Lake Superior on my mind

Last week I mentioned here that US Coast Guard cutters were starting to work at breaking up the ice in the harbor and out into the lake to open water.  That activity has continued since then and this past Wednesday, the cutters left the Duluth harbor leading a caravan of cutters and one big laker, the Presque Isle,  out of the Duluth harbor and on east toward the Soo Locks which were opening for the season.  They were going to try to follow what little open water there was which meant hugging the shore and taking the LONG way to get to the Soo Locks.

Unfortunately, that plan ground to a halt yesterday when the 4-5 foot ice chunks severely damaged a couple of the cutters and the laker.  So yesterday they all turned back and limped into Duluth again.  The cutters returned first but the Presque Isle had to offload some of its iron ore cargo to lighten the load a little before coming back for repairs.  Here's a link to a KDLH-TV report that may tell it better than I just did.

From: Duluth Shipping News

All this is happening as I'm reading a Kindle book on my iPad, So Terrible a Storm: A Tale of Fury on Lake Superior, about a catastrophic 3-day storm at the end of November in 1905.  That was back before Split Rock Lighthouse or any other lighthouses at the west end of Lake Superior.  In Part I of the book the author, Curt Brown, presents a short history of the lake and how it developed to the major industrial port it was in 1905.  Then Part II begins on the 3-day ordeal experienced by several ships that wanted to make that one last trip to get through the locks before winter set in.

Right now I'm on Day 2 and reading about the Mataafa, a laker that was towing another barge.  The weather forecaster had posted the red flags warning of bad weather coming, but the captain got antsy and took off with his crew of 24 men.  He needed to get up to Two Harbors to load up, but soon realized he'd better turn back to Duluth.  The storm was so bad and the waves so high, he knew he was never going to get his ship and the one he was towing safely into the ship canal.  So he cut the tow line, but then the winds and waves buffeted him so badly and the ship ended up straddling the north side of the pier and eventually splitting in half.  The fifteen men who were able to make it to the front of the ship lived; the nine who were working or tending the engines in the back all froze before being rescued.

http://www.lakesuperior.com/the-lake/maritime/the-mataafa-blow-stormy-horror-of-1905/

I hear strains of Gordon Lightfoot singing in my head!

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called "Gitche Gumee."
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the "Gales of November" came early.

http://gordonlightfoot.com/wreckoftheedmundfitzgerald.shtml