Searchers find Minnesota-bound freighter that sank in Lake Superior in 1892

DULUTH ‐ The Western Reserve, a mammoth and nearly new steam freighter, was en route to Two Harbors in August 1892 when it split in half during a storm and quickly sank to the depths of Lake Superior, leaving behind a wheelman as the lone survivor of a hurried evacuation on rough waters.

“There is no way of identifying the place where the steamer went down,” according to a story that ran in the Chicago Tribune. “It was out of sight of land and no way of locating the wreck.”

A team from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society announced this week that it had finally located the 300-foot ship this past summer, bow resting atop the stern in water 600 feet deep, about 60 miles northwest of Whitefish Point. This has been a two-year project for the Michigan-based shipwreck seekers who work aboard the David Boyd research vessel using marine technology to scour the dark pockets of Lake Superior.

The searchers use grids to mark out shipwreck spots on the greatest of Great Lakes. One triangle of area on a map they call “The Monster Grid,” had been hard to get to because of coordinating with shipping traffic. Plus, this is “darn near the middle of Lake Superior,” according to Corey Adkins, communications director.

Then it all came together.

“It was there,” Adkins said. “The sonar image was clear.”

When the crew spotted it, the size seemed right for the Western Reserve, according to Darryl Ertel, director of marine operations.

“So we went back over the top of the ship and saw it had cargo hatches and it looked like it was broken in two,” Ertel said in a news release. “One half on top of the other and each half measured with the side scan 150-feet long and then we measured the width, and it was right, so we knew we had found the Western Reserve.”

Twenty-six people died in the wreck, including the supposedly unsinkable ship’s owner Peter Minch, his family and others who had tucked into two separate lifeboats before the Western Reserve foundered. Harry Stewart was the only one left to tell the tale — after swimming a mile to shore, then walking 10 more miles to get help at a safety station.

He would later credit his knit cap and tight-fitting jacket with saving his life.

Staff at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, which is planning a documentary about the wreck, has been in touch with Stewart’s descendants.

The Western Reserve had left Cleveland two days earlier with the ship’s owner and family among the more than two dozen on board. Minch, his wife, his son, 10, and daughter 6, were joined by Minch’s sister-in-law and her daughter, 9. For them, it was a recreational trip from Lake Huron to Minnesota’s north shore.

A gale overtook the ship on the evening of Aug. 30, 1892. The Western Reserve quickly broke in two and began to sink. Stewart would later say that the ship was barreling into heavy head seas with no water in her front compartment. Others later speculated that the ship might have come down on a log.

Either way, it took just 10 minutes, according to Stewart.

Those on board scrambled for the ship’s two lifeboats. The Western Reserve was barely below the water when the first lifeboat capsized. The remaining lifeboat battled the lake all night and into the next day — only to flip a mile from the shore.

“Stewart says he saw none of the occupants after that,” according to a story that ran in the Minneapolis Daily Times. “He struck for the shores, but the cries of the children, screams of the women and moaning of the men were terrible for a few moments, when all became silent.”

He was in the water for 2 hours before making it to land.

“I have seen a great deal more severe storms on Lake Superior and cannot account for the breaking in two of our boat; her machinery was all right, also her boilers,” Stewart said, according to a story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “It was certainly the pounding she got.”

The historical society’s executive director Bruce Lynn said that it’s hard to imagine that the ship’s owner would have foreseen any trouble when he invited his family aboard.

“It just reinforces how dangerous the Great Lakes can be — any time of the year," he said in a news release from the organization.

The Western Reserve, among the first all-steel freighters, was built to be the fastest and strongest freighter on the Great Lakes at the time, according to Adkins.

It closely resembled another ship built in the early 1890s: the W.H. Gilcher. They were both capable of carrying the largest amounts of cargo, both made of steel.

And, a couple months later, the Gilcher, too, was lost to a Great Lake.

It left Buffalo bound for Milwaukee with a load of coal in late October, but never reached its destination. Debris was found near North Manitou Island on Lake Michigan, according to news reports from the time. No one in the crew of 18 survived; That sunken ship has not been found.