Today in Great Lakes History – September 11

1876
1876:   The schooner HARVEST HOME sank on Lake Michigan while bound from Chicago, IL, for Cleveland, OH, with a load of scrap iron. She was about 26 miles off Grand Haven, MI. The crew was taken off by the schooner GRACIE M. FILER just as the boat was going down.

1883
1883:   EXPLORER (two-masted wooden schooner; 48 foot; 33 gross tons; built in 1866 at Chatham, ON) struck rocks and went down on Stokes Bay on the outside of the Bruce Peninsula. Her crew was visible from shore clinging to the wreck until the vessel broke up. All five were lost.

1895
1895:   S.P. AMES (two-masted wooden schooner; 61 feet; 43 gross tons) was driven ashore at Pointe aux Barques, MI, in a storm. She was quickly stripped before she went to pieces. She had been built in 1879 at Montrose, MI, in farm country, well inland, on the Flint River by Mr. Seth Ames. He wanted to use her to return to sea, but he died the day before her hull was launched.

1929
1929:   HORACE JOHNSON sailed on her maiden voyage light from Lorain, OH, upbound for Two Harbors, MI, to load iron ore.

1942
1942:   HMCS CHARLOTTETOWN, a Canadian naval corvette built at Kingston, ON, in 1941, was torpedoed and sunk by U-517 on the St. Lawrence River near Cap-Chat, QC. Nine of the 64 on board were lost.

1944
1944:   The GEORGE M. HUMPHREY was patched and refloated. She had sunk in 80 feet of water after a collision with the steamer D.M. CLEMSON of 1916 off Old Point Light on June 15, 1943. On May 6, 1944, the barges MAITLAND NO. 1 and HILDA were employed as pontoons for the salvage operation positioned over the sunken hull. Cables were attached to the HUMPHREY’s hull and to the barges. The hull was raised through a series of lifts, which allowed it to be brought into shallower water. Partial buoyancy was provided by the HUMPHREY’s ballast tanks, which were pumped out to about 25 percent capacity. She was taken to the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. first for an estimate of repairs, which totaled $469,400, and then was towed to Sturgeon Bay, WI, for reconditioning, which was completed at a reported cost of $437,000. Captain John Roen’s Roen Transportation Co. assumed ownership on September 18, 1944, and the next year the ship was renamed b.) CAPTAIN JOHN ROEN. She re-entered service on May 1, 1945, chartered to the Pioneer Steamship Co. on a commission basis. The vessel was renamed c.) ADAM E. CORNELIUS in 1948 and d.) CONSUMERS POWER in 1958. She was scrapped at Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1988.

1946
1946:   The former Hall freighter LUCIUS W. ROBINSON, heading for new service in the Far East as b.) HAI LIN, ran into a typhoon on the Pacific during its delivery voyage but was unscathed.

1961
1961:   The retired PERSEUS, under tow for scrapping overseas, broke loose of the tug ENGLISHMAN and was abandoned in rough seas near the Azores. The hull was later found drifting and taken in tow only to sink on September 21.

1968
1968:   GRINDEFJELL, a pre-Seaway and Seaway-era visitor for the Norwegian Fjell Line from 1953 to 1965, was put into Mozambique as b.) LENRO after a fire had broken out in a cargo hold. The flames spread, and at one time the hull glowed red hot. The ship was gutted, later capsized, and was abandoned as a total loss. The vessel was en route from Assab, Ethiopia, to Rotterdam, Netherlands, with a cargo of bagged niger seed expellers and had to take the long way around due to the Suez Canal being closed. The hull was either scrapped or scuttled.

1969
1969:   The Bethlehem steamer LEHIGH, under the command of Captain Loren A. Falk, delivered the first cargo to the new Bethlehem Steel mill at Burns Harbor, IN. The cargo consisted of 15,700 tons of taconite pellets loaded at Taconite Harbor, MN.

1987
1987:   An arson fire gutted the bridge and top deck of the laid-up former CSL package freighter FORT YORK at Sarnia, ON. There had been another suspicious fire 3 weeks earlier that had been extinguished.

1988?
1988:   Carrying cargoes off the lakes, CANADA MARQUIS departed Halifax, NS, bound for Philadelphia, PA, with a cargo of grain. HON. PAUL MARTIN departed Halifax the same day on her way to Tampa, FL, with a load of gypsum.

2001
2001:   The former Boblo boat STE. CLAIRE was towed from Detroit, MI, to Toledo, OH, by Gaelic’s tug SHANNON. In August 2005, she was taken to Belanger Park in River Rouge, MI, and in the spring of 2006, she was returned to Nicholson’s slip in Ecorse, MI, by Gaelic’s tugs PATRICIA HOEY and CAROLYN HOEY.

Data from: Skip Gillham, Joe Barr, David Swayze, Russ Plumb, Father Dowling Collection, Jody L. Aho, James Neumiller, Ahoy & Farewell II, and the Great Lakes Ships We Remember series from the Marine Historical Society of Detroit. Compiled by Roger LeLievre.