Why Did They Hit?
By James Donahue
The collision that sank the steamer Pewabic and took an estimated one hundred lives in Lake Huron’s Thunder Bay is still counted among the worst of the Great Lake disasters. It also remains among the unsolved mysteries of the lakes. It happened when a sister ship, the Meteor, hit the Pewabic, sinking her at dusk, about 8:30 PM on August 9, 1865.
The puzzle about the incident was that both vessels from the Lake Superior Lane were operated by experienced crews who should have not made such a mistake. The lake was calm, the night was clear, and survivors from the Pewabic said they could see the light of the Meteor coming for miles before the collision.
The officers didn’t say much about the accident. But historians have developed a plausible theory. Sailors in 1865 were hungry for news from home, and the best way for them to get it was to buy and exchange newspapers. Ships, especially vessels affiliated with the same company, made a habit of passing newspapers to each other when they met, so that sailors could get the latest news from the ports still lying ahead of them. The busy boat masters weren’t always willing to bring their vessels to a stop just to exchange newspaper, so it was said some of them established a system of tossing newspapers and even sacks of mail from ship to ship as they passed in midlake.
The Pewabic and the Meteor were on a schedule and probably passed each other regularly at about the same place on every trip. Nobody can prove it, but the story is that the masters brought their boats recklessly close in passing so the sacks of mail and newspapers could be safely tossed from deck-to-deck.
On the night of August 9, they got too close. The Pewabic, under command of Capt. George McKay, was steaming down the lake, bound for Detroit, with about one hundred seventy-five passengers and crew members, plus a heavy cargo including two hundred seventy tons of copper ingots in her hold.
The Meteor, loaded with lime, was upbound heading for Lake Superior. Some accounts said Capt. Thomas Wilson and the Meteor’s first mate, George Cleveland, who was standing watch, were negligent in the disaster. But old news stories of the period show that a jury acquitted Cleveland of any wrongdoing. Wilson testified that he was not in the pilot house at the time of the crash.
When the Meteor drove her bow deep into the port side of the ill-fated Pewabic, just aft of the wheelhouse, many people were crushed in the cabin below where they were socializing for the evening. The Pewabic filled and sank so fast that crew members working in the engine room and passengers who failed to rush out of their staterooms went down with the ship. Some survivors escaped by jumping to the deck of the Meteor before she backed away. Others got in lifeboats or were picked up in the water by lifeboats launched by the Meteor.
Survivor James M. Buchan of Cleveland said he was standing with several other passengers on the deck, watching the approaching Meteor, until it became evident that the two boats were going to hit. He said everybody ran to the starboard side where they heard the crash.
“It didn’t shake the boat very much,” Buchan said. He said he went to his stateroom, grabbed a life jacket, then went out on deck again to assess the damage. By then the Pewabic was already sinking by the head. Before he knew it Buchan said he was in the water and getting pulled down with the suction of the sinking ship. “When I began to ascend I felt pieces of timber above me and touching me all around. I began to fear that I could come under a piece of the deck and find it difficult to come to the surface. But owing to my having a life preserver in my hand, I came up more rapidly than the wreck and found myself on top of the water with a large piece of the hurricane deck under me.”
The exact number of people killed was never told. Estimates ranged between forty and a hundred. The Pewabic sank deep, in one hundred eighty feet of water off Alpena, Michigan.
Even there, the Pewabic continued to claim lives. Her cargo of copper plus an estimated forty thousand dollars in the strongbox lured many divers of the day to risk their lives making that deep descent to the wreck. At least five divers died before salvagers successfully recovered the Pewabic’s treasures in 1917.
The Meteor caught fire and burned about two days after the collision, even before it completed its ill-fated trip into Lake Superior. The fire happened in the Saint Mary Ship Canal basin near Sault Ste. Marie. They thought the blaze was caused by the ship’s leaking hull, which caused water to make contact with the cargo of lime. To extinguish the flames, the Meteor was scuttled and sunk in twelve feet of water. Nobody was hurt.
By James Donahue
The collision that sank the steamer Pewabic and took an estimated one hundred lives in Lake Huron’s Thunder Bay is still counted among the worst of the Great Lake disasters. It also remains among the unsolved mysteries of the lakes. It happened when a sister ship, the Meteor, hit the Pewabic, sinking her at dusk, about 8:30 PM on August 9, 1865.
The puzzle about the incident was that both vessels from the Lake Superior Lane were operated by experienced crews who should have not made such a mistake. The lake was calm, the night was clear, and survivors from the Pewabic said they could see the light of the Meteor coming for miles before the collision.
The officers didn’t say much about the accident. But historians have developed a plausible theory. Sailors in 1865 were hungry for news from home, and the best way for them to get it was to buy and exchange newspapers. Ships, especially vessels affiliated with the same company, made a habit of passing newspapers to each other when they met, so that sailors could get the latest news from the ports still lying ahead of them. The busy boat masters weren’t always willing to bring their vessels to a stop just to exchange newspaper, so it was said some of them established a system of tossing newspapers and even sacks of mail from ship to ship as they passed in midlake.
The Pewabic and the Meteor were on a schedule and probably passed each other regularly at about the same place on every trip. Nobody can prove it, but the story is that the masters brought their boats recklessly close in passing so the sacks of mail and newspapers could be safely tossed from deck-to-deck.
On the night of August 9, they got too close. The Pewabic, under command of Capt. George McKay, was steaming down the lake, bound for Detroit, with about one hundred seventy-five passengers and crew members, plus a heavy cargo including two hundred seventy tons of copper ingots in her hold.
The Meteor, loaded with lime, was upbound heading for Lake Superior. Some accounts said Capt. Thomas Wilson and the Meteor’s first mate, George Cleveland, who was standing watch, were negligent in the disaster. But old news stories of the period show that a jury acquitted Cleveland of any wrongdoing. Wilson testified that he was not in the pilot house at the time of the crash.
When the Meteor drove her bow deep into the port side of the ill-fated Pewabic, just aft of the wheelhouse, many people were crushed in the cabin below where they were socializing for the evening. The Pewabic filled and sank so fast that crew members working in the engine room and passengers who failed to rush out of their staterooms went down with the ship. Some survivors escaped by jumping to the deck of the Meteor before she backed away. Others got in lifeboats or were picked up in the water by lifeboats launched by the Meteor.
Survivor James M. Buchan of Cleveland said he was standing with several other passengers on the deck, watching the approaching Meteor, until it became evident that the two boats were going to hit. He said everybody ran to the starboard side where they heard the crash.
“It didn’t shake the boat very much,” Buchan said. He said he went to his stateroom, grabbed a life jacket, then went out on deck again to assess the damage. By then the Pewabic was already sinking by the head. Before he knew it Buchan said he was in the water and getting pulled down with the suction of the sinking ship. “When I began to ascend I felt pieces of timber above me and touching me all around. I began to fear that I could come under a piece of the deck and find it difficult to come to the surface. But owing to my having a life preserver in my hand, I came up more rapidly than the wreck and found myself on top of the water with a large piece of the hurricane deck under me.”
The exact number of people killed was never told. Estimates ranged between forty and a hundred. The Pewabic sank deep, in one hundred eighty feet of water off Alpena, Michigan.
Even there, the Pewabic continued to claim lives. Her cargo of copper plus an estimated forty thousand dollars in the strongbox lured many divers of the day to risk their lives making that deep descent to the wreck. At least five divers died before salvagers successfully recovered the Pewabic’s treasures in 1917.
The Meteor caught fire and burned about two days after the collision, even before it completed its ill-fated trip into Lake Superior. The fire happened in the Saint Mary Ship Canal basin near Sault Ste. Marie. They thought the blaze was caused by the ship’s leaking hull, which caused water to make contact with the cargo of lime. To extinguish the flames, the Meteor was scuttled and sunk in twelve feet of water. Nobody was hurt.