The Western Reserve cargo ship was supposed to be a modern marvel in 1892, but it split in two during a storm and sank.
The wreckage took the lives of 27 people, with one lone survivor able to swim a mile to shore and recount the tale.
The ship, revered for its speed and technology, used the same steel as the Titanic did just 20 years later.
The Western Reserve was designed as a new class of technological shipbuilding in the 1890s. Created by millionaire owner Peter Minch, it was intended to smash speed records on the Great Lakes as it sailed between Michigan and Canada. One of the first all-steel cargo ships built—using the same steel that the Titanic opted for 20 years later—Western Reserve was a 300-foot-long “inland greyhound.”
That all ended tragically on August 30, 1892.
With 28 people aboard the cargo-less ship (including Minch, his wife, his children, and other members of his family), a storm whipped up on Lake Superior. Sitting higher in the water than usual because of the lack of cargo, Western Reserve split in half. Wheelsman Harry W. Stewart was the lone survivor, able to get onto a lifeboat with others and then swim a mile in the lake to shore after the lifeboat capsized 10 hours later.
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The ship wasn’t seen again until diligent explorers with the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society found the wreckage off Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It took members Darryl and Dan Ertel over two years of searching for the ship to find it.
“We side-scan looking out a half mile per side and we caught an image on our port side,” said Darryl Ertel, according to a statement from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. “It was very small looking out that far, but I measured the shadow, and it came up about 40 feet. So we went back over the top of the ship and saw that it had cargo hatches, and it looked like it was broken in two, one half on top of the other and each half measured with the side scan 150 feet long and then we measured the width and it was right on so we knew that we’d found the Western Reserve.”
Crews then used a remotely operated vehicle to capture video of the broken ship, with the bow resting on top of the stern under approximately 600 feet of water.
“Every shipwreck has its own story, but some are just that much more tragic,” Bruce Lynn, Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society executive director, said in a statement. “It is hard to imagine that Captain Peter G. Minch would have foreseen any trouble when he invited his wife, two young children and sister-in-law with her daughter aboard the Western Reserve for a summer cruise up the lakes. It just reinforces how dangerous the Great Lakes can be any time of the year.”
Originally launched in Cleveland in 1890, the Western Reserve was the largest bulk carrier on the lakes at the time, and the first steel bulk carrier of the classic Great Lakes design, according to the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society.
The tale of the tragic ending of the ship just two years later comes thanks to the lone survivor, who managed to find the U.S. Lifesaving Service station at Whitefish Point, Michigan. Stewart recounted sailing directly into a storm about 60 miles north of Whitefish Point, and after the ship broke in two “halfway up the rigging,” it sank in just 10 minutes.
Everyone on board was able to get into two lifeboats (one wooden and one metal), but the metal lifeboat capsized immediately. Stewart recounted that the wooden boat lasted 10 hours carrying 19 people, until it too capsized roughly a mile from shore.
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According to the historical society, Stewart said that he lost sight of the others, “but the cries of the children, the screams of the women, and the moaning of the men were terrible for a few moments, when all became silent.” Stewart swam to shore, laid there for hours and then managed to make it another 10 miles to the lifesaving station. He attributed survival to a “heavy knit close-fitting jacket.”
While experts debated the stories and reasoning behind the Western Reserve failings, it was eventually accepted—especially following the rapid sinking of the *Titanic*—that the vulnerability of cheaper Bessemer steel contributed to the problem, and that the design (with the superstructure moved from the middle to the ends of the ship) added to the inherent fragility of the vessel. The new style of steel was determined to be relatively weak, and the pressure applied by the storm was too much for a metal that became more brittle in lower temperatures. The sinking of sister ship Gilcher just two months later (which had no survivors) helped substantiate the breakage theory.
“Knowing how the 300-foot Western Reserve was caught in a storm this far from shore made an uneasy feeling in the back of my neck,” Darryl Ertel said, “a squall can come up unexpectedly anywhere and anytime.”
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Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.