Unsolved Mysteries of the Lakes

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Water is something of a mystery. Unlike most simple substances, its solid form ice floats on its liquid form. It makes up 70 percent of the earth’s surface. We also are about 70 percent water – lean muscle tissue is about 75 percent water, blood 83 percent, body fat 25 percent and even bone is about 22 percent water. Our attraction, then, to large bodies of water and their mysteries is no surprise. And it may be only natural that with some 6 quadrillion gallons of water (20 percent of the earth’s fresh water), the Great Lakes seem magnets for unnatural occurrences. Related below are three tales of yet unsolved mysteries on or beside the lakes. We’re certain that you will feel attracted to them. …

Three started out … one arrived … two did not survive. The story of the three minesweepers that left Port Arthur, Ontario, one late November day in 1918 is simple to summarize. One boat, Sebastopol, made it to port in Sault Ste. Marie. What happened between the western and eastern shores of Lake Superior and where the remains of Inkerman and Cerisoles now lie have perplexed mariners and divers for nearly a century.

On November 23, 1918, these last three of 12 minesweepers commissioned by the French government left Fort William-Port Arthur (Thunder Bay today) from the Canada Car Works where they were built.

The company, the fortunes of which had swung up and down, had retooled to create the minesweepers, or trawlers as they were called. It had made rail cars, just as the Bombardier plant in Thunder Bay today makes modern rail cars.

The minesweepers, commissioned early in 1918, were to be in the service of the French Navy during World War I. The 145-foot boats had 4-inch guns mounted fore and aft. News of the end of the European conflict was not quite two weeks old – Armistice Day came on November 11 – when these last three boats set out with full crews of at least 35 French sailors and one Great Lakes pilot on each. (After the disappearances, one of many rumors claimed that two of the trawlers did not have licensed pilots and were left to the vagaries of a gale-tossed lake. Much to the sadness of their families, the lake pilots Captain W.J. Murphy of Collingwood, Ontario, and Captain R. Wilson of Buffalo, New York, were on board the downed vessels.)

While awaiting departure, the French crews became popular with Port Arthur residents. Many were “entertained in private homes.” Some of these sailors had once been in the army, serving in France and Flanders, according to News-Chronicle reports at the time. Several proudly wore the French War Cross, given for bravery in action.

The trawlers on which they were to sail also proudly wore signs of bravery; all of them were named for battles won by French armies of the past.

The weather was calm on the day that they left port, but within 24 hours a winter storm blew in.

For the next couple of days, nothing was heard from or about the vessels, although all had wireless communication. The rest of November, the regional news mainly reported happenings in Europe, including the pending arrival of President Wilson on the north coast of France. Interestingly, minesweepers were leading the boat bearing the president, safely clearing his path while these minesweepers on Lake Superior faced a different kind of peril. It is not known whether those sweepers near Brest, France, were from the nine delivered earlier from Fort William to the French.

Maritime news in the waning days of November concentrated on the upcoming closure of the locks and canals and on grain-hauling records being broken (478,000 bushels for a U.S. vessel; 492,000 for a Canadian vessel. Today’s oceangoing ships haul 650,000 to 869,000 bushels per trip).

Then on December 2, word arrived in Fort William from the Sebastopol and Captain M. Leclerc, the French naval office in charge of the trawlers, that no sign nor word had been heard of the Inkerman and Cerisoles. Sebastopol had arrived November 26, just three days out from Fort William, but its sister ships were last seen after midnight, November 24, some 10 miles north of Manitou Island lighthouse off the coast of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula.

“The weather at that time was clear, sky cloudy and a heavy sea with a southwest wind,” reports on December 3 said. By the next day, that report had been revised to: “heavy weather, accompanied by thick snow, was encountered and the Sebastopol lost sight of the Inkerman and Cerisoles in the heavy seas.”

In its December 11 report, the Duluth News-Tribune related that the Sebastopol itself was damaged in the storm. “During the night of Nov. 24, a terrific southwester hit the ships and forced them to turn into it in order to avoid swamping. They were compelled to make a turn to avoid Keweenaw point, which is the extreme of the upper peninsula jutting out into Lake Superior. The Sebastopol weathered the turn, but not without opening her seams and rendering constant use of the pumps necessary.”

That there was a winter storm is not in doubt.

Later, the steamer Harriet B. also was listed as overdue, considered a probable victim of the blow. It did arrive later and was promptly impounded because of a legal dispute not related to stormy seas.

Speculation sprouted as to the fate of the overdue minesweepers. Mechanical troubles most likely would leave them drifting onto the Slate Islands, came the word. Tugs set out from Sault Ste. Marie to search the length of Lake Superior. Tugs closer to the Keweenaw covered that region. Steamers and Coast Guardsmen from both countries scanned for either of the disabled trawlers – thank God if it be so – or bodies and debris from them – God forbid.

Debris did wash ashore on the Keweenaw, but it was determined to be from a past wreck, perhaps dredged up by the waves. This phenomenon is not unknown on Lake Superior. During the 1905 Mataafa Blow, a body was discovered near the Mataafa off the Duluth, Minnesota, pier. At first thought to be one of the nine men who died in that storm, the remains were likely displaced from a vessel sunk nearby several years earlier.

As it seems with all lost vessels, rumors flew about inexperience and instability aboard Cerisoles and Inkerman. It was first erroneously reported that a deal had been struck to have a licensed pilot only on the Sebastopol, leaving the other trawlers floundering without lake-experienced direction once they were separated.

Rumors also suggested that the trawlers were not seaworthy. “It is declared that the boats were poorly constructed, that sailors had declared they were afraid to embark because of the tendency the vessels showed to leaking beyond what they considered the point of safety,” reported the News-Chronicle on December 5. “On the other hand,” the newspaper also pointed out, “they were turned out under Lloyd inspection, and if there is any foundation in the stories, it casts the severest kind of reflection upon those responsible for the building and inspection of the vessels.”

It was also suggested that no word came from the two minesweepers because the radio operators “were young men and said to be students rather than experienced radio experts.”

Finally, hope was abandoned for the two lost minesweepers and the 76 men sailing on them. It was a story befitting an episode of the “X-Files” – government boats disappearing without warning or trace. The lake that opened around them closed just as easily without, of course, nary a crease in the water.

Fast forward to the 21st century. The crews of Cerisoles and Inkerman are long past, but not forgotten. Wreck hunters continue to be intrigued by them and new revelations and technology may help to find them.

Tom Farnquist, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Society, a longtime Lake Superior diver and a wreck searcher on the RV David Boyd, says the two minesweepers are definitely on his list. Tom estimates some 550 ships wrecked on Lake Superior with about half of those still underwater. Other divers have estimated some 50 wrecks remain completely undiscovered.

Tom acquired the original 1918 French reports from maritime historian Frederick Stonehouse. “They really turned up little or no clues,” Tom says.

Many theories exist on why the boats floundered, he says. “Improperly ballasted, inexperienced crewmen, top heavy with guns, problems with steering …”

Even Navy sailors seasoned to ocean waters might be confounded by the terrible storms and choppier waves churned on Lake Superior.

Why the ships went down will be part of the mystery to solve once where they went down is discovered. While it’s not known where the two vessels are, covering an area of lake bottom with modern sonar tells wreck hunters where they are not.

“We scan laterally out and look for anything that doesn’t quite fit the contours of the bottom. It’s a matter of mowing the lawn.”

That said, places near the Keweenaw Peninsula – considered a likely resting place for the two boats – are not sonar-friendly because of huge outcroppings of stone. Unsuccessful searches have been done for Cerisoles and Inkerman, and searches – his and others – will continue, Tom predicts.

“There is probably nothing more exciting and interesting. … You’re solving a mystery. The disappearance of a ship and crew. It’s really telling the stories of gallant mariners and seeing something nobody else has seen.”

Other clues may be arising. David C. Whyte, author of An Introduction to Michipicoten Island, Lake Superior’s Wild Heart, relates a story told to him by seasonal Michipicoten Island resident Mort Purvis:

“Shortly after they moved to the island, Dad and my grandfather were exploring with a small boat for potential shallow water shoals to set on. They went ashore at West Sand Bay and found two skeletons that had washed up. They had the remains of naval uniforms and French ID tags. They put the remains in a wooden fish box and buried them above the water line without a marker, feeling that someone would be digging them up as curios or ornamental skulls or something. They sent the ID tags in to the authorities.”

“The Purvis family,” David writes, “heard nothing further about the matter, and the origin of the skeletons was never publicly verified.”

It is possible for lake currents to carry bodies from the Keweenaw as far as Michipicoten Island, Ontario. Similar cases have been documented in the past. But just who these lost sailors were remains yet another mystery. – KLM

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Unsolved Mysteries of the Lakes

Terry Pepper Collection

Unsolved Mysteries of the Lakes

There is not much change between the St. Martin Island Lighthouse from its early history...

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Unsolved Mysteries of the Lakes

Terry Pepper Collection

Unsolved Mysteries of the Lakes

... and more recently.

Frederick Stonehouse became an accidental ghost-story hunter while doing what he considered “legitimate” research on maritime tales. Today he has multiple books of hauntings, and the latest, Haunted Lake Michigan, was released in September. Here is one tale from that new book, produced by the publishers of this magazine:

St. Martin Island, Michigan, sits roughly halfway between Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula and Michigan’s Garden Peninsula. Slightly smaller than 200 acres, the island is mostly rock bound. The light tower proper is six-sided, composed of six steel posts latticed together. The height from base to lamp room is 57 feet. The original Fourth Order Fresnel lens had a range of 24 miles. A brick keeper’s building is nearby.    

The ghost on St. Martin Island is supposed to be that of the lightkeeper, still searching for his lost children. As was the custom, the keeper’s children attended school at nearby Washington Island, 10 miles to the southwest. Every day they rowed to class in the morning and back again at dismissal, weather permitting. One terrible day when they were coming home and about halfway across, the children were caught in a vicious squall and they and their boat disappeared. Heartbroken, the old keeper desperately searched the shore looking for his missing offspring. His efforts were in vain. Their bodies were never recovered. Today, some say that when the nights are dark and stormy, and the north wind blows down from an arctic hell, the faint green glow of the keeper’s lantern can still be seen as he wanders along the island’s desolate shore, ever searching.

There is another version to this ghost story. It seems that one storm-blown night the keeper failed to properly trim his wicks and the beam winked out. Without the trusty light to guide her, a schooner struck hard on an outlying shoal. Waves soon began to batter the helpless ship to pieces. The crew counted their chances for survival as nil. Turned around in the black night and pummeled by the wild seas, they lost all sense of direction. Missing the steady gleam from the light, they didn’t even know which way the shore was. Surely their end was at hand.

Suddenly, a small thin beam of green light pierced the darkness. While it shimmered like an old handheld kerosene lantern, wobbling and flickering in the cold wind, it burned true. Eagerly, the desperate men jumped into the cold lake and struggled for the dim but very welcome light.

When they finally stumbled ashore, the mysterious light was not waiting on the beach for them, but instead bobbed off in the distance. Anxiously the crewmen walked toward it, past an old cemetery and up a twisting path through thick and forbidding forest. It always seemed to “float” somewhere just ahead of them. Blusters of wind tore at their wet and frigid bodies and driving rain pelted them. All the while, the bedraggled crew followed the strange flickering glow. Finally they stumbled into a small clearing. Ahead was the partially open door to the keeper’s house, a warm and welcoming light leaking out into the forbidding night. When they entered, a brightly burning green-lensed lantern was sitting on the table. It was the same beacon that had guided them to safety. Exploring further, the crew discovered the keeper lying stone cold dead on his bed. His oilskins hung from a nearby wall peg. They were dry to the touch. No one else was on the island. If the keeper hadn’t carried the lantern out into the storm to guide them, who did?

The old tale continues that the official report only stated that the keeper died in the act of saving the crew. No mention was made of the strange green light. The crew, though, knew the truth. There was no doubt in their minds that it was a dead man who saved them. A dead man and his light had led them to safety.

In the following years, others reported seeing an unearthly green light. The ghostly lantern continued to search for shipwrecked crews to lead to safety on a dangerous shore. – FS

Mysteries occur not just on the water, but also on the land beside the lakes. Here is a century-old “cold case” murder that spawned, apparently, both a book and a ghost.

At the turn of last century, Laura Whittlesay got the most out of life in the boomtown of Hurley, Wisconsin. The actress, who used the name Lottie or Lotta Morgan, was effervescent and beautiful, especially on stage at variety show theaters in the raucous lumber and mining town.

Lottie was talented not only on the stage (or so the gossip ran) and had a number of beaus who lavished her with expensive trinkets. The unkind question was whether she worked for pay … offstage. But Lottie cared little about gossip. She was known to flit among Hurley’s bars and night spots and to thoroughly enjoy her time on the planet. Her time, as it turned out, would be quite short.

On April 10, 1890, just a few days shy of her 30th birthday, Lottie met a gruesome end. She was found hit in the head with an axe, at least twice, and perhaps shot. Newspapers of the day, calling Lottie a “sporting woman,” said police found a hair-and-blood encrusted axe.

The Daily Northwestern of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on April 11, 1890, reported details. (This is found on the Website called “Casebook” that tracks Jack the Ripper-like incidents.)

“Hurley was last night the scene of a murder that equals in horror any of the Whitechapel crimes. Early this morning the body of Laura Whittlesay, alias Lottie Morgan, a woman of the demi-monde, was found in the rear of Ives’ saloon, the toughest place in town. Over the right eye was a deep, long cut which caused her death. An axe was discovered with blood stains upon it in a shed nearby. This was undoubtedly the weapon used by the murderer. A revolver identified as belonging to the victim was found near her head. None of the chambers were empty. Several valuable diamond rings and other jewelry and over $20 in cash was found on the body showing conclusively that the deed was prompted by other motives than robbery. The Morgan woman was last seen about 11 o’clock in John Sullivan’s saloon, from whence she started up an alley towards her rooms. The murderer was probably lying in wait for her and struck her and left her as she fell. The only explanation offered at all plausible is that she was killed by a jealous lover of whom she had quite a number. The police say there is no clue to the perpetrator of the ghastly crime. Lottie Morgan was a favorite actress here in the palmy days of Hurley variety theaters but has since fallen to the lowest depths.”

A man named Terry Day, suspected in a Bessemer murder, was arrested and released because he had an alibi.

Besides an angry or jilted lover (or the wife of a Lottie lover), theories related to a bank robbery that took place across from Lottie’s apartment the preceding fall. Lottie, it is said, left town to avoid being called as a witness. She returned and now was dead. Did she know something or was she involved in something? Whatever happened, someone got away with murder. And that was a shame, said a “leading businessman” quoted in the May 10, 1890, Interstate News-Record: “That Lotta Morgan was an abandoned woman is no reason why her slayer should go unpunished.”

Today, says Hurley Police Chief Dan Erspamer, given the same circumstances, chances for catching the killer might be better. The scene would be sealed and a crime lab called up from Wausau.

“In that case, if it went down like it sounds like it did, there may have been a scuffle,” he says. That means DNA evidence under Lottie’s fingernails, hair on her clothes or fingerprints on the axe. In 1890, the main investigative tool would have been interviews or eyewitnesses; none came forward.

Technically, because Lottie was murdered, her case could still be opened by the district attorney … though time, one can be reasonably assured, has dealt with the murderer.

“It would,” the chief says, “put a period on the case if we had enough information to go through.”

In death, Lottie gained a much wider fame than life brought the actress.

“I heard the stories when I was a kid about Lottie Morgan and an axe,” says Chief Erspamer.

In 1934, Lottie’s story inspired Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edna Ferber to write Come and Get It (the title based on a call to dinner). There was no murder in the book, and the character Lotta Morgan, a saloon singer, married a Swedish logger and had a daughter. Her true love jilted her for a well-heeled girl. In 1936, Howard Hawks directed a film of the book. Actor Walter Brennan, playing the Swede, won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Troubled actress Frances Farmer played both Lotta and her daughter. More recently, Ironwood, Michigan, playwright Ray Maurin based “Murder on Silver Street” on her story and “The Ballad of Lottie Morgan” was recorded by Jackie Lutey for the Hurley centennial in 1984.

Poor Lottie never knew how famous she had become. Or does she know? Dick Swanson of Regal Country Inn in Wakefield has a “Hurley Room” with Lotta’s portrait, a scrapbook and “LM” carved into the bed. He says that one Sunday he heard “Lotta Morgan” on the TV and saw that the Hawks’ movie was on. Later downstairs, he saw an open book on the floor of the inn’s phone booth. It was Come and Get It, open to the scene when he first noticed the film. If that isn’t spooky enough, Dick didn’t own the book and no guest ever claimed it. It is now in the Hurley room.

In Haunted Lake Superior, author Hugh E. Bishop says some folks believe that Lottie’s ghost – “a wispy woman in an ankle-length dress” – still strolls Silver Street. She may be looking for justice or enjoying, as she no doubt would have done in life, her fame. – KLM