Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Scanner, v. 36, no. 2 (November 2003), p. 7

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7. Ship of the Month - cont'd. of the waves from shore turned us around and we were then heading into the waves for the first time. As soon as we started into it, the first big waves came over the wheelhouse and broke all the front windows in it. The wheel­ house then was full of water and everyone had cuts and bruises from the bro­ ken glass and wreckage. We then ran full astern for a while and then stopped the engines. "The surf was then carrying us down the shore until we got to about two miles north of the light; then we struck bottom for the first time. We were all glad to see it hit as we knew we had a chance of being saved then. When the ship hit, she quivered from stem to stern and broke in two. With her back broken, she soon filled up with water and we were forced to spend the night in the Captain's room. We were in darkness as the wires were broken under the deck and the engine room soon filled up as the gangway door broke in. The aftercrew were forced to spend the night in the oilers' room and each one took turns in bailing water out the porthole to keep alive. There were ten of us up in the Captain's room, so we all made ourselves as comfor­ table as possible. We were soaked and we had no more clothes to put on so we just made the best of it. "Before we lay down for the night, we thought it would be a good idea to lo­ wer down the anchors just in case the surf would carry us out again. With the help of a deck hand, I went out and lowered them down. Then we came in and sat around and talked. We lit the coal-oil lamp to give us a little light but it only lasted a few hours. The night was long and cold with not much encouragement of being rescued. Just before daylight, the port door caved in forcing us all into the Captain's office. Our only hope then was that the wall between his office and the rest of his quarters wouldn't let go as we had no other place to go. We felt the wall getting weaker all the time so we put boards up against it to prop it up, hoping it would hold un­ til we were rescued. "After daylight came, we noticed our lifeboats had been washed away so the only way we could be rescued was [with] aid from shore. About 9: 30 in the morning, we noticed three men on the shore walking over the hill so we tried to draw their attention by waving a sheet out the door. At last they saw us, so they went back over the hill and about an hour later there were about a dozen men coming down to the shore. During the day the crowd got bigger and soon there were hundreds of people there but no one would dare come out in those raging waters. "As we were only 700 feet from shore, we tried to shoot a line to the shore but had no success. We kept sending up rockets to let the people know that we were still alive. As darkness came on us for the second night, we saw we had no chance of being rescued that day so we all sat around hoping for the best. By this time we were cold and getting quite hungry as we had had nothing to eat for two days. The mate then found a pail and made a little fire in it to warm us up a bit. We broke up the chairs and furniture for wood and when that was all gone we started on the walls. We had a little axe with us so we broke up the walls with it. We opened the door to let the smoke out as we had the fire close to the door, on the floor. "Every hour we sent up a rocket to let the folks know we were there yet. On shore they kept a fire going all the time to try to encourage us and to let us know there was nothing to do but wait until help arrived. During that night, the sea had gone down and when daylight came the Captain went down to the afterend of the boat to see who all was there. We knew there was someone there as they were throwing water out the porthole. When they came back up forward we found to our sorrow that the two cooks [Joseph Deshaw, Toronto, and Philip Flavin, Halifax] had been washed overboard and one fireman [John Peterson] was almost all in from exposure. "The seventeen [surviving] of us were once more back together again and we all crowded around the fire. The fire felt good to them [the aft end crew]

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