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Ship of the Month - cont'd. was Louise Cluckey, second cook and the wife of the steward. 12. There was a delay of several days in obtaining a cargo of iron ore out of the Lakehead and, accordingly, SEVONA did not clear the piers at Superior until 6: 03 p. m. on Friday, September 1st. (There are those who would suggest that she never should have sailed on a Friday and, in retrospect, it would have been much better had she not sail e d. ) SEVONA was bound for Erie. She cleared Superior just ahead of the Provident Steamship Company's JAMES H. REED and, as the ships passed, their masters exchanged greetings. The REED's master later said that their normal trip to the Soo would have taken 28 hours, but on this occasion that same trip took 60 hours. The REED would not deliver her 7, 800-ton ore cargo at Erie until September 7th. The weather on Lake Superior early on the evening of September 1st was gene rally favourable. There was no wind, but a heavy ground swell was running. Captain McDonald went aft about 9: 30 p. m. to see the chief engineer and remarked that they were liable to get some sea when they got down a little further. In fact, they would soon find themselves sailing into the teeth of a vicious northeasterly gale. Finding that the situation was deteriorating rapidly, at about 2: 00 a. m. on September 2nd, the master alerted the passengers that he was going to turn the ship around, and that they should put things so they would not fall on the deck with the movement of the ship. At 4: 00 a. m., he sent four men to assist the passengers back to the after cabin. With one man on each side, the inner one holding on to a life line stretched between the winches, they quickly escorted the two passengers to the safety of the dining room. At 3: 00 a. m., the captain had passed the word for the chief to stand by in the engine room as they made the turn to come about. The turn successfully accomplished, the chief went up on deck to look around and found Mate Darwin standing atop No. 10 hatch; he was considering changing the tarps on the three after hatches because they were old, but the chief talked him out of doing it under those conditions. The Anchor Line passenger steamer TIONESTA saw the lights of SEVONA after she had made her turn. Someone else "saw" her, too, but under different cir cumstances. Captain W. W. Wilkins, of Erie, was sailing McBrier's steamer NYANZA at this time; he later indicated that on two occasions during the night of September 1-2, he had dreamed that the SEVONA was in trouble. At 5: 30 a. m., SEVONA started to pitch heavily. At 5: 45 a. m., the engine room received a signal for one-half speed. About five minutes later, the ship struck the Sand Island Shoals in the Apostle Islands, with a "terrific splitting crash", and two more followed in quick succession. After she made her turn to run back for shelter, it would appear that SEVONA had deviated to port from the prescribed course, and found herself in shoal water. The chief engineer, in a statement which he gave later, said that he felt that SEVONA had broken at No. 4 hatch on the port side when she struck the shoal. The rope to the valve of SEVONA's steam whistle was tied down to sound a signal of distress, and the whistle blew until all of the steam was gone, but there was no one to render assistance in that weather. When the first lifeboat was being lowered, the chief engineer saw Captain McDonald and Mate Darwin standing in the lee of the pilothouse. He waved to them to come aft before the break in the hull spread, but they paid no heed. The second lifeboat was launched with some difficulty as they could not lower it from the port side and they had to drag it over to the opposite side. A water tank had to be removed to make passage for the boat across the deck, and the men also had to cut away the lashings of some of the stays to the smokestack. (This most likely is why the stack was washed away by the seas, whereas the mainmast remained standing on the wreck, as did the bat tered steel boilerhouse. )