On Aug. 30, 1892 (133 years ago this month), the steel freighter Western Reserve went down during a furious gale on the Great Lakes, taking 27 souls with her.
The 300-foot steamer remained hidden from that day until just last summer, when it was located 60 miles northwest of Whitefish Point, on the far eastern end of Lake Superior, by members of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society. The find was not made public until March 10 of this year, after the society had formally contacted the descendants of its owner, Capt. Peter G. Minch, who was one of the casualties along with his wife, Anna, and their children, Charlie, age 9, and Florence, age 6, as well as Anna’s sister, Mary Englebry, and her daughter, Bertha, age 10.
Searchers find the tragic shipwreck Western Reserve after 133 years at the bottom of Lake Superior.
Though the tragedy happened on Lake Superior, the most northerly, largest, and deepest of the Five Sisters, the story has many ties to the Buckeye State.
First, of course, is its name, which honored the historic 3-million-acre tract of land in northeast Ohio that was once claimed, or “reserved,” by the state of Connecticut. The ship, one of the first lake freighters built entirely of steel plate, was constructed by the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company in 1890. And Minch, the millionaire shipping magnate, was born near Erie, Ohio, in 1842. The Western Reserve was the pride of his fleet; the ship was so fast, it earned the nickname “the inland greyhound.”
So it was in August — one of the least likely months of the year for major storms on the lakes — that Minch decided to treat his family to some relief from the heat and humidity of a Midwest summer by taking them on a cruise aboard his famous freighter. The ship was scheduled to travel from Cleveland to Two Harbors, Minnesota, where it would pick up a load of ore.
The journey went smoothly as the Western Reserve steamed across Lake Erie, up the Detroit and St. Clair rivers, and northward over Lake Huron to the
St. Marys River, which links to Whitefish Bay, the easternmost point of Lake Superior, at Sault Ste. Marie. But as they entered Whitefish Bay, the wind and weather began changing rapidly. Before long, the waves had grown to gigantic heights, and at about
9 p.m., the Western Reserve began breaking apart at the seams; it sank within only a few minutes.
Most of those aboard, miraculously, were able to abandon ship. Minch and his family escaped in a wooden lifeboat while the crew clambered into a second, metal lifeboat. The metal lifeboat quickly capsized, though two of the crew were able to somehow reach the wooden lifeboat and were
taken aboard.
The remaining lifeboat containing Minch, his family, and the two crew members drifted toward land for 10 hours throughout the night before it, too, capsized, about a mile from Lake Superior’s southeastern shore. Miraculously, one of the crew members — a wheelsman named Harry H. Stewart — survived to tell the tale.
“Every shipwreck has its own story, but some are just that much more tragic,” GLSHS executive director Bruce Lynn said as he announced the discovery. “It just reinforces how dangerous the Great Lakes can be — any time of year.”
At the time of the sinking, speculation was that the ship had been made of steel that was too brittle, causing the ship to twist in two on the tall waves. Two months after the disaster, the Western Reserve’s sister ship, W.H. Gilcher, which had
been built at the same time and with similar mill runs of steel plate, disappeared on Lake Michigan. The ensuing investigation led to changes in the types of maritime steel approved for use in American and Canadian shipbuilding.
Some 6,000 shipwrecks have occurred on the Great Lakes, with more than 30,000 people losing their lives. Lake Erie, the shallowest of the five lakes, has one of the highest concentrations of shipwrecks anywhere in the world. More than 2,000 ships have gone down on Erie, but only 400 of those wrecks have been located.
To make their discovery, the GLSHS team searched a grid pattern for two years, using both side-scanning sonar and a remotely operated vehicle. The wreck revealed that the Western Reserve had broken cleanly in two, the bow now resting atop the stern in 600 feet of water.
One final tie-in to the Buckeye State: The only artifact thus far recovered from the Western Reserve is a light (top photo), which is currently housed at the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo (https://nmgl.org). A matching light seen by the remote vehicle was one of the ways the searchers confirmed they had found the ship.
W.H. “Chip” Gross is Ohio Cooperative Living’s outdoors editor. Email him with your outdoors questions at whchipgross@gmail.com. Be sure to include “Ask Chip” in the subject of the email. Your question may be answered on www.ohiocoopliving.com!
