Harbor History: November 27, 1886: Fire Destroys Grain Elevators A & Q

By Tony Dierkins - Zenith City Online - On this day in Duluth in 1886, fire destroyed Duluth’s first two grain elevators, Elevators A and Q, located along the lake at the base of Third Avenue East. Elevator A was built in 1869 by Jay Cooke’s Union Improvement and Elevator Company with wood purchased from Roger Munger’s sawmill on Lake Avenue. the grain terminal that could hold 350,000 bushels of grain and came equipped with a steam-powered conveyance system. Only one other grain elevator, Elevator Q in 1878, was built on the lake itself. Grain dust is highly combustible, and wooden grain elevators often went up in flames. When elevators A and Q burned, they took with them about 500,000 bushels of grain and the lives of elevator foreman Edward Lee, fireman Charles Moore, and W. B. Loranger, whose charred body was not discovered until December 17, among the ruins of Elevator Q. The loss was so substantial it actually led to a rise in value of the Chicago grain market. The fire also consumed a saloon, a carriage factory, houses, and warehouses on the 400 block of East Superior Street. The following year wheat from both burned elevators remained on the site, rotting away. It was loaded onto barges and dumped into Lake Superior. In 1892, founders of the Duluth Curling Club used Elevator A’s foundation to build the club’s first rink, which was destroyed in a blizzard in March 1892. Read about Duluth’s historic Grain Trade here, in the Zenith City History archives Industry section. Read newspaper coverage of the fire here: ElevatorFire_12.03.1886_01_DWT, ElevatorFire_12.03.1886_02_DWT, ElevatorFire_12.03.1886_

Harbor History: November 21, 1902: The Steamer Bannockburn Vanishes

November 21, 1902: The Steamer Bannockburn Vanishes By Tony Dierckins On November 21, 2012

The Bannockburn, the “Flying Dutchman of the Great Lakes.” (Image: Great Lakes Vessel Index)

 On this day on Lake Superior in 1902, the steamer Bannockburn—a 254-foot, 1,620-ton steel-hulled steamer—vanished. She was headed down lake to Saulte Sainte Marie from Port Arthur/Fort William (today’s Thunder Bay, Ontario) with 95,000 bushels of wheat grown in Manitoba. Built in Scotland in 1893, the Bannockburn was piloted by Captain George Woods, who had a crew of 19 with him. The reports of her disappearance first reached Duluth on November 27, in a report from Chicago. At first it was hoped she was stranded on Caribou Island. The steamer John D. Rockefeller reached Duluth the day before, and the same issue of the Duluth News Tribune that carried the Chicago story also reported that the Rockefeller’s crew said they had passed through a large debris field off Stannard Rock east of the Keweena Peninsula, with no signs of life. Later the steamer Algonquin reported seeing her on November 17 about sixty miles southeast of Passage Island (part of today’s Isle Royale National Park) and northeast of Keweenaw Point, within a heavily used shipping lane. Tugs searched along the entire north shore of Lake Superior to no avail. In December, one of her life preservers was found near Grand Marais. No one ever saw her again. Except…well, some did. She apparently had a unique profile and was easily identifiable from a distance. In the years after she vanished, crews of Lake Superior vessels have reported seeing her, most often in November storms. In the late 1940s the captain and crew of the Walter A. Hutchinson claimed seeing the ship during a November storm. The Bannockburn reportedly forced the Hutchinson to change course, then rammed itself into rocks the Hutchinson would have otherwise hit. The Bannockburn then started breaking up and, suddenly, vanished. She is known as “the Flying Dutchman of the Great Lakes.”
Read more about theBannockburn here and here.
Zenith City Online

Harbor History: November 10, 1975: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

 A postcard of the Edmund Fitzgerald. (Image: X-Comm.)

This day on Lake Superior in 1975, as most readers are aware, the ore boat Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, taking all twenty-nine hands down with her. The previous day she had loaded 26,000 tons of taconite pellets at the Burlington Northern dock in Superior, Wisconsin, and left port at  2 p.m. that day, taking its cargo to Zug Island on the Detroit River. Just 39 minutes later, the gale warnings came in. It took the Fitzgerald until 1 a.m. to get 20 miles south of Isle Royale, battling 52-knot winds and ten-foot waves. At 7 a.m. the Fitzgerald reported 35-knot winds and ten-foot waves. At 3:30 in the afternoon, Fitzgerald Captain Ernest McSorley radios the Arthur Anderson, who is trailing the Fitz, and tells Captain Cooper his vessel had sustained “some topside damage.” and asked the Anderson to keep the Fitz in her sights. Forty minutes later the Fitz radioed the Anderson once again, announcing that her radar equipment had failed and asking for the Anderson’s assistance. Things got steadily worse for the Fitzgerald, and by 6 p.m. it was listing badly. At 7:10 the Fitzgerald told the Anderson “We are holding our own.” At 7:25 the Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared from the Anderson’s radar. For more information on the Fitzgerald sinking, visit S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald Online.

Tony Dierckins | Zenith City 

November 7, 1913: The “White Hurricane” begins

                                A lithographic postcard of the Huronic in Duluth, made between 1915 and 1925. (Image: X-Comm.)

This day in 1913 marks the start of one of the biggest storms sailors on the Great Lakes have ever experienced. The so-called “White Hurricane” (also called the “Big Blow” and the “Freshwater Fury”) was essentially a blizzard producing hurricane-force winds and technically considered an “extrapolated cyclone.” Between November 7 and 10 the storm produced 90 mph wind gusts, 35-foot waves, and whiteout snow squalls, beaching many large vessels. A lull in the storm on November 8 caused many to think the storm was over, and shipping traffic that had been delayed was resumed, sending more vessels out into what would soon become the teeth of the storm. Ports around the Great Lakes raised gale-warning flags, ignored by many ship captains. Cleveland was hit with 22 inches of snow. A brand-new $100,000 breakwater in Chicago was swept away. On Lake Superior, the Leafield was wrecked near Angus Island, taking 18 people down with it; theHenry B. Smith sunk near Marquette, Michigan, with 25 lives lost. Neither vessel has ever been found. Stranded on Lake Superior were the Fred G. Harwell, the J. T. Hutchinson, the Major, the William Nittingham, the Scottish Hero, the Turret Chief, the L. S.  Waldo, and the passenger steamer Huronic (some newspapers  mistakenly reported the Huronicas the Hamonic, its sistership). In all, nineteen ships were destroyed, nineteen other stranded, and 250 people died. Read Wikipedia's description of the storm here.
Contributed by: Tony Dierckins - Zenith City Press

Harbor History - 1874: The Wreck of the Lotta Bernard

1874: The Wreck of the Lotta Bernard

Lake Superior in 1874, the wooden sidewheelerLotta Bernard foundered in a storm and was stranded at Encampment Island—off the North Shore near Castle Danger, between Two Harbors and Gooseberry Falls—where she broke up. She had been en route from Thunder Bay (Port Arthur) to Duluth. when they encountered a storm that soon turned to a blizzard. Lifeboats were launched, but one capsized, and two crew members were lost. Another later died of exposure. Captain Michael Norris and eleven other crew members and passengers and crew survived. Ten of them found food and shelter in a camp of local Ojibwe. Besides the three human lives, a horse, 200 sacks of flour, and 60 kegs of fish were lost. TheLotta Bernard was just six years old. The 125-foot long, 190-ton vessel was built in Sandusky, Ohio, and used by J. D. Howard and Edmund Ingalls of Duluth to ship lumber and small freight around communities along the western Lake Superior shores. (Her official home port was Superior.) The Detroit Free Presssaid she “was altogether unfit for the traffic she was employed in. Her route was a rugged and dangerous one, and no means being available for the few that traveled that way without the right of government necessary in such cases, she was permitted to receive passage permission on every opportunity.” She had experienced trouble before: In the fall of 1872 the Lotta Bernard ran aground near Octonagon, Michigan, and was stranded there until the following April. On October 30, 1874, the day after she ran aground on Encampment Island, she sank to the bottom of Lake Superior. Her wreck has not been located.
Story is compliments of Zenith City Press

October 24, 1899: Wreck of the Criss Grove

Split Rock Island

October 24, 1899: Wreck of the Criss Grove

On October 24th, 1899 on Lake Superior, ninety-foot long, the three-masted schooner Criss Grover ran aground and wrecked near Split Rock Island—eleven years before the Split Rock Lighthouse first lit. Enroute from Bay Mills, Michigan, to Duluth with a load of lumber, the Grover ran into gale or thick fog (accounts differ) and struck a reef near the island. Divers today can see its hull and anchor in about 53 feet of water near the Island. No one was killed, and the next day the crew began stripping it of any reusable items—the vessel was so rotten and damaged it was deemed not worth salvaging. Launched in 1878, the schooner was known among Lake Superior mining towns as a “powder boat,” as she often hauled blasting powder and dynamite to mining and lumber camps when no other vessel would. It wasn’t the first time the Grover had run aground. In 1880 she had also come ashore with heavy damage in Lake Huron near AuSable, Michigan. The wreck was declared a total loss, but she was salvaged and returned to action. Unfortunately, life-saving efforts during that incident proved fatal—for one of the volunteer rescuers. A local judge was manning a small canon that propelled tow lines to the floundering vessel when the cannon exploded, killing him. 

By Tony Dierckins On 

By Tony Dierckins On October 24, 2012 

http://zenithcity.com/october-24-1899-wreck-of-the-criss-grover/