The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Page 8 The AURANIA began her career as a 352-foot barge. During the winter of 1899, an engine md machinery were installed. The impact crushed the Ward's bow like a foot would a styrofoam cup. Her pumps were activated immediately, but in minutes it was clear the Ward suffered mortal wounds and already the death throes had set in. The call to abandon ship was given. Five crewmen of the Ward would be lost in the frigid water. The survivors were rescued by the Rutland Line steamer Bennington (later renamed Brockton) and taken to Mackinaw City. As the news of the Ward disaster flashed across the wire, it was reported that the five perished crewmen of the Ward were asleep in their bunks. Timese LeMay arrived in Detroit the next day and put that rumor to rest. As the crewmen of the Ward that had taken to the starboard lifeboat and successfully launched it, they neglected to turn the davits inward. As the Ward slipped below the surface, the davit caught the gunwale of the lifeboat, capsizing it. The occupants were hurled into the Arctic water, and while LeMay and others in the port lifeboat were quick to rescue six men, five lost their lives. (Besides an unidentified deckhand, the lost were identified as John Hem, James Perry, John Mebaroth and Kinney McKay.) The same day Timese LeMay was giving his testimonial to the loss of the Ward's crewmen, April 21st, the sedulous, much-traveled laker Russell Sage was chugging up to the dock of the Booth Fish Company in Ashtabula, Ohio. It wasn't where the Sage arrived from - Ogdensburg, New York, - that probably would have caused Timese LeMay's mouth to drop open. It was her cargo. Owing to the mild winter on the Lake Erie environs, the Russell Sage arrived with a cargo of St. Lawrence River ice! It would be a week when already a somber spring on the lakes would be transformed into a season of dirges. With a hefty fleet of icebound vessels near the Soo awaiting upbound passage, vesselmen appeared to be getting a break as brisk winds began pushing ice floes out of Whitefish Bay. But these would be specious winds, for as Whitefish Bay began clearing and a number of boats began the charge up Lake Superior, a dastardly windshift and strength was offing. On the 29th, the walls came down. A major system, cyclonic in fury, blew from Lake Superior all the way south to the Ohio River Valley. Violent wind and thunderstorms wracked Cleveland, doing extensive damage to buildings and injuring many. At Lamont, Illinois, it was reported that the vicious winds ripped the iron sheeting off a railcar and telegraph poles were downed curtailing rail traffic. It was the same scenario in Chicago where traffic was brought to a standstill, and some three deaths were Dossin Museum Coll.