Lost At Sea III: The Great Lakes Quiz

Answer: HMS Ontario

The Ontario was an 80 foot Sloop-of-War built on Carleton Island on the St. Lawrence River. She had a displacement of 226 tons, and was armed with 22 cannon.

On October 31, 1780, the Ontario left Fort Niagara bound for Carleton Island. It was last leg of a trip to the fort that had begun in late September, and she was bringing back 130 British troops, about 40 civilians, and what many believe was about 30 American Prisoners of War taken during the War of Independence. Later that night, the sloop was beset by a sudden and violent gale which sank the ship. There were no survivors.

Two hundred and twenty-eight years later, Jim Kennard (who had frutlessly searched for the Ontario off and on for 35 years) and Dan Scoville, using side-scan sonar and a Remotely Operated Vehicle discovered the wreck of the Ontario sitting upright in over 500 feet of water in an area between Rochester, New York and the sloop's intended destination--Fort Niagara. It is now a war grave protected by the British Admiralty.

Answer: Marquette and Bessemer No. 2

Owned and operated by the Marquette and Bessemer Dock & Navigation Company, The 2,584 ton, 338 foot long Marquette and Bessemer No. 2 left Conneaut, Ohio on December 7, 1909 carrying a crew of 33, one passenger, and a deck load of hopper cars loaded with coal and/or iron ore destined for Port Stanley, Ontario. She steamed out into a gale bringing 70 MPH winds and heavy seas which assaulted the burdened ferry as it tried to steam for shelter. In the early morning hours of December 8, residents of Conneaut and Port Stanley purportedly heard a ship's whistle--possibly the M&B No. 2's-- shrieking out a distress signal not far from the shores of those towns.

A few days later, the crew of a fishing boat, the Commodore Perry, discovered one of the M&B No. 2's lifeboats--with the frozen bodies of nine men huddled inside it--and the clothing of a tenth man scattered with them. A year later, the body of the M&B No. 2's captain, Robert McLeod, was recovered on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. It is believed by some that the ferry's lack of a sea gate or an enclosed stern to protect her main deck allowed her to be overwhelmed by the storm's waves.

The M&B No. 2's distinction as a "ghost ship" stems from the following legend: It is said that on clear nights in December, the doomed ferry's call's for help can still be heard off Conneaut's shores.

Answer: SS William C. Moreland

The 580 foot William C. Moreland, owned by the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, had only been in service for less than two months when, on October 18, 1910, she ran aground on Sawtooth Reef, near Eagle River, on Michigan's Keewenaw peninsula while hauling a cargo of Iron Ore from Superior, Wisconsin. At first the 7,514 ton ship remained intact until October 20, when a gale caused the ship's hull to crack and break up. Fortunately, all of the crew aboard were rescued by members of a Coast Guard lifesaving station. The cause of the accident was attributed to a forest fire on Keewenaw, which generated enough smoke to obscure the vision of the captain and helmsman, just as easily as any fog bank could do.

The wreck of the Moreland remained a fixture of Eagle River for many months after the grounding, as salvage crews struggled to offload her cargo and raise her. Unfortunately, by the summer of 1911, the ship had broken up again and in the end only 278 feet of the freighter's stern could be saved. It was attached to the bow of a new ship and christened as the Sir Trevor Dawson in 1915. The Dawson would serve the lakes for many decades and undergo several name changes, including the Charles L. Hutchinson and Gene C. Hutchinson. In 1970, the ship, then owned by a Canadian company and called Parkdale, was scrapped in Spain.

As for the bow section of the William C. Moreland, it still lies on Sawtooth Reef, although much of the hull has been flattened and crushed by decades of ice build up.

Answer: SS James C. Carruthers

The James Carruthers, launched at Collingwood, Ontario in 1913, was unique among steamers of her type. Her builders gave up valuable cargo space and used extra steel in her hull for additional strength, making her not only the largest Canadian flagged bulk carrier, but also reputedly one of the strongest.

On November 6 1913, the Carruthers and her 22 man crew left Fort William, Ontario bound for Midland, Ontario carrying a shipment of 375,000 tons of wheat. On November 8, a storm exploded across the Great Lakes region, forever to be known by both American and Canadian mariners as "the big blow" or the "king of storms." Of all the lakes affected by this storm, Lake Huron suffered the worst of it, as did the ships caught out in its waters. By the time the storm died out on November 11, 12 ships had been sunk with no survivors between them, while 30 others were stranded on shore. Eight of the lost ships foundered on Lake Huron. One of them was the James Carruthers, which reportedly could be heard and seen on Inverhuron, Ontario on the night of November 9, sounding her whistle and shooting off distress rockets.

As the storm gradually ended, wreckage of many of the ships lost to this storm began washing ashore from the lakes. Debris that was identified as coming from the Carruthers was found along Point Clark, Kincardine and Inverhuron. Also found from the steamer were several bodies of her crew.

Answer: SS Novadoc

Sailing to Port Alfred, Quebec from Chicago and laden with coke (coal byproduct, not the drink) the Novadoc was disabled by the heavy seas generated by the Armistice Day Gale and ended up broken apart off the beach near Little Sable Point lighthouse in Oceana County, Michigan. The wind and waves that battered the Novadoc's hull, flooded her pilothouse and after deck house also threatened to wash away her 17 crew, and in fact became so severe that even the US Coast Guard refused to go to the freighter's aid. It was left up to the crew of the fishing boat Three Brothers, who took it upon themselves to go out into the very same seas that had just claimed the Novadoc and rescue their fellow sailors.

In an amazing display of courage and seamanship, the crew of Three Brothers rescued all but two of the Novadoc's men (the two fatalities were that of the freighter's cooks, swept overboard during the rescue). The Novadoc was declared a total loss and still lies off Little Sable Bank as a dive attraction.

Answer: SS Pewabic

The Pewabic was sunk in a collision with her sister ship Meteor in Thunder Bay, Ontario on August 9, 1865. The collision happened in relatively clear conditions and those intimate with the disaster at the time could only speculate as to why the Meteor's bow crashed into the Pewabic's port side, opening up the hull, and sinking the liner in mere minutes. One theory is that both the Pewabic and Meteor's captain's closed to a dangerous distance in order to exchange mail and newspapers, and got too close to one another, resulting in the Pewabic's loss and the deaths of over 100 passengers and crew.

When sunk, the Pewabic was carrying $40,000 dollars in her safe and a shipment of 170 tons of copper. Salvage of the wreck followed soon after the sinking, but the Pewabic, even when sunk, still proved to be deadly, killing an estimated five divers. It was not until 1917 that the cargo of copper and most of the cash were successfully recovered.

Answer: SS Noronic

The Noronic arrived in Toronto on September 16, 1949, the final stop on a voyage that had begun in Detroit and was to take the ship and the 522 passengers aboard her to the Thousand Islands on the St. Lawrence River for a seven day cruise. The ship was moored at pier 9, facing Yonge Street. At around 2:30 a.m.--the morning of September 17--a fire erupted in the storage closet on one of the Noronic's decks, the air flowing throughout the ship's corridors and the heavily varnished woodwork fueled the fire and served as a chimney of sorts for the flames and smoke. Soon, the entire length of the Noronic was ablaze, the screams of her passengers mingling with the shriek of her whistle, which had jammed while sounding a call to stations. Efforts by the Tornoto fire department proved useless, and work soon turned to getting as many people off the ship as soon as possible.

By the time the fire burned itself out at dawn, the Noronic's stern had sunk to the bottom of her berth and her entire superstructure was a charred and blackened ruin. A count of the dead revealed that 119 people--all passengers--had perished in the blaze. The Captain of the Noronic, who was not on board at the time was charged with negligence. The wreck of the Noronic was raised later that year and towed to Hamilton for scrapping.

Answer: SS Carl D. Bradley

Built in Lorain, Ohio, the Bradley, the flagship of the Michigan Limestone and Chemical Company, left Buffington, Indiana on November 17, 1958 bound for the company's docks in Rogers City, Michigan. She had just unloaded a cargo of crushed limestone and was travelling in ballast with a crew of 35. That day and well into the next, a storm was forming over Lake Michigan bringing, at its height, 65 mile an hour winds and waves reaching monumental proportions. At around 5:30 p.m. on November 18, the Bradley was in the Northern end of the lake when the hull began to sag and break apart. The bow of the freighter sank. The stern upended and went down, her boilers exploding as they came in contact with the frigid lake waters.

The forward life raft was launched and soon became a haven for four men, but by the time that raft was picked up by the Coat Guard cutter Sundew on the morning of November 19, only two of those men--First Mate Elmer Fleming and Deckhand Frank Mays--were alive. The remaining 33 men aboard the the Bradley had perished . Eighteen bodies were recovered. The remaining crew were listed as "missing" and presumed to have gone down with the ship, which was located a year later in 360 feet of water northwest of boulder reef. In 2008, the fiftieth anniversary of the sinking the bell of the Carl D. Bradley was raised and replaced with a bell inscribed with the names of those aboard her lost.

Answer: SS Cedarville

On May 7, 1965, the Cedarville--heading for Gary, Indiana with 14,000 tons of limestone--was rammed on her portside in a dense fogbank while transiting the Straits of Mackinac. The ship that struck her was the Topdalsfjord, a Norwegian "Saltie" ( slang for an ocean going freighter). The captain of the Cedarville--Martin Joppich--tried to beach his ship on the nearby shoreline, but the Cedarville soon rolled over to her starboard side and plunged 105 feet to the bottom of the strait. Ten of the Cedarville's crew died in the sinking the remainder were rescued by the Weissenburg, a German freighter in the area, which the Cedarville had been in contact with prior to the collision.

Captain Joppich was accused of failing to reduce speed in the fogbank and sound a danger signal after the collision. He was suspended for a year, but he never returned to the lakes again.

Answer: SS Daniel J. Morrell

The 603 footer Daniel J. Morrell--owned by the Bethlehem Steel Company--left Lackawanna, New York on November 26, 1966 bound for Minnesota to take on a load iron ore. On the night of November 29, the Morrell was fighting through a storm on Lake Huron off Michigan's "thumb" when she was broke in half by the waves. The bow sank, but the stern, still afloat and still under engine power sailed through the storm whipped waters and disappeared from sight. Dennis Hale, then a deckhand, escaped in one of the ship's life rafts dressed in only underwear and a pea coat. With him were two other crew members who soon succumbed to hypothermia. Hale used their bodies for warmth, and survived over 36 hours on the lake before he was rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter on November 30. In the end, only Hale was found alive from the Morrell's crew of 29. Twenty-five bodies were recovered.

The stern of the Morrell was found a year later sitting in over 200 feet of water off Point Aux Barques, Michigan. The bow was not located until 1979. It is separated from the stern by about five miles.