------- GHOULS ROB BODIES OF DROWNED SAILORS SENSATIONAL REPORT FROM THEDFORD - ROBBERS DESTROY VALUABLE EVIDENCE OF IDENTITY OF LOST SHIPS. Thedford, Ont., Nov. 13. - Last night steamboat officials returned from Port Franks with information that will be placed in the hands of the attorney general's department, of a nature that casts a reflection upon this province. Not only have they the names of men whom they found carting wreckage away from the death-strewn shore, but they have under surveillance one man who is alleged to have in his posses- sion $800 taken from a foreigner's belt found on shore, and the names of men who are believed to have even gone so far as to rob the dead. The ghouls found three victims of the storm in or near a lifeboat of the REGINA. Those who are stealing wreckage are making it more difficult for the steam- ship men and county officers to identify the dead, as life buoys have been taken off victims and mixed up, and names on boats taken away. It is therefore dif- ficult to locate the boats from which the wreckage comes. =========================================================================