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The Big Storm of 1913 - Part II (continued) Some of the outfit of the private dining room was washed into the mess room; the stewards trunk was washed out of his room and stood on end in the galley. Stewards wife had to remain all night in the engine room wrapped in a blanket. Water through the engine room skylight drenched the two engineers who were throttling the engines. I do not think it ever happened before when these two men had to stand by these two positions constantly. From 2:30 p. m., until 5:00 the engines raced, requiring the greastest care and judgement. At times the ship was so heavily burdened with seas coming over her decks that her revolutions were decreased from 75 to 35 turns per minute. The engineers made their positions more comfortable by rigging up a piece of canvas over the engines. We continued on our course, following our deep sea soundings, and at 9 o'clock had soundings of 18 fathoms. This carried us well off the west shore. I called the engineer up at this time and told him that at 10 o'clock (the night of Nov. 9) I was going to turn around head to the sea unless I could locate the land or Fort Gratiot light, and wanted to increase the speed of the ship up to that time so as to enable me to bring the boat around head to on account of the sea running behind us. At 10 o'clock we turned heading north half east; the vessel rolled very heavily, but came around all right head to. I should judge that we were 10 minutes in turning. At that time we were about 10 miles north of Fort Gratiot by the soundings we got 10 fathoms. I had everything lashed before we turned. No one thought of a life preserver. The way the ship was behaving we had every confidence in her. The heavy rolling tore adrift the binnacle on top of the pilot house. After that it was extremely dangerous to be in the house, as this heavy object was hurled back and forth across the deck as the ship labored and rolled in the heavy sea. (To be concluded in the January issue of the "Historian".) SEASONS GREETINGS JAMES CARRUTHERS Univ.of Detroit Marine Collection | Steel bulk freighter (C. 131090) built in 1913 at Collingwood, Ontario by the Collingwood Ship Building Co. (Hull #38) for the St. Lawrence & Chicago Steam Navigation; 529 X 58 X 31; 7,462 gross tons. Sank during The Big Storm of 1913.