OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List Issue 335 *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ *********************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 00 : Issue 335 Today's Topics: #1 Fw: Know Your Ohio -- The Great La ["MaggieOhio" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <07ee01c04e59$b2bf20e0$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Know Your Ohio -- The Great Lake Erie --part 3 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: Darlene & Kathi kelley Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives, by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 1, 2000 ****************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know Your Ohio by Darlene E.Kelley ****************************************************** The Great Lake Erie -- part 3. Lake Erie has always had more personal relationship with land than all the other Lakes, simply because more people have come to dwell around her shores and more boats have trafficked her waters. Lake Erie sailors are no more colorful than the sailors on the other Lakes. but there have been more of them, and they have oftener appeared upon the stage of dramatic events. Erie is the Lake of short hauls, quick trips, stops and starts, hello-goodbys. If a nineteenth century steamboat captain didn't pause along the way for a bite between meals at Toledo or Sandusky or Lorain or Ashtabula or Conneaut, Ohio, or Erie, Pennsylvania, or Dunkirk, New York, he could enjoy an early breakfast in Detroit, a late lunch in Cleveland, and a midnight supper in Buffalo, where he could take a cat nap while freight and passengers came aboard, and then resume his Lake Erie menu in reverse. Steamboats on Erie were as familiar a sight in each port, and as welcome, and almost as regular, as today's mailman. They carried the mail, of course; they brought the latest news. They served the purpose of today's interstate and commuter trains; they were the Greyhound buses running on fresh water. Better known in their day then celebrities, the Captains of crack steamboats strutted in port, promenading the water front while admiring eyes took in their blue coats, brass buttons, nankeen trousers, white vests, low shoes, white silk stockings, ruffled shirts, high hats, jingling gold watch chains and seals. In the era of the Civil War they sported Prince Alberts and stovepipe lids and General Grant beards that gave them the appearance of Barnum's trained walruses. They called anything that floated a boat, and on occasion they even used the word ship, but the term had no relation to size on the Great Lakes. A boat was a boat, from a lumber hooker to a battlewagon. The day would come when fresh water boats grew large enough to serve as aircraft carriers, but boats they remained to the Lake people who in general steered clear of salt water parlance to measure speed in miles rather than knots and to keep time by the Big Ben alarm clock rather than ship's bells. A Captain had a whole list of pet names for his boat; she was his darling, his sweet business, his plaything, his huckleberry. There were staemboat engineers who petted and stroked their machinery and talked baby talk to the various parts in an effort to coax more speed out of them; " It's a sweet little engine; it's the prettiest little piston; it's a cute little valve; it's the nicest little bearing--- etc." The Captains were always roaring for more speed so the engineers had plenty of practice on baby talk. Coming out of Cleveland in a heavy fog, Captain Wight of the William Penn once observed what he figured to be a smokestack of another streamer between his boat and the shore. He ordered full speed ahead, opining that he would never allow anything on Lake Erie to pass him, not if he knew it! The race went on, sparks flying and paddles churning, until the fog cleared to reveal that the supposed rival smokestack was nothing but a fire-blasted tree along the shore. This same Captain Wight was coming out of Buffalo harbor one day when the steamer Illinois hove in sight abaft the William Penn and gained rapidly on her. Whereas an anxious passenger said : " Capatin, she is after us, isn't she?" To which the Captain relied, shaking his fist, " Never mind, we'll be after her directly!" Spokesman for all steamboat Captains on Lake Erie, it was Wight who bragged that the William Penn could " run anywhere where ground was moist." By Lake Erie custom when a Captain made a record run, he hoisted a broom atop the smokestack or foremast and kept it there until beaten. he shipping news of 1839 made this note: During the season there was considerable rivalry in regard to speed, and not infrequently in company a high pressure of steam was carried. The steamer Cleveland claimed to be the fastest boat, without the necessity of racing, which was inserted in her bills. She claimed to make a run between Cleveland and Buffalo in fourteen hours, and from Detroit to Buffalo on one occasion, with fair freight and one hundred passegers, in twenty one hours and thirty eight minutes, the dist- ance being three hundred miles. Not long after this, however, the steamer Buffalo, Capt Levi Allen, made the distance between Detroit and Buffalo in nineteen hours, and carried the broom for the remainder of the season. The year 1853 marked another famous racing season on Lake Erie. Capt McBride's Queen of The West challenged Capt Hazzard's Mississippi on the run to Buffalo to Cleveland, and lived up to her name. Among other contests that same year, the steamboat Queen City raced the Alabama over the identcal course, a distance of 173 miles, and had a winning time of twelve hours and ten minutes, giving her an average speed of almost 15 miles an hour. These contests continued across the years on Lake Erie with the most famous of al reserved for the year 1901 when Detroit's crack excursion boat Tashmoo raced Cleveland's City of Erie on June 4 over a course laid out from Cleveland's breakwater to the lighthouse off Erie, Pennsylvania, almost a hundred miles. A historic event never to be repeated because of the disaster inherent in such trials of speed, the two floating palaces of the Lake approached the starting point at about 9:30 in the morning. For more than a hundred miles the south shore of Lake Erie was lined with holiday crowds. Business shut down; school was closed; passenger steamers were charted from Detroit and other ports to bring spectators to the scene; thousands of dollars had been wagered on the outcome of the race. A cannon boomed and the race was on with the Tashmoo and the City of Erie almost abreast, their paddle wheels kicking up huge swells and clouds of spray flying back from their sharp bows. At Fairport, Ohio, the Tashmoo forged ahead; at Ashtabula Harbor, the City of Erie pulled abreast again; at Conneaut she was two lengths ahead; twenty miles from the finish line she had increased her lead to three lengths. On the last stretch the Tashmoo desperately tried to close the gap, and the wake she and her riva kicked up almost swamped the timekeepers and the judges in their boats, but the watches showed the Tashmoo had come in a heartbreaking forty-five seconds behind the City of Erie, both steamboats averaged just a fraction less than twenty-two miles an hour for ninety-four miles, a record still to be envied by most modern steamers and respected by all. Although the Tashmoo lost her race against the City of Erie in June of 1901, she went on to win the greatest victory any steamboat could boast, on another June day thirty five years later, when, mortally wounded herself,she carried 1,500 passengers to safety, and then died alongside the dock. From the year 1818 when the Walk-in-the-Water started posting records for other steamboats on Lake Erie to shoot at, until 1901 when Tashmoo and the City of Erie ended such debates, rival captains on the short hauls across the shallow inland sea took desperate chances to beat one another into Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, and all points. These Captains also took big chances to extend the season of navigation. One winter Capt. Whitaker of the steamer United States took his boat out of Buffalo and plowed through drift ice until he came to a large field of ice that barred passage into the open lake. Instead of returning to port, he herded all the passegers on the upper deck and told them to run from one side of the steamer to the other, all together. This gave the boat a rolling motion that helped break down the ice while Capt Whitaker backed up and drove ahead until he rammed his way through into navigable water. There were hundreds of such couragious Captains on Lake Erie. They went out in weather that literally scared fish in frightened schools from one depth or another. They made gallant rescues under impossible conditions, and now and then a wild spark of humor would show in their eyes. Their golden era is gone in smoke, but the memory of the old Lake Captains may be seen in the long sunset ladders of pure molten gold that climb the high wall of Lake Erie from the Canadian shore. Each flowing step in the ladder, every rising wave, is a tribute to each and every one of them. ****************************************************** to be continued in part 4-- ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #2 Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 11:40:40 -0500 From: "MaggieOhio" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <07ef01c04e59$b3024460$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Know your Ohio -- The Great Lake Erie-- part 4. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: Darlene & Kathi kelley Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 1, 2000 ****************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley ****************************************************** The Great Lake Erie -- part 4 Lake Erie / Lighthouses/ Aids to Navagation-- With her short hauls and heavy traffic, Lake Erie always has been a cozier body of water than other Lakes, especially when compared with the cold and aloof reaches of upper Huron, Michigan, and Superior. Sometimes this closeness between Lake and shore could become grimly intimate. leading to many notices appearing in the shipping news of the seasons of navigation. With heavy fog and gales it became imminent that aids to navigaion was needed with boats crisscrossing along the way, making Lake Erie too cozy for comfort even in the slightest haze or fog. There is a story told about a freighter Captain while transversing a certain section of Lake Erie during a particularly heavy blow, upon seeing a light in the direct path of his boat radioed the oncoming vessel that he was in imminent danger, in the path of his boat, and to please " Give Way ." Contact was made and the reply came, " Captain forgive us but we will not move." The freighter Captain, incensed that this vessel would not give way, replied in a terse manner that they would surely perish in the path of the freighter and to please give way immediately!. Once again the reply came that they would not give way, but in fact couldn't give way for they were in fact were the lighthouse and not a vessel at sea at all-- the freighter Captain sheepishly changed course and continued unharmed throughout the night. Ohio has at least 18 lighthouses on Lake Erie, of which at least 10 are still active. This total includes some smaller towers which meet the defination of a lighthouse at best. The Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial at Put-in-Bay is not included; it is considered to be a day mark 352 ft high, but not a lighthouse. There is no state lighthouse preservation society in Ohio, but many of the towers are supported by local societies. Because the most hazzardous areas for those crossing Lake Erie, was the southwest passage between Bass Islands to the north, and the Marblehead Peninsula and Catawba Island to the south. The narrowness of the channel combined with frequent storms and a rocky shoreline meant that shipwrecks in this area was common. Because of these dangers, and simply to aid transportation in the area, Congress in 1822 appropriated $10,000 for a new lighthouse to be placed " at or between the mouth of the Grand River in the Territory of Michigan. " The fibal location chosen, the tip of Marblehead Penninsula, was called Rocky Point. Sandusky contractor Stephen Wolverton and his crew went to work there and fashioned a beautiful tower from Native limestone taken from William Kelley of Kelley's Island. The first keeper, Benajah Wolcott, accepted the contractor's work on behalf of the Government in a letter dated Jun 17, 1822. After ten years on the job, Benajah Wolcott died in a cholera outbreak, and the tending of the Marblehead lighthouse fell to his wife, Rachel, who earned the ditinction of becoming the first female lighthouse keeper on the Great Lakes. She continued in this capacity for nearly two years. The original specifications called for the tower to be fifty feet above the ground, the base to be twenty-five feet in diameter, and the diameter of the top to be twelve feet. In 1897, fifteen feet of brick construction was added to the top of the tower, its height increased to sixty-five feet. This addition created added space for a watch room as well to accomodate a better lighting system. At this time, a rotating mechanism called a clockwork system was installed to rotate the light, giving it an intermittent signal. The mechanism was like a grandfather clock, its weights contained in a large pipe in the center of the tower. Each night, every three hours, the keeper cranked the weights up to the top and, as the weights descended, the metal table revolved causing the light to flash. Built in 1822, Marblehead Lighthouse is the oldest continuously operated lighthouse on the Great Lakes and is listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings. It has become the subject of a commemorative U. S. postage stamp and is featured on Ohio's Lake Erie license plate. It now belongs to the Ohio State Parks System. Ohio's Inventory of Historic light Stations--- Astabula Harbor Light [ 1905 ] Location; Astabula Harbor Ent/ Lake Erie Current use; Active aid to navigation Cleaveland Harbor Pierhead Lights [ 1911 ] Location; Cleveland Harbor Entrance/ Lake Erie Current use; Active aid to navigation. Conneaut Harbor West Breakwater Light [1936] Location; Conneaut River Entrance / Lake Erie. Current use; Active aid to navigation Fairport Harbor West Breakwater Light [1925 ] Location; Grand River Entrance/ Lake Erie Current use; Active aid to navigation. Grand River ( Fairport Harbor ) Light [1871 ] Location; Fairport Harbor / Lake Erie. Current use; Museum Huron Harbor Light [ 1936 ] Location; Lake Erie Current use; Active aid to navigation. Lorain Light [ 1917 ] Location; West Harbor Breakwater / Lake Erie. Current use; Community Landmark. Marblehead Light [ Formally Sandusky Bay Light ] [1821] Location; Sandusky Bay Entrance / Lake Erie Current use; Active aid to navigation / Historic site. South Bass Island Light [ 1897 ] Location; South Bass Island / w. Lake Erie Current use; Tower is active aid to navigation / old tower is part of a biological research facility. Toledo Harbor Light [1904 ] Location; Maumee River / Maumee Bay / Lake Erie Current use; Active aid to navigation. West Sister Island Light [ 1848 ] Location; Maumee Bay Entrance/ west end Lake Erie Current use; Active aid to navigation in National Wildlife Refuge. ***************************************************** to be continued in part 5. ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #3 Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 11:43:46 -0500 From: "MaggieOhio" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <07fa01c04e5a$6a78d1e0$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Know Your Ohio -- The Great Lake Erie -- part 5 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: Darlene & Kathi kelley Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 2, 2000 ****************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley ****************************************************** The Great Lake Erie -- part 5. Lake Erie / weather/ messages in bottles and wrecks. The shipping news for the navation season of 1845 carried the following notice; Boisterous Weather-- The extremely boisterous weather was very destructive to lives and vessels, amounting to, as nearly a careful account can make it, thirty six vessels driven ashore. Twenty of these became total wrecks. Four foundered at sea. The boisterous weather struck again in November of 1869, visiting all five of the Great Lakes with the worst toll of shipwrecks in recorded history. A catastrophic storm rode a gale out of Lake Superior to hurricane down Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, and blasted across the Lower Lakes to blow Lake Erie and Lake Ontario spray into the clouds that dropped snow on the St Lawrence River. From the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior to the Thousand Islands at the foot of Lake Ontario, the Lake shores were littered with masts and spars, hulls and sails, lifeboats and life belts, the latter ironically named because they contained nothing but dead men. In Buffalo and Chicago, in Detroit and Cleveland, in Saginaw and Toronto, in Duluth and Milwaukee, owners waited for ships that would never come in, and women yearned in vain for the sailors they kissed good-bye. Through four November days, the storm king raged over the Lakes, strikng icy fists at six propellers, a paddle-wheel steamer, one tug, eight barks, four brigs, fifty-six schooners, three barges, and eighteen scows-- a total of seventy seven vessels wrecked or swept from sight forever. There are some who claim that this storm marked the turning point between sail and steam on the Lakes. Shipping men examined the statistics and decided that sailing vessels were too vulnerable to fresh-water's bosisterous winds and lee shores, whereas steamboats could fight for the sea room that meant survival. This point has nothing to do with the right for supremacy between sail and steam, but to offer in evidence a last minute message corked in a bottle that washed ashore on one of Lake Erie's so-called Wine Islands, Kelley's Island to be exact, the next spring. This message was reprinted in the Islander, Kelley's Island local paper. " Nov. "69. Mast gone. Sinking fast. Good-bye all. Gold Hunter." There were at least half a dozen Gold Hunters on the Lakes in this era, three of them schooners and all lost or wrecked, but only one left a farewell note that was found, and she remains unidentified. Earlier in the same decade, on Aug 18,1861, Mrs. E. Bowen was walkng along the docks of a bustling Cuyahoga River in Cleveland when she spied a corked bottle floating towad shore. The message read; " On board schooner Amelia, August 12, off Grand River, schooner lost foremast, also mainsail, leaking badly, cargo iron. Must go down. All hands must be lost. C.S. Brace, Captain." There were at least three Amelias on the Lakes in this era, starting with the one in Perry's squadron, and all of them schooners, but only this one delivered a message written by a dead man's hand and both the sailing vessel and the Captain remained unidentfied. No great mystery is inferred. The large shallow Lake Erie has swallowed many an unlisted ship and unlicensed master. Sailing in those days was a haphazard business. Even so, the authenticity of some farewell notes found in bottles could provide an interesting subject for speculation. A number of them studied calm. or a theatrical flair, or a gossipy newsiness that may not be inconsistent to the crank letters that follow a tabloid crime or they give the impression of having been planted, as a hoax, after a shipwreck, in an place of easy finding. Dropping notes in bottles during pleasant weather long has been a popular hobby among Great Lakes sailors. Such notes generally contain the writer's name and address, along with the request that any finder drop him a line as to where it was picked up. The vast majority of these hobbyists are still waiting for their bottles to be discovered. A professor studying Great Lakes currents at the Duluth Branch of the University of Minnesota has reported that out of a thousand bottles dropped in Lake Superior to test currents, only 350 have been found. These bottles were dropped under average circumstances, not in the height of a storm whose heavy seas could plunge them to depths where they would explode under pressure, or smash them against rocks, or coat them with ice, or hurl them high onto uninhabited shores, or a thousand other mishaps, which glass is heir to. This raises a much more interesting and dramatic question than the genuiness of farewell notes found in bottles. How many have been written at death's elbow on a sinking ship during a man's last few precious moments of life, never to be found? One of the most genuine instances of a farewell note at the moment of shipwreck, and certainly one of the most poignant, was written by Capt. Hugh M. Williams to his wife during Lake Huron's great storm of Nov 1913. that also created havoc on ake Erie. Capt Williams commanded the Government Lightship No. 82, anchored at the entrance to Buffalo Harbor. After a storm, the lightship was no more to be seen then if she had been swept clear of Erie by a giant's broom. The only clue to her fate was found on one of her boards which came ashore. On this board the Captain had written these last few words to his wife; " Good-bye, Nellie, ship is breaking up fast --- Williams." Among old time Lake dwelllers, Black Friday long has been a household phrase, rivilled only by Dark Sunday, somber nickname for the Nov.,1913, Lake Huron storm, when clouds were so dark and blizzard so thick that midday differed no all from midnight. October 20, 1916, marked the grimest modern date in Lake Erie's shipwreck-studded history. The storm king who visited her differed from other storm kings in that he concentrated al his force against her instead of wasting any strength on her sisters. On Black Friday there were four boats caught out on the open Lake; the schooner D. L. Filer. the lumber hooker Marshall F. Butters, the Canadian steamer Merida, and the whaleback frieghter James B. Colgate. They all went down in the storm. Four brave captains stayed with their ships to the last. Three of them lived to tell the story. Two of the three were the only ones left to tell what happened, because they survivied the bitter experience of watching thir entire crews perish. The Canadian steamer Merida was sighted once on Black Friday, about 10 miles off the Southeast Shoals in Lake Erie, by Capt Massey of the steamer Briton. He observed her to be making bad weather of her passage, and he considered himself lucky to be able to make shelter off Cedar Point. The doomed Merida was never seen again. Several days after the storm blew itself out, bodies of men were found floating in the middle of the lake, their heads bowed in life preservers bearing the name Merida. All hands were lost, twenty three. The steamer with the most ominous number aboard on Black Friday proved to be themost fortunate as far as human survival was concerned. The lumber carrier Marshall F. Butters carried thirteen men, counting Captain and crew, out of the mouth of Detroit River into the storm. She was loaded with shingles and boards for Cleveland, and her cargo started to shift as she rolled wildly in the sharp seas. The Butters developed a list. " Trim cargo!" roared Captain McClure. " For your lives!" Fear of death put wings on the feet of the men, and eyes in their hands, but they were unable to keep the ship from sinking under them. Water crashed abroard. Captain McClure grabbed the steamer's whistle and sounded the distress signal, but it had no more chance of being heard above the storm than a pin dropping in a boiler factory. As the Butters settled lower in the water and the fires in her boilers went out, she lost headway and drifted at the mercy of Black Friday. Ten of the crew kept him company while he yanked in despeation at the steamboat's whistle while the decks began going awash. Two large freighters, the Frank R. Billngs and the F. G. Hartwell, were approaching the scene. The Hartwell picked up the men in the half-swamped lifeboats. Captain Cody of the Billings could not hear the distress signals of the Butters, but he read the message conveyed by the puffs of white steam from the doomed ship's whistle. Despite mountainous seas he guided his big freighter all the way around the Butters, dropping storm oil as he went in order to calm the waters and get close enough to send a line aboard. This he managed in a display of great seamanship, and the remaining men were pulled to safety aboard the Billings in the nick of time before the lumber hooker went to the bottom of Lake Erie. "That wind blew seventy miles an hour," Captain McClure said after his rescue. " Worst storm I ever experienced." ****************************************************** to be continued in part 6-- -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V00 Issue #335 *******************************************