Aaaarrrghhh.
Posted on 04/09/2009 7:05:54 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
While the world watches the Somali pirate drama, there's a story to be told of pirates right here on Lake Michigan.
WBBM Newsradio 780's Steve Miller found out that the lake in Chicago's front yard was home to a few pirates from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
You'll find proof in an edition of the New York Times from Oct. 10, 1855. The headline: Wholesale robbery by pirates on Lake Michigan.
The New York Times reported on people in the area around Saugutuck, Mich., "thrown into the most intense excitement by the operations of a gang of marauders, who are reported to be Mormons from Beaver Island."
But these pirates weren't attacking other ships. They were going after land-based stores.
Beaver Island is located toward the north end of Lake Michigan between the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan, and it has its own bizarre history. In the 1850s, James Jesse Strang crowned himself the king of the island and declared it a separate country from the United States. Strang was eventually assassinated.
Another incident of piracy came in June 1908, when "Roaring" Dan Seavey took control of a Great Lakes cargo ship and sailed it to Chicago.
Seavey got control of the 40-foot schooner Nellie Johnson in Grand Haven, Mich., by out-drinking its captain and crew, then stealing it.
Seavey was known as a large, intimidating man who drank hard and fought harder. In the years since he sailed the lakes, other legends have sprung up around him.
Rumors said that Seavey killed a man by dropping a piano on him, and that he hunted gold in Alaska with Frederick Pabst of beer notoriety. And no one knew where the skulls he kept on the hull of his ship came from, the Sun-Times reported.
Nonetheless, the Sun-Times said Seavey "found no fortune in his pirating: He was unable to sell the load of cedar posts in Chicago and was captured back near his home in Frankfort, Michigan." Seavey died in 1949.
There were also pirates that roamed and plundered right in the heart of Chicago. During the 1870s, Dick Dooley and his partner "One Night Stand" Cullen sailed along the city's lakefront and riverfront, stopping to raid warehouses and distilleries and steal their cargo, according to the book Strange but True Chicago.
And most infamously of all, Captain George Wellington Streeter stranded his boat on a sandbar on the lake just north of downtown in 1886, then stranded declared that his land was outside of the jurisdiction of Illinois law.
Authorities tried to evict Streeter numerous times, in conflicts that led to gun battles, before a court finally succeeded in removing him in 1918. The trendy Streeterville neighborhood still bears Cap'n Streeter's name.
Related thread:
James Strang, "King of the Kingdom of God on Earth"
The community of avowed “Mormons” lead by James J. Strang on the Beaver Island in Lake Michagan broke up soon after Strang’s death at the hands of disenchanted followers in 1856. The ambush and killing of Strang followed a punishment of 79 lashes meted out against a follower who’d been caught in bed with another follower’s wife.From published accounts of the island’s history, we know that Strang, who reportedly struggled with Brigham Young for control of the LDS Church following the death of Joseph Smith, moved with a group of followers from Nauvoo, Ill., to Voree, Wis., and finally Beaver Island in the late 1840s. There, Strang declared himself “King of the Kingdom of God on Earth” and presided over a community of up to 230 devotees, imposing strict rules of behavior that included an edict that all women wear bloomers instead of dresses and that all men take up polygamy.
Tom Hanks will probably make a movie about them.
If the NY Times says it is so, then it must be. Just like the Jews caused WWII.
Aaaarrrghhh.
About the wacko James Jesse Strang: a few years ago I came across a website where one of his descendents was selling Strang’s revelations in nice leather bound volumes.
No, I didn’t buy any.
This looks interesting: http://www.signaturebooks.com/strang.htm
And who knows, the Strangites might still be around: http://www.strangite.org/Welcome.htm
Strang set up a Mormon sect separate from the Brigham Young sect and declared himself a king...the only kingdom in America. The irish wiped out the mormons on beaver island...it is still heavily irish. If you visit today, it is like stepping back 50 years.
Joseph Smith called himself King. I guess Strang was just taking on the mantle after Smith died, just as Brig took on the mantle of Prophet.
STRANGITES OFF THE PORT BOW! Run up the French (white) flag!
....The New York Times reported on people in the area around Saugutuck, Mich., "thrown into the most intense excitement by the operations of a gang of marauders, who are reported to be Mormons from Beaver Island." But these pirates weren't attacking other ships. They were going after land-based stores.
Beaver Island is located toward the north end of Lake Michigan between the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan, and it has its own bizarre history. In the 1850s, James Jesse Strang crowned himself the king of the island and declared it a separate country from the United States. Strang was eventually assassinated.
PING to resurrect an old thread! It's Talk Like A Pirate Day in the Religion Forum!
Arrrr! Real Pirates Once Sailed On Lake Michigan [and avast! They be Mormons!]
Ahoy, mateys ! Thar be Jewish pirates!
When he prophesies, it's in pirate
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