Photo from the C. Patrick Labadie Collection
Before the Thomas Friant was converted to become one of the larger fishing tugs on Lake Superior at the time, it was a passenger ferry.
“The Lake, it is said, never gives up her dead …”
– “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot
The Jones family of Cornucopia, Wisconsin, was well known as both boatbuilders and commercial fishermen on Lake Superior. Thomas Senior and his two sons, Thomas Jr. “Coonie” and Emery, made good money in the fall of 1924 when the price of herring was unusually high.
The price of trout was also high at the time, and the men knew they could make even better money if only they could fish trout on the Big Lake after herring season closed. Overwinter fishing on the open Lake had never been done out of the small harbors of the South Shore. Another problem was – the Joneses didn’t have a proper boat capable of staying out beyond the pack ice for any length of time.
Enter the Thomas Friant, a 96-by-18-foot abeam, 81-ton wooden hulled ferry built in Grand Haven, Michigan, in 1884. The passenger-hauling Friant had been converted to a massive – for that era – fishing tug. The Joneses contracted with the Friant’s owners, Einer “Shine” Miller and Halvor Reitan of nearby Bayfield, to take it out to the open Lake to net trout all winter.
1924 was a cold one. NOAA records show that International Falls, Minnesota, had 30 consecutive days of below zero temps starting December 30. On January 4, Engineer Halvor Reitan brought the Friant to Cornucopia for outfitting. It was 30° F below zero. The Joneses and the rest of the crew packed the Friant from ash pit to top deck with coal for the 315-horsepower compound steam engine. Some $4,000 worth of gill nets filled the bow. As ice threatened to entomb the Friant in the Cornucopia harbor, the crew scrambled to get their personal belongings and victualing on board. They pounded ice exiting the harbor and made open water successfully, anchoring in Bark Bay to get the vessel organized for fishing.
At anchor, the wind swung from south to northeast, driving in pack ice. Water spray froze the anchor chain solid.
“Gotta move ’er, boys,” said Halvor. Coonie and Emery climbed overboard with a sledge hammer and a pike pole to break the chain loose enough to bring it aboard. The pack ice was thick but navigable. Making open water, they headed for Two Harbors, Minnesota, to overnight in an ice-free harbor and begin fishing the next day. The temperature was a balmy minus-20° F.
Eighteen miles off Port Wing, Wisconsin, in big seas from the nor’easter now blowing a gale, the coal passer reported that water was up to the ash pit and rising. The Jones boys got the pumps going, but to no avail.
“I fear we’ve been planked,” Engineer Halvor said. The abandon ship order was given.
The crew scrambled to get the 18-foot lifeboat over the gunwales and into the 6-foot waves without swamping. Everyone was shipped except Coonie. In the high wind, Emery yelled for his brother still on the Friant. “She’s a gonner, Coonie! Get out of there!”
Coonie appeared in the hatch, a grin on his face, his favorite cast iron griddle in his hands. “Yer a damn fool, Coonie,” Emery said. “I left my favorite cribbage board behind.”
The author’s copy of a 1979 Minneapolis Star story by John Oslund.
At 4 p.m. on January 6, 1924, the men in the lifeboat watched as the Thomas Friant went down a-bow, its propeller stirring air, eventually sinking 300 feet down. It was now all hands to the oars, pulling into the fierce wind for Two Harbors 20-some miles away. Sturdy as the lifeboat was, it would never survive the pack ice to the south.
Bow first into seas that built to 10 feet, the crew took turns rowing, breaking ice off the gunwales. Sea spray coated their wool coats forming turtle-like shells on them. In the November 29, 1966, storm that sunk the Daniel J. Morrell on Lake Huron, sole survivor Dennis Hale, said that the shell of ice on him actually staved off hypothermia. The same phenomenon took place with the survivors of the Friant.
The ice forming on the lifeboat was another matter, hour after hour the men not rowing beat ice off the bow, w and the stern. As the lifeboat gained weight and rode lower and lower in the waves, a lone tired voice in the darkness lamented, “I think we may be done for boys.”
But still they rowed and rowed and broke ice and rowed some more until a bow man cried, “A light!”
Ahead in the black night a single light appeared high and above and directly upwind.
“Pull, boys! Pull!”
And then the sound of crashing surf, and the sound of the lifeboat cracking up on boulders and swamping onto a rocky beach. The light from the phosphorescent foam of the breaking waves revealed they were ashore and safe from drowning, but the landfall was entirely surrounded by water. Behind them a high cliff. They were trapped. Hypothermia was next on the menu of disasters. As opposed to Coonie’s cast iron griddle, Halvor had saved a hatchet. Knowing the only way was up, he began chopping foot and hand holds into the icy rock face. Up they went, clawing at the ice with frozen fingers and boots glazed slick. At the headland, the light shining in the wilderness turned out to be from a Minnesota North Shore fishing shack occupied by two commercial fishermen waiting out the storm.
Photos from the C. Patrick Labadie Collection
Photo of the Thomas Friant as fishing tug.
Two more days the nor’easter blew. Then, slogging through deep drifts to the Duluth and Northeastern Railroad tracks, the shipwrecked crew flagged down a train that took them to Two Harbors. Another day in Two Harbors. Another overnight in the basement of Gloria Dei Lutheran church waiting to catch the South Shore and Atlantic train east toward Ironwood, Michigan. The men spent another night in the hospitality of the Our Lady of The Lake Parish in Ashland, bringing the total days of separation without communication with their families to seven. Halvor took the daily steam packet back to Bayfield. The Joneses opted to walk the 30 miles to Corny, hitching an occasional ride on the horse-drawn sleighs of farmers hauling their milk cans to market on roads impassible to vehicle travel.
Cornucopia appeared dead to the foot-weary survivors walking into town. A “closed” sign hung crookedly on the front door of the Fleith-Ehlers General Store. There were, however, sleighs with horses in harness in front of Immanuel Lutheran Church. To the astonishment of the dumbfounded congregation and would-be widows holding services for those lost at sea, the Jones men walked in on their own funeral.
This was, perhaps, the only known day that Lake Superior gave up her dead.
At least, this is the story I learned about in newspapers and websites and also from Doug Jardine, grand nephew of the Jones brothers.
Doug also told me this epilogue: Coonie cooked pancakes on the griddle he saved for decades following his “funeral.” The next spring, C. Gustafson from Port Wing appeared at the Joneses fish shed in Cornucopia. In his hand was a battered cribbage board.
“This be yours,” he said, handing Emery his favorite cribbage board with his name wood-burned into the backside.
Michael Savage writes a mystery series set in northern Wisconsin and owns of Savage Press (savpress.com).