Shipwreck Tales from Lake Superior (1/5)

a brief intro to the most deadly November Gale of all time

Novembers on the Great Lakes are full of dark and stormy nights, wind that rips across the water, waves that swallow up ships. The skies are red in the mornings, winds gust up to Hurricane Force, and most of the tourists stay south during the most haunted month of the year on Lake Superior.

The gales of November were popularized by a notable Gordon Lightfoot song, but the Edmund Fitzgerald is far from the only ship to go down on Lake Superior, and the storm that took her down was far from the deadliest.

A November gale pounds East Bay of Grand Marais, Minnesota

From Father Baraga and his Ojibwe Guide’s legendary crossing from the Apostle Islands to the North Shore in a canoe ending with them shipwrecked at the mouth of the Cross River, to the hundreds of undiscovered Shipwrecks throughout the last century, to the Fitzgerald itself, the Great Lakes have claimed countless wrecks and lives, many of those in the month of November.

Fall brings a particularly stormy time on Lake Superior, with cool Canadian air colliding with the warm, wet air to the south in the southwest. These storms travel to the northeast towards the Great Lakes, then collide with the relatively warm air over the lakes themselves (you may recall from 7th grade science that land cools faster than water) ushering in mid-latitude cyclones, with cycling winds very similar to what you would see in a tropical cyclone or hurricane. Generally, these storms bring strong winds and high waves on the Great Lakes. Also generally, these winds while strong are comparatively much weaker than what we see in tropical hurricanes. But not always.

In several storms including the storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940, the 1996 Lake Huron Cyclone, and the White Hurricane of 1913, Hurricane force winds (in excess of 64 knots/73 miles an hour) were either recorded or reported.

The storm that sank the Fitzgerald and the sinking of the Fitz itself get the most attention in the Great Lakes Region come November, due in part both to shock and relative recency of the Fitzgerald’s sinking— no one in the 1970s thought that a ship 728 feet long could sink on a lake of all things— and to the infamous Gordon Lightfoot song. Perhaps you’ve heard it. Still, the storm that sank the Eddie Fitz was not the most deadly storm on the Great Lakes.

The White Hurricane of 1913:

In early November of 1913, two storms converged over the Great Lakes to form the extratropical cyclone that became the White Hurricane of 1913. Over the course of four days, 12 freighters and 31 ships foundered (sank) with an official death toll of 248 people. This death toll and ship count does not account for unregistered boats and their sailors, commercial fishermen, and the victims of this storm on land.

On Thursday, November 13th, 1913, the frozen bodies of dead sailors began to wash up on the shores of the Lakes. There isn’t a starker set of facts to illustrate the scale of the destruction caused by the White Hurricane of 1913.

The term “white hurricane” is not an exaggeration and is used quite literally; this storm had the wind speeds, wave heights, and subsequent carnage of a tropical hurricane. The only thing missing was an actual tropical storm and the ocean.

Gusts of 90 mph winds were recorded, and sustained windspeed reached hurricane force. There are credible reports of average wave heights reaching 35 ft on Lake Huron during the most deadly hours of the storm. For comparison, the largest recorded wave on Lake Superior only clocked about 30 feet.

How do the Great Lakes compare to Oceans?

Functionally, each Great Lake is an inland sea. They create and alter weather patterns, produce waves that sink ships, and have enough force to carve out sea caves and arches.

But the Lakes are freshwater, and smaller than oceans. Intuition might imply that this would make them more safe to navigate than an ocean, but the Great Lakes have their own unique set of hazards to navigation.

Fresh water is less dense than salt water, which correlates to shorter wave periods, and steeper waves than generally seen on an ocean. This can be especially hard on ships when wave heights start to reach double digits.

The other major hazard of the Great Lakes when compared to the ocean is the smaller size itself. In the ocean, you can ride out or outrun a storm— you’ve got the whole ocean to find calm water.

In contrast, the Great Lakes are a closed system. You might ride out the storm directly into cliffs or shoals or rocks. If you lose navigation or GPS, you can only head for open water for so long before you crash into the other end of the lake. On Lake Huron especially, concern for running out of Lake during the 1913 storm lead captains to attempt risky turns, exposing the length of freighters to the full force of rolling waves.

Furthermore, energy from storm waves is likely to hit cliffs and refract off, creating erratic wave patterns, potentially contributing to rouge waves.

Due to shorter wave periods, increased potential for rebound and rouge waves, and the fact that mariners could not simply weather the storm in open ocean away from hazards to navigation, the White Hurricane of 1913 had a devastating effect on the ships of the Great Lakes.

Shipwrecks of the 1913 White Hurricane

The dramatic events of the 1913 White Hurricane are best told in detail in White Hurricane by David G. Brown, which offers a detailed account of the storm including everything from the forecasting of the storm, to each individual shipwreck, to the aftermath of the storm.

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Over the course of November, I’ll be covering the stories of four of these wrecks— one with an unlikely rescue, one with an unsung heroine, one with a mysterious and tragic end, and the story of some darn good seamanship that didn’t end in a shipwreck at all.

These four stories will be available for all subscribers, both free and paid, so remember to sign up below for a very haunted shipwreck-themed November, and happy Halloween!

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Some comparatively small big waves at the Grand Marais Lighthouse