Shipwreck Tales from Lake Superior (2/5)
The Wrecking Waldo (pardon my footnotes)
On Saturday November 8th 1913, The L.C Waldo found itself in 60 mph, mammoth waves, and blinding snow somewhere off the east coast of Keweenaw Point; then the rudder failed.
Just the previous morning the Waldo, a 472-ft steel freighter, had left Two Harbors, Minnesota. While the crew had anticipated some life in the water, there was no way to anticipate what would later come. Around midnight, the Waldo would round the Keweenaw Peninsula into into strong Northwest winds, well on its way to becoming one of the 43 ships and freighters that sank during 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 foundered1 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. (For more on the storm itself, check out part one of this series on the shipwrecks of the 1913 White Hurricane.
For more on the White Hurricane of 1913 including meteorological history, and the story of just about every shipwreck, check out White Hurricane by David G. Brown, the book that provides much of the backstory for this series.
There are a few key risks posed to large freighters and ships like the Waldo in storms like these— the first risk is shoaling, or hitting bottom. Unlike the ocean, the Great Lakes are closed systems with only a hundred or so miles at most between islands, shorelines, and shoals2 that pose a hazard to the hulls of ships. On open ocean, a freighter like the Waldo might be able to simply ride out the storm and focus only on staying up right. On the Great Lakes, you can only ride out the storm for so long before you run out of Lake and are at risk of being ground to a pulp against a cliff wall. In blinding snow, and high wind and waves, without the modern help of a GPS, risks are even higher.
The another big risk is the “three sister waves”, a type of rouge wave phenomenon3 central to shipwreck lore on the Great Lakes, particularly Lake Superior. Once believed to be just lore, rouge waves have since been proven to be a real phenomenon on the oceans via offshore oil rigs wave height measurements during storms, and a University of Wisconsin-Madison study is currently investigating the three sisters phenomenon on Lake Superior using the Apostle Islands sea caves as a starting point4.
The “three sisters” refers to a set of waves much larger than the average wave height at the time. Generally the first wave is large, followed by a second, larger wave, then a third, usually largest wave.
Anecdotally, I can attest to this phenomenon. When sea kayaking surfing on Lake Superior, it’s pretty common to wait for a large set of three to come through to catch the best wave. Usually, you see a large set coming in and wait out the first two to catch that last, largest wave— both in order to catch the best ride, and so that if you were to get chundled5 on wave number two the third, largest wave isn’t waiting to drag you across the lake bottom and do you in for good.
It was just after midnight when the LC Waldo was hit with with a monster wave like those described in the “three sisters” phenomenon. This wave tore away the front of the pilothouse, and bent the steel deck of the compass room, and wrecked the compass. The wheelsman was swept out of the wheelhouse and on to the deck of the boat. After this wave, Caption Duddleston decided to try and turn the ship back to the Keweenaw and seek shelter in the lee behind Keweenaw Point.
By 3 a.m., the captain and his mates realized the boat was not responding to steering. For some undiagnosable reason, the rudder had given out. Aside from a hole torn in the hull of a boat, loss of steering in a storm with 60 mph winds, blinding snow, and 30 ft waves, is one of the worst things that can happen. The Northwest Storm Force winds were pushing the Waldo in from the open lake towards the rocky teeth of the Keweenaw’s cliffs and quickly.
The Waldo was far from the only boat to find themselves in trouble on Saturday, November 8th, 1913. Throughout the Great Lakes, ships would run aground, sink, or simply turn belly up (we’ll get there).
Ten hours after the rudder failed, the Waldo washed up on Gull Rocks off the Keweenaw Peninsula, and Captain Duddleston and his crew set to work flooding the ship— the best chance the had now, though slim, was to stay stuck on the rocks and wait for rescue. If they washed off they’d be on the bottom of the Lake within moments.
In the working to secure the ship on the rocks best as possible, the stern began to split off. Brown reports that in the chaos, the crew had forgotten the steward’s wife and mother aboard the ship hunkered in the stern and staged a daring rescue of the frightened, hysteric women.
Personally, I tend to be skeptic of this recounting of the rescue itself, and of all accounts of hysteric and frightened women from the early 20th century. All documentation of the women’s behavior and the rescue itself was recounted by the men involved in the rescue, both traumatized and likely to ham up their own heroics, and then reported again in the paper, written up again by a man living in the early 1900s, predisposed inherently to thinking of women as hysteric. This isn’t to undermine the seamanship or daringness of the rescue of steward Price’s unnamed wife and mother, rather to point out the injustice of the way these two probably very brave women were portrayed now immortalized for the rest of time.
(Perhaps you’ve worked it out, but the fact that there is a concrete story to tell at all, and not a mystery with unanswered questions takes away from some of the suspense; the heroes of the Waldo will eventually make it off their icy rock and tell their tale to the news reporters.)
Perched conveniently on Gull Rock, the now temporarily safe crew of the the Waldo’s best and only chance was to wait for rescue— they had no radio, and no electricity on board. There was no good way to call help from a distance; all they could do was hope to be spotted by someone who cared enough to investigate.
Lucky for the Waldo, Great Lakes sailors are the sort who look out for each other. It was at dawn on Sunday, two full days since the Waldo left Two Harbors, when the George Stephenson spotted the Waldo on the rocks. Initially Captain Mosher of the Stephenson thought the boat was likely abandoned, with the bad shape it was in and the still high waves. Still, Captain Mosher got as close as he could to investigate. At 7am, the crew of the Waldo was able to raise a distress signal and Captain Mosher was able raise a flag in answer. The rescue was on.
Captain Mosher and the Stephenson had a new mission, and the crew of the Waldo had renewed hope— granted of course that they could last a little longer.
Aboard the Waldo, the hungry and cold crew hunkered and made a fire in a bathtub for warmth, picking at what food they could scavenge in what remained of the boat.
Meanwhile, Captain Mosher turned the Stephenson back towards the lee6 of the Keweenaw Peninsula, where one of the men of the ship “hired a fishing boat to cross Lac La Belle then used a horse-drawn sleigh to reach the Eagle Harbor Lifesaving Station” (Brown 71).
Upon reaching the Eagle Harbor Lifesaving Station, he found that the Success, the largest motorized lifeboat, was broken down, and all that remained was the smaller 8-horsepower surfboat. The men from the Eagle Harbor Station only made it about a mile out in the smaller boat before they were forced to turn back and set to work repairing the Success, successfully.
Captain Mosher was not satisfied with the speed of the rescue, and sent another man ashore who contacted the lifesaving station this time at Portage Canal to relay the tale of the men stuck off Gull Rocks. First, the Portage Canal Lifesavers tried to head directly into the storm. They too, were forced to turn back. They then opted to take the Portage Canal across the Keweenaw, then took a railroad flatcar to Lac La Belle, from which they eventually launched their slow rescue mission.
By Monday, November 10th, pieces of the Waldo’s pilothouse began to wash ashore near Marquette, Michigan, some 60 miles to the south, and word that the Waldo was lost began to hit the newspapers though the survivors still sat in the icy remains of the boat on Gull Rocks warmed only by their bathtub fireplace.
Despite the ominous bits of the Waldo in Marquette and subsequent assumptions, Captain Mosher and the crew of the Stephenson worked tireless like to bring rescue to the men they knew were still stranded, and hopefully still alive, aboard the Waldo. In raising a flag to answer their distress call, they’d promised a rescue was coming. They were going to ensure that rescue came for whomever was alive to be rescued.
Against their better judgment, the crew of the Stephenson took advantage of a lull in the storm to head back to the Waldo to see if there were still signs of life, and confirm that the boat had not been swept off the rocks. Still, the Stephenson could not get close enough to attempt a rescue, but the iced over boat was still there on the rocks with no signs of life detectable.
As the Stephenson turned back for the protection of the Keweenaw, the Portage Canal crew were trekking out towards Gull Rock, and the repaired Success from Eagle Harbor had also launched a rescue mission.
Around 3am on Tuesday, November 11th both lifesaving crews arrived around the same time at the wreck of the Waldo, encased in ice. The ice had to be broken off the doors, and heavy freezing spray piled on the lifesaving boats, but all of the people aboard Waldo made it out and on to the boats, frostbitten but alive.
In the end, everyone on the Waldo made it out with no serious physical injuries. Today, the LC Waldo still lies on Gull Rock off the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, over a hundred years at at least twice as many storms later.
To read more about the 1913 White Hurricane, check out White Hurricane by David G. Brown, or stay tuned for a few more shipwreck stories throughout the month of November!
Tonight is a dark and stormy night on Lake Superior with southwest gales building across the Lake! Current forecasts call for potential Storm Force winds from the Northeast in Western Lake Superior this Thursday/Friday, meaning everywhere from Tettegouche to Duluth, then all across the South Shore could see some waves in the 20-30 foot range. Time to batten down the hatches—
The Gales of November are here! Check out the Open Lakes Marine Forecast here!
sat up here the night before a gale and spotted about 7 or 8 freighters bound for Duluth or Two Harbors to wait out the coming storm. You can sometimes tell when something really big is coming because the big boats will stick a little closer to shore, and move places a little sooner than they might otherwise.
Foundered just means sank. Not to be confused with floundered, with an “l”.
A shoal is a shallow spot in a body of water. Shoals are a risk for ships in that it’s incredibly easy to run aground, and in some cases rocky shoals can even gouge holes in the bottoms of boats. Waves are often locally larger around shoals as the shallow bottoms force wave heights up. Lake Erie is especially dangerous for it’s shallow bottoms and shoals leading to hazardous waves. Stoney Point north of Duluth is a good example of an underwater shoal that forces waves up, making for an excellent surf break.
Rouge waves until recently were basically believed to be myth! Check out this video on the science behind rouge waves— it will not disappoint!
This same article has a lot of really interesting information about rouge waves on Lake Superior, including the extremely relevant tidbit that as ice cover on the lake decreases and lake temperatures increase, we are seeing more frequent wind events.
verb “to chundle”. To get absolutely crushed, wrecked, capsize, worked, and/or dragged across the rocks or otherwise beat up. Ex. Damn, that wave set was gnarly. Maddy got chundled like wool in a washing machine, hope all her teeth are still in her head.
lee is a nautical term used to refer to the “windshadow” of land. In the lee of an island or point, a boat can generally find waters protected from the wind and a safe place to wait out the storm. On a somewhat related note, misunderstanding of calm waters and lee is almost definitely a factor in many of the modern small boat accidents on the Great Lakes. Many people launch their kayaks, canoes, or small boats in a protected bay or behind a point, unaware that they are in the lee or windshadow until it’s too late. You might begin a paddle in the glassy calm lee, only to round the corner and find yourself in eight foot breaking waves. Alternately, you might launch in strong winds but calm water, only to have those strong winds push you out of your protected patch and in to rough, open water. Anecdotally, a few weeks ago a few friends and I were out surfing and paddling in 4-6 foot waves at Stoney Point. We rounded the point into the lee, and found ourselves in water so calm my grandma would’ve launched. Meanwhile, just around the corner, Andy was getting surfed right up into the rocks (a near chundling, if you will). It’s really incredible the way that water behaves.