Customer Reviews

Shipwrecks and Lost Treasures: Great Lakes: Legends and Lore, Pirates and More!

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I just received this book and it took me all of two days to finish it (I like to read). The chapters are short and easy to read just one or two (or all of them) in a sitting. I wish the author would have gone into a little more detail on each of the shipwrecks though. Overall, I would reccommend this book to anyone who likes maritime history in the Great Lakes. There are a lot of nautical terms [it is a book about ships] and although there is a glossary in the back of the book a few of the terms, such as draft, do not appear so a basic knowledge of boats is helpful.

I picked up this title from my local library with the express purpose of reading it and then later purchasing it. However, I'll hold off. I'm a big fan of Great Lakes maritime history, even being a member of the GLSHS (Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society). While the editor of this collection of stories had the best of intentions, I feel like many of the stories fall flat. Some are fantastic, others feel unfinished. Overall, the work suffers from a lack of historical perspective. More was put into the spinning of a tale than the presentation of fact. While this was not a "history" per se, it could have been a better meld of the two. I understand the controversy behind the Wikipedia lifting mentioned by another reviewer. It's possible. It always is. If the author/editor was not personally writing each story, his contracted author might have lifted those sections in a moment of desperation. But that really doesn't matter.

If you're looking for a quick read that gives a 50,000-foot view on some of the more fascinating shipwrecks on the Great Lakes, this is a wonderful primer. Move on to the more historical reads next and visit the GLSHS at Whitefish Point in Michigan's Upper Peninsula to see some of these things for yourself. (It's near the site of the legendary Edmund Fitzgerald's sinking.)

This was an excellent read. I have always enjoyed books about shipwrecks. This book delves into shipwrecks of the Great Lakes opening the door to an area explored little by writers of this topic. Mr. Varhola takes his readers away from the warm waters of the Caribbean and recounts historical tales of lost ships in the colder waters in the American Great Lakes. The histories of the various ships were fascinating and the imagery of one or two short stories brought life to this topic. As a fan of historical fiction I hope Mr. Varhola will utilize his well researched knowledge to create a few tales that dig deeper into this subject matter.

When folks think of shipwrecks and nautical adventures they typically consider the Atlantic Coast or the Caribbean. But Mike Varhola takes us on an entertaining and educational voyage through 21 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. Each engaging story of these wrecks, from the earliest European explorers to the 1970s, is told from a different perspective: a passenger awaiting a death sentence, the harried skipper, the conniving grave robber. Mike helps the reader with background information by including a geologic history of the lakes, their surface areas and depths, and weather peculiarities. The author also includes a quick reference map of the wrecks and the lakes. Mike has done a great job capturing this often overlooked area of nautical history.

MikeVarhola's Shipwrecks and Lost Treasures: Great Lakes is an engrossing and entertaining read. Anyone who grew up on the shore, as I did, or who loves ships ("boats," as they are called on the Great Lakes) will find these twenty-five stories riveting. Varhola writes with clarity and close attention to historical details about mighty vessels that came to a bad end in the vast reaches of the Great Lakes. He takes the reader on a fascinating voyage through maritime history, beginning his chronicles in 1679 with the disappearance of French explorer LaSalle's Le Griffon and sailing right up to the 1975 fabled wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

One of my favorite stories in Shipwrecks is the story of the Eastland, a steamship that rolled over on the Chicago River in 1915--literally less than twenty feet from downtown sidewalks--killing over 800 people. I also wrote about the Eastland (more specifically, about the ghosts of its victims) in my book, Ghosthunting Illinois, but Varhola's story is a great retelling of the grim historical details for those readers unfamiliar with the disaster.

I recommend Shipwrecks for readers who are interested in ships and the lore of the sea, or who have an interest in the history of the Great Lakes region, and I look forward to reading more of Varhola's works.

John Kachuba
Author, Ghosthunters: On the Trail of Mediums, Dowsers, Spirit Seekers, and Other Investigators of America's Paranormal World


[ASIN:1578602203 Ghosthunting Illinois (The Haunted Heartland)]]

Excellent book full of 'treasures' of its own. Well-researched and authoritative, this book is an easy read for the layman and an indispensible seminal work for the professional historian.

I did the research necessary to write the 2005 Wikipedia article on the Great Lakes Storm of 1913. It came as a surprise to me to find this book, written a couple years later, had lifted its chapter "Great Lakes Storm of 1913" almost directly from the Wikipedia article, with only minor modification. No credit is given, which is required by the license under which Wikipedia articles are covered.

[Update - see examples in the comments section, or compare for yourself via Google Books.]