Image via Globe Pequot
Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes
November has always been a treacherous month for sailing on the Great Lakes. The gale force winds, raising mountains of water, have claimed many lives and many ships. Best remembered among them is the Edmund Fitzgerald, whose sinking inspired Gordon Lightfoot’s hit song as well as the final chapter in Anna Lardinois’ new book, Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes.
The author is known in her hometown as the operator of the Gothic Milwaukee haunted buildings tour and for her previous book Milwaukee Ghosts and Legends. Shipwrecks is divided by lakes with subchapters about particular ships and stories (some of them supernatural or cryptozoological).
Characteristic is her section on the events of late October 1929. As the stock market began its descent toward the Great Depression, no less than three steamers went down in Lake Michigan, victims of a November gale that arrived early. Human misjudgment was also a factor. The skipper of one of those lost ships, the Milwaukee, stubbornly tried to reach his port on time and sailed into the storm. The entire crew of 52 perished and most of their bodies were never recovered. The wreck of the Milwaukee went undiscovered until 1972 when it was found near Fox Point.
