The steamer Benjamin Noble, which went down with all hands on Lake Superior in 1914
Posted on 07/20/2005 7:44:23 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
DULUTH -- For more than 90 years it was a secret Lake Superior wouldn't tell: the deep, dark place where it had entombed the 239-foot Great Lakes freighter Benjamin Noble and its crew of 20 men.
Its captain, 31-year-old John Eisenhardt of Milwaukee, worried in a letter to his sister that the vessel was overloaded, making it unstable, according to "Lake Superior Shipwrecks" by Julius F. Wolff. The trip was Eisenhardt's first as captain. It became his last.
As the vessel crossed Lake Superior, one of the worst spring storms ever to strike the big lake was gathering -- with winds of at least 64 miles per hour. From a distance, the captain of another vessel saw a smaller ship's lights disappear at about 3 a.m. By that afternoon, hatch covers, oars and other flotsam from the Noble were washing up on Minnesota Point in Duluth.
Last Halloween, wreck hunters Jerry Eliason and Randy Beebe of Duluth, Ken Merryman of Fridley and Kraig Smith of Rice Lake, Wis., were scanning the bottom about 10 miles off the shore near Two Harbors.
They were looking for the Robert Wallace, a wooden steamer that went down in 1902. They thought the structure their side-scan sonar detected half-buried in the muddy bottom more than 300 feet down was the Wallace.
But when they lowered an underwater camera, they discovered a hull made of steel, not wood. Then they caught glimpses of the cargo: steel rails.
In western Lake Superior, only one missing steel vessel was loaded with rails when it went down: the Benjamin Noble. Eliason considered the Noble the Holy Grail or Loch Ness monster of wrecks, half history, half legend, a hidden crypt for 20 men.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the gales of November come early?
;^)
Superior ping!
that is nasty Lake when it get cranked up, anytime of the year more so in late fall, and spring, lots of wrecks.
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
by Gordon Lightfoot
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore - 26,000 tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early
The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconson
As the big freighters go it was bigger than most
With a crew and the Captain well seasoned.
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ships bell rang
Could it be the North Wind they'd been feeling.
The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the Captain did, too,
T'was the witch of November come stealing.
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashing
When afternoon came it was freezing rain
In the face of a hurricane West Wind
When supper time came the old cook came on deck
Saying fellows it's too rough to feed ya
At 7PM a main hatchway caved in
He said fellas it's been good to know ya.
The Captain wired in he had water coming in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went out of sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the words turn the minutes to hours
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd fifteen more miles behind her.
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.
Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the ruins of her ice water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams,
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered.
In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed, 'til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they say, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early.
© 1976 Moose Music, Inc.
Ive read that ocean swells are easier on ships than the short choppy waves of the great lakes.
She was a coal burner, that's f'sure.
i believe that is true. little factoid, Lake Superior is the largest and deepest and coldest of the Great Lakes, and has been know to freeze over except the very middle in winter. all N all a really great place to live.
I know y'all just LOVE the song!
You suck. :P
Say Eric how many wreck are in the big lake, I can't remember anymore.
Does dis train go to duloot?
Nope. She goes woop woop.
If you're going to excerpt random paragraphs from a story, please put in [snip] to mark the places. I went out to the source page to read the rest of the story and discovered there was a whole boat-load of stuff from the beginning missing from your excerpt, so I ended up reading it from the beginning to see what all I'd missed.
:o)
thanks, old age is creeping in
thanks, guess I am going to have to make a trip back to Duluth and stand under the lift bridge, and check out the ships coming and going.
Sorry you had to work so hard to read.
Ill pray for you...
watch your head
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