White Hurricane : A Great Lakes November Gale and America's Deadliest Maritime Disaster [Hardcover]

David G. Brown (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 007138037X | ISBN-13: 978-0071380379 | Publication Date: June 27, 2002

In early November 1913, not quite 19 months after the loss of the Titanic in midatlantic, an autumn gale descended on the Great Lakes. "Gales of November" - like the one that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald in the 1970s - are a fact of life for Great Lakes mariners, but this one was anything but ordinary. Meteorologists now believe that a blast of cold polar air met a warm, moist air mass entrained in a low-pressure cell moving up from the Gulf of Mexico through the U.S. heartland, and the result was a violent weather "bomb" and the worst recorded storm in Great Lakes history. The storm lasted four days, with sustained winds as high as 75 miles per hour, freezing temperatures, white-out blizzard conditions, and mountainous seas. Though the U.S. Department of Agriculture's weather bureau (forerunner of the U.S. Weather Bureau) issued storm warnings on Friday morning, November 7, the warnings contained no hint of anything more than 50-mile-per-hour winds for Friday and Saturday. Most ships were making their final trips of the season; their captains knew that as autumn turned to winter the weather would only get worse, and then the lakes would freeze. Across the Great Lakes, hundreds of ships left port that weekend, heading directly into the jaws of what became a survival storm. On the ocean, with sea room, a well-found ship can often survive by running off before a storm until it blows out. On the Great Lakes there is never sufficient sea room. In the driving snow, ship masters could only guess where the treacherous shores lay. Ships iced up and became topheavy; some turned turtle. By Monday evening 19 ships had sunk, another two dozen were driven ashore, and at least 238 sailors had lost their lives. The city of Cleveland, buried under 22 inches of snow that drifted up to second-story eaves, and facing shortages of milk, bread, and meat, was confronting the worst natural disaster in its history. White Hurricane recreates the four-day storm with narrative intensity and factual depth. To make sense of this big, sprawling, multifaceted story, author David Brown develops it chronologically and focuses on the most exciting human dramas. One or two ships in each of the four hardest hit lakes - Superior, Huron, Michigan, and Erie - carry the narrative, while other disasters are reported more briefly as they occur. The featured ships are those that left in the newspaper archives and other original and secondary sources the richest, most exciting, most mysterious, and most humanly moving stories. The destructive impacts ashore - especially the privations in Cleveland - weave another narrative strand. On Lake Huron, for example, we meet the Regina, a small Canadian package freighter, as it takes on cargo Thursday at Port Huron. On Sunday, despite gale-force winds, the Regina, the Charles S. Price, and the H.A. Hawgood all leave the sheltered St. Clair River to steam north on Huron. The Regina gets as far north as Saginaw Bay before turning back. The Price and Hawgood also turn around. By dark, the Hawgood is stranded on a Canadian beach and the other ships are missing. Residents of Harbor Beach, Michigan, hear the whistle of a ship in distress just offshore, but can do nothing. The Revenue Cutter Service (forerunner to the U.S. Coast Guard) sends its only Lake Huron rescue vessel to Lake Erie to aid a vessel that, it turns out, doesn't need help. Later, the bodies of Regina's crew and the wreckage of one of her lifeboats wash ashore on the Canadian side of the lake. Intermingled are bodies from the Charles S. Price, one reportedly even wearing a Regina life jacket - leading to an enduring mystery concerning what exactly happened out there. On Lake Huron, for example, we meet the Regina, a small Canadian package freighter, as it takes on cargo Thursday at Port Huron. On Sunday, despite gale-force winds, the Regina, the Charles S. Price, and the H.A. Hawgood all leave the sheltered St. Clair River to steam north on Huron. The Regina gets as far north as Saginaw Bay before turning back. The Price and Hawgood also turn around. By dark, the Hawgood is stranded on a Canadian beach and the other ships are missing. Residents of Harbor Beach, Michigan, hear the whistle of a ship in distress just offshore, but can do nothing. The Revenue Cutter Service (forerunner to the U.S. Coast Guard) sends its only Lake Huron rescue vessel to Lake Erie to aid a vessel that, it turns out, doesn't need help. Later, the bodies of Regina's crew and the wreckage of one of her lifeboats wash ashore on the Canadian side of the lake. Intermingled are bodies from the Charles S. Price, one reportedly even wearing a Regina life jacket - leading to an enduring mystery concerning what exactly happened out there. The book's prologue and epilogue follow ripples from the long-ago storm into the recent past. In the prologue, we trace a diver's discovery of the Regina - the ship that disappeared--in the 1980s. Her overturned hull and bar-taut anchor chain provide mute testimony to the 70 years before. In the epilogue, two divers become the 239th and 240th victims of the storm in the summer of 2000, as they dive on the Regina. The U.S. Weather Bureau and the U.S. Coast Guard owe their existence in part to the Storm of 1913. Like Isaac's Storm and The Heart of the Sea, White Hurricane is both thrilling narrative and scrupulous history. This is the book that carries The Perfect Storm to the heart of America, and David Brown, a Great Lakes mariner and writer and the author of The Last Log of the Titanic, is the ideal guide.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A riveting, well researched account of the worst Great Lakes storm on record. A fascinating read. - Inland Seas: Quarterly Journal of the Great Lakes Historical Society; Brings history to life in a book as readable as any novel. - Good Old Boat; A great read. - Grand Rapids Press --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

Great Lakes mariners fear the gales of November. Six to ten thousand vessels litter the lake bottoms, a disproportionate share--from LaSalle's Le Griffon in 1679 to the mighty Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975--lost in autumn storms. No one, however, was prepared for the killing wind that materialized from the unusually balmy days of early November 1913. On Friday, November 7, as hundreds of ships left port on their final trips of the season, a deadly atmospheric disturbance was already churning Lake Superior and spreading east. By Sunday night, Lake Huron was battered by winds up to 90 miles an hour, whiteout blizzard conditions, and mountainous 35-foot waves. The White Hurricane became the worst Great Lakes storm on record, the monstrous product of a meteorological chain of cause and effect that has yet to repeat itself. Twelve ships sank, and thirty-one more were stranded on rocks and beaches. At least 248 sailors lost their lives, and the city of Cleveland faced the worst natural disaster in its history.

In White Hurricane, nationally recognized nautical writer and experienced Great Lakes mariner David Brown re-creates the desperate struggles for survival aboard doomed and damaged vessels and on shore. Using first-hand accounts and contemporary newspaper reports, he reconstructs the progress of the storm in a tight chronology packed with vivid detail and unforgettable drama. He re-creates the long and desperate hours as captains blinded by driving snow tried to guess where treacherous shorelines lay; as layers of ice made ships top-heavy and threatened to capsize them; as rivets exploded like popcorn from hull plating; as sailors in one storm-tossed freighter watched a crack open up across their steel deck; and as the crew of another stood frozen in horror while a passing vessel broke up and sank before their eyes. And he does what the fledgling U.S. Weather Bureau of 1913 could not do: dissect the storm itself to highlight its hour-by-hour development.

The storm left mystery as well as devastation in its wake. Why, for instance, was the body of a crewman from the Charles S. Price found wearing a life jacket from another doomed ship, the Regina? Why did the Henry B. Smith set out into the Lake Superior blizzard with its hatches still open, never to be seen again? What turned the south end of Lake Huron into a killing zone Sunday night, and why were so many ships caught there? Brown follows all these strands deep into the heart of the storm, meeting the people who lived and died there, including the eighteen-year-old helmsman who may have saved the lives of his entire crew by disobeying his captain's order; the ship's engineer who was stirred by a premonition to quit his ship just before the season's final voyage, then met his shipmates again a few days later under far different circumstances; and the young captain who saw his crew into a lifeboat, then retired to his cabin to die.

White Hurricane tells a big, multifaceted story that sprawls across nearly a thousand miles of storm-ravaged inland sea, combining a fast-paced narrative with scrupulous history and telling detail.

A Riveting Account of the 1913 Storm That Paralyzed the Heart of America

"Ships in the grasp of the storm were on their own, beyond human aid. No matter what happened, they were cut off from potential rescue by the fierceness of the winds and the height of the waves. Even though their anchor held, Regina's crew recognized their perilous situation. The pumps were no longer controlling the flooding, and their ship was becoming waterlogged. It would be only a matter of time before the small freighter succumbed to Lake Huron. Staying aboard a sinking ship was certain doom. If they were to survive, the crew realized they were going to have to rescue themselves."--from White Hurricane

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: International Marine Publishing (June 27, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 007138037X
• ISBN-13: 978-0071380379
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,511,383 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The last trip of the season, December 16, 2003

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: White Hurricane : A Great Lakes November Gale and America's Deadliest Maritime Disaster (Hardcover)

Ninety years ago this November, one of the worst disasters in Great Lakes history took place over a period of four days, when twelve ships foundered and thirty-one were stranded, and 253 sailors drowned during the deadliest storm ever to hit the Great Lakes. The actual toll was probably higher, but no single agency in 1913 kept track of vessels lost or sailors killed. According to this author, the death toll did not include "the commercial fishermen, hunters, or anglers who also lost their lives."

At least three books have been written about this storm, including "Fresh Water Fury" (1960), "Ships Gone Missing" (1992), and this book by David G. Brown, published in 2002. One of the things that sets Brown's book apart from the others is his meticulous meteorological reconstruction of the 1913 storm that raged for four days in early November and sank ships on Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron (the worst hit) and Erie.

According to the author's research, the weather in early November 1913 was remarkably dry and balmy, tempting the shipping companies into making one last run before the end of the season. The U.S. Weather Bureau issued storm warnings on November 7, 8, and 9 but these did not come close to suggesting the true ferocity of the 'White Hurricane.' In fact the Weather Bureau never did post hurricane warnings--two red flags with black centers, displayed one above the other--on the Great Lakes, preferring to reserve that warning for tropical storms even though the four-day storm that struck the Lakes was of hurricane intensity.

This book is organized as a temporal narrative of the storm, starting on Wednesday, November 5 as freighters such as the 'Charles S. Price' took on loads of coal, railroad ties, and iron ore for their last trips of the season. The 'Price's' Assistant Engineer Milton Smith had such a strong premonition about the forthcoming voyage that he quit his job and went home. He would later be asked to identify the bodies of his shipmates that washed up on Huron's icy shores.

On November 6, ships on western Lake Superior were already experiencing rough weather, but nothing that qualified as a full-fledged November gale--not yet. In Detroit, a prominent halo ringed the moon, perhaps bringing to mind the rhyme: "When halos ring the moon or sun/ Rain is coming on the run." In the case of this particular storm, it was a warning of the ferocious blizzard that would paralyze Cleveland and other cities on the Lakes, and add to the woes of the ships that were already battling life-threatening gales.

The empty wooden bulk freighter 'Louisania' was the first casualty of the storm. On Saturday, November 8, the onrushing gale stranded her near Port des Mortes on Lake Michigan, where she burned to the waterline. Up on Lake Superior, the storm "began picking apart the 'L.C. Waldo' shortly after midnight near the Keweenaw Peninsula." Her sailors were some of the lucky few to be picked up from their stranded, ice-bound freighter, but they would have to wait until Monday, November 10 to be rescued.

Brown's narrative of the height of the storm is truly frightening and he can only speculate on the fates of the ships that disappeared far from land. Of the seventeen ships known to be in lower Lake Huron on Sunday, November 9, only two survived and they sustained serious damage.

This book also provides an extended aftermath, appendices, bibliography, and index.

If you'd like to read more about the 'Big Blow' of 1913, I highly recommend Dwight Boyer's "True Tales of the Great Lakes," William Ratigan's "Great Lakes Shipwrecks and Survivals," and the above-mentioned "Ships Gone Missing" by Robert J. Hemming.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars MAKES "THE PERFECT STORM" LOOK LIKE A PICNIC, December 24, 2004

By 

Lance C. Panzer (the Great Lakes) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: White Hurricane: A Great Lakes November Gale and America's Deadliest Maritime Disaster (Paperback)

In November 1913, multiple storm systems collided above the Great Lakes, fueling a deadly maelstrom that lasted several days. There was no ship-to-shore radio. Meteorology was in its infancy; the jet stream hadn't even been discovered yet. Weather news was transmitted via telegraph, and then signal flags were hoisted at assorted spots along shorelines to warn mariners. It wasn't enough.

After unseasonably warm weather in the 60s, ships docked along all the Great Lakes set out for their final trip of the season. For many of them, it was their final trip, period.

The author compiles a staggering quantity of data from a by-gone era to present a sequential, methodical telling of the multitude of ships which sailed headlong into the worst Great Lakes storm in recorded history. While his wide-ranging narrative can sometimes lose the reader in a blizzard of names and places, gradually a larger picture comes clear of flesh-and-blood men struggling to just get home against unimaginable odds. This book evokes tension, courage, even nightmares, followed by heartwrenching tales of frozen bodies washing up on beaches, lifeboats occupied by dead sailors lashed to their seats, and even a message in a bottle hastily penned by a man who knew he'd be dead in minutes (and whose corpse indeed washed ashore a few weeks after this bottle was found). This is man vs. nature, this is man looking into the abyss, this is man meeting his Maker in no uncertain terms.

The next time you stroll along a sunny beach with the water washing around your ankles, consider this:

Your ship battles 30-foot waves driven by sustained 70-mph winds. Out on deck, there's a jackline which extends from bow to stern, specifically to help sailors walk safely along the ship's deck in rough seas. That jackline is now coated with ice as thick as a man's torso. Soon the waves smash out the pilothouse windows. Skylights in the boiler room have also shattered; men somehow continue to shovel coal into the engines while knee-deep in 40-degree water. One gigantic wave actually crushes the pilothouse; all hope of navigation has now vanished. The captain shouts to drop anchor; within minutes the anchor's chain snaps like twine. The ship's inch-thick steel plating begins to crack, and iron rivets snap like buttons. There's nothing to do now but pray and wait to drown--and every minute lasts an eternity.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the REAL "Perfect Storm"!, December 1, 2003

By 

KathyM (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Hurricane : A Great Lakes November Gale and America's Deadliest Maritime Disaster (Hardcover)

While the movie "The Perfect Storm" chronicles a great "Nor'Easter," it can't hold a candle to the White Hurricane of 1913. The stories of heroism, foolishness, kindness, and ruthlessness serve to highlight the ferocity of the great storm. And the eerie coincidences, premonitions, and unexplained happenings before, during, and after the storm make this one exciting ride.

The author does a good job detailing the storm, but some maps would have been helpful. More photos of boats (no, they're not called ships!) and some photos of key characters would have been nice, as well. There is a lot of information on Great Lakes history, so he should have been able to come up with such artifacts.

My grandfather was captain of a "longboat" on the lakes, and he was a sailor in WWI in the Atlantic, and WWII in the Pacific. He said a storm on the Great Lakes was a lot worse than ocean storms because of all the reasons the author details, but also because the water is in a much smaller "container" than in the ocean...so the power multiplies because it has nowhere to go. And the results are horrifying.

I've lived in the Great Lakes area all my life. If you want some "extreme" excitement, come and ride out a November gale. Or, read this book for an excellent "virtual" ride!