November's Fury: The Deadly Great Lakes Hurricane of 1913 by Michel Schumacher-book Review-Five Stars

 

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

November's Fury: The Deadly Great Lakes Hurricane of 1913 by Michel Schumacher

I loved this fact-filled true story. My wife Jane and I have sailed the Great Lakes, their connecting rivers and locks to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence Seaway. Our first voyage starting in Superior, Wisconsin, was on our home built and designed 46 foot sailing vessel Dursmirg. We have also transited the Atlantic, the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the Great Lakes by freighter.

We have witnessed in a November windstorm a large lake freighters broached sideways by a single wave through the Superior, Wisconsin, entry, and then miraculously straighten up in the blink of an eye to glide through the entry channel unscathed. That episode gave us everlasting nightmares.

EXCERPTS:

A “PERFECT STORM” on the Great Lakes, it would be the one that pounded the lakes from November 7 through November 10, 1913, leaving a wake of destruction unlike anything ever seen on freshwater at any point in recorded history. By the time the storm had blown out of the region, twelve boats had sunk, thirty-one more had been grounded on rocks or beaches, and dozens more were severely damaged. More than 250 men lost their lives. Eight boats, with their entire crews, were lost in a single day on Lake Huron alone.

Out on the lakes, hurricane-force winds built thirty- to forty-foot waves that mercilessly assaulted vessels unfortunate enough to be out on the water—

Similar weather conditions might revisit the lakes, but advances in science, technology, and communications have made it easier to stay out of harm’s way.

Larson described the sheer force generated by the kind of waves on Lakes Michigan and Superior and, later, Lake Huron: “A single cubic yard of water weighs about fifteen hundred pounds,” Larson wrote. “A wave fifty feet long and ten feet high has a static weight of over eighty thousand pounds. Moving at thirty miles an hour, it generates forward momentum of over two million pounds.”

The wind velocity on the open water vastly exceeded the velocities recorded on land.

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Portage: A Family, a Canoe, and the Search for the Good Life by Sue Leaf - Book Review Five Stars

BOOK REVIEW: FIVE STARS

Portage: A Family, a Canoe, and the Search for the Good Life by Sue Leaf

Portage is a wonderful collection of dream-fulfilling canoeing adventures commingling with nature and spiced with tidbits of historically enlightening information.

Sue Leaf and her husband Tom chose a good way of life...very satisfying and immensely rewarding while ecologically living with nature.

This is a great lesson plan for humanity to follow while reaping gratifying returns with positive self-sustaining rewards.

I loved all the chapters, but my favorite was when Sue shared her experiences canoeing the Bois Brule River in Douglas County, Wisconsin. I grew up near the Brule, and some of my earliest adventures were in a canoe on Brule.

Click here for a link to a chapter of one of my wild experiences on the Brule.

EXCERPTS from Portage by Sue Leaf

Mr. Ito had packed a book and a lawn chair and would spend the time on shore, but Bob and Joanne and I could paddle about to our heart’s delight. I rushed home to change into my swimsuit and get permission. I can still hear my father’s voice. “Oh, I don’t know, Susan Jean. That sounds like not a good idea. Too dangerous. Those canoes are tippy. What if you capsized?” “I can swim,” I pointed out. “I’d wear a life jacket. The Itos have life jackets. They’re required by law.” “Yes, you can swim,” he countered. “But can you swim in deep water? No, no, you can’t go. It’s just too dangerous.” My temper flared. This made no sense! The Itos weren’t foolish. They were very smart, in fact. All sorts of people paddled canoes without fear, without endangerment. I was not going to lose this opportunity. “Well, I don’t care. I’m going,” I declared.

I had the skill to be on the water, that normal people went out in canoes every day, that risk was involved in everything one does.

What amazes me even now is that this time there were no consequences. No one yelled when I got home. No one clobbered me. I wasn’t grounded. I lost no privileges. My parents and I must have reached a kind of détente that day,

How fortunate we sometimes are, the blind and naive young who operate without the benefit of experience. I realize now that I myself had been a canoe that day, cutting with ease through the water, swiftly gliding into my future.

“What is: the good life.” Never wanting more, never striving for more, never trying to accumulate stuff. Surely those seventeen-year-olds in Mr. Johnson’s classroom, at least two of them, saw even then the glimmer of wisdom when it is asked this way. The veracity of this statement is especially obvious when sitting in a canoe, making your way across sparkling blue water, with everything you will need for the night and the next morning stowed in Duluth packs wedged between thwarts. One’s needs and desires are bounded by what is, and surely it is good, beauty, and grandeur apparent at every hand.

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Impermanence; Life and Loss on Superior's South Shore by Sue Leaf - Book Review Five Stars

 

BOOK REVIEW: FIVE STARS 

Impermanence; Life and Loss on Superior's South Shore by Sue Leaf

Thought provoking platitudes of a place I knew all too well. It is where I grew up, bicycled, canoed, sailed, beach-combed, camped and eked out meager living while becoming acquainted with and friends of the locals.

Sue Leaf took me on a beautifully described trip down memory lane. I loved it!

EXCERPTS:

There was a bank across the street with a digital clock flashing the time (11:27) and the temperature (58 degrees), and a bit of advice: “You can’t—take it—with you—but try—going—somewhere—without it—SAVE!” I wondered if there was a deeper message in this slogan.

She now talks in terms of the “embodied energy” of old buildings. This is a broad concept that incorporates the cost entailed to construct them and also the money spent to produce their materials—like quarried stone or cut timber—and, too, the incalculable value of virgin wood, so much finer-grained and sturdier than today’s plantation-grown trees.

Sue seemed to be the catalyst that galvanized the town into rethinking its relationship to its past and perhaps to standing up a little straighter.

This is a reflection of an older man, one who has the depth of experience to put such a profound loss into perspective. It comes from someone who has struggled against the dominant current of conventional society, someone who values something that most people do not. I think about this as I trudge along a ski trail in new snow, often a solitary pursuit and now a pursuit made lonely by this unnerving thought: the age of cross-country skiing is drawing to a close.

“there are weeks in the summer when these great bodies of water sleep like placid woodland ponds.” But this can change within minutes. Squalls with high winds launch themselves with fury. Waves pile high, with shorter troughs than in the ocean, so recovery is difficult. At the end of the season, ice accumulates on boats, on decks and rigging. Rescuing any crew in trouble requires stamina, skill, and courage. And that was why the keeper drew from a pool of local sailors well versed in Superior’s capricious moods.

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Adventurous Spirits – Sailing the Seas

“I admire the heroes that have taken on great challenges, and I want to follow in their footsteps.” Stanley Paris, 2013. 

 

Joshua Slocum  - Spirit of Adventure

Joshua Slocum laid his life on the line to pursue his extraordinary dream of circumnavigating the globe. He was the first to single-handedly sail around the world. He started his voyage in 1895 and completed it in 1898. 

Joshua Slocum is my number one sailing hero.  In his book Sailing Alone Around the World, he wrote:

 "I had resolved on a voyage around the world, and as the wind on the morning of April 24, 1895, was fair, at noon I weighed anchor, set sail, and filled away from Boston, where the Spray had been moored snugly all winter. The twelve o'clock whistles were blowing just as the sloop shot ahead under full sail.”

Joshua Slocum’s Spray

 

Stanley Paris – Kiwi Spirit

The 21^st century has another self-made man with an original thought who is willing to lay his life on the line to be first.

Stanley Paris, a transplanted New Zealander, recently made St. Augustine, Florida, his port of call.  

Seventy-six year-old Stanley Paris, a lifetime self-motivated high achiever, will employ space age technology to beat the proverbial clock circumnavigating the globe single-handed aboard his sailboat Kiwi Spirit in less than 150 days. The world will be enthusiastically watching.

His website: www.stanleyparis.com
Blog of voyage: Stanley Paris Blog

My Viking Spirit

Inspirations and motivations backed by original ideas drive self-motivated persons to new frontiers.

This happened to me and a dream was born. My dream boat was launched in 1972.

My five year plan of escape materialized because I had my wife Jane at my side all the way. She is a one-in-a-million person and was a driving force to my goal.

We disembarked on a voyage of adventure that mysteriously drew us to St. Augustine, Florida, where our lives took off on a strange tangent to places and adventures beyond our wildest dreams.

It was wonderful and our only regret was that we hadn’t departed sooner.

Read about this dream-come-true story in the book Sailing Beyond Lake Superior.  Available in paperback and digital additions worldwide. 

Our adventure story continues…there is more: Sailing the Sea Islands, 
Sailing the Florida Keys,
 and 
Sailing to St. Augustine.

Lake Superior's Fall Storms

And Superior has a harder fate in store for many of those who take the last ill-fated trip of the season. Sailors dread it more than the tragedy of dense snowstorms, when they run upon the rocks, for even there hope does not die; they dread it more than the fierce, sledge-hammer wash of Erie in a storm; more than the fearful dash for port in Lake Michigan, where ports are few; and this fate is the fate of "the little ice devils"-—those masses of ice which freeze upon a ship until she is weighted beyond control. In these days of late navigation—days of fierce battles with snow, ice, and wind, days of death and destruction as they are never known upon the salt seas—is material for a generation of writers; unnumbered stories of true mystery, true romance, and true tragedy, which, if fed to the nation in popular form, would be of immeasurable value to lovers of the literature of adventure. The Great Lakes by James Oliver Curwood, 1908.

The Superior, Wisconsin/Minnesota Point Entry and lighthouse pictured in calm weather.

Fall storm, Superior, Wisconsin, November 1968.

During the fall season on Lake Superior it is a common occurrence to have at least one very violent storm on Lake Superior, but one storm I witnessed was exceptional.

My father, Jane, and I drove out late this Sunday afternoon onto a narrow finger of land known as Wisconsin Point.

We went to see just what the raging lake would be like when whipped into an anger fury by a full gale force wind.

While parking the car, the shuddering wind blasted us with sand and icy pelting spray that coupled to make a deafening roar.

We watched the sixty foot tall lighthouse on the east jetty completely buried in crashing seas…a sight beyond belief.

There were four people trapped inside the lighthouse structure and several days would pass before they could leave their imprisonment.

The approach to that lighthouse had been constructed of huge boulders the size of small houses, and the mammoth waves crashing into and over them scattered the rocks about like so many pebbles on the beach.

If this sounds bad, you will not believe the sickening horror we felt as the next chain of events unfolded.

Out on the lake and headed into port was an eight-hundred foot Great Lakes iron ore freighter with the full brunt of that savage storm sweeping it along on a path of no return. As large and as powerful as this ship was, it was no match for the killer storm.

With the wind on the ship’s stern, it was impossible for the crew to turn their ship into the wind. Their fate was sealed. They had no other choice but to run the inlet.

What we witnessed next made our hearts nearly stop. We held our breath as we watched a huge wave break under the stern of this mighty ship. It lifted the stern and sent the ship into a broach position that turned it beam to the sea. The power and force unleashed by the giant wave took all control out of the hands of the crew. Their fate rested with Mother Nature while the ship washed out of control sideways towards the inlet with its rock jetties.

In the blink of an eye it was over. The massive vessel had gone surfing sideways through the outer and inner jetties, and then into the safety of the harbor.

For those aboard that got to stare the Grim Reaper squarely in the eye, that blink of the eye must have felt like an eternity.

After reading terrifying storm stories and witnessing the gale force storm at Superior's inlet, Jane and I still went on to fulfill our dream and ventured out there onto Lake Superior confronting the mighty Gitche Gumme.

I had a Dream – Dursmirg is born.

In 1972 our 46-foot sailing dreamboat Dursmirg was launched and Jane and I sailed away from Superior, Wisconsin, to the salty sea.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, serving as a geologist on the 1820 Lewis Cass expedition to establish the source of the Mississippi River, traversed the Great Lakes 152 years before the maiden voyage of our Dursmirg.

Schoolcraft’s 1820 stagecoach and birch bark canoe adventure from New York to the western terminus of Lake Superior was before the completion of the Erie Barge Canal.

Schoolcraft wrote the account of his epic expedition in his book Narrative journal of travels through the northwestern regions of the United States...performed as a member of the expedition under Governor Cass in the year 1820, Albany: E. & E. Hosford, 1821.

I have published our epic voyage in the four volumes of Travels of Dursmirg.  All are available in paperback and digital editions worldwide.

• Sailing Beyond Lake Superior
• Sailing the Sea Islands
• Sailing the Florida Keys
• Sailing to St. Augustine

Coming soon:

• Sailing to Lake Superior: A Trip Down Memory Lane

Brule River Forest and Lake Superior: Cloverland Anecdotes

Brule River Forest and Lake Superior: Cloverland Anecdotes by Jane Pearson Grimsrud

This is a real life story from the shores of western Lake Superior that will bring laughter, a tear, and stimulate strong emotions.

Meet the people who spent their lifetimes on this frontier witnessing the Indian and voyager era surrender to lumberjack and timber barons as European immigrants flooded in conveyed by railroads and steamships. Then observe the rest of the story of those pioneers who built the American dream.

From the author’s archived personal correspondence and diaries, the foundation for this book was laid. It is laced with anecdotes and cynical humor that will carry the reader along at a pleasant pace.

Front cover:

Top: Casey’s Logging Camp, Brule, Wisconsin, 1901. 

Bottom: Martinsen Landing on the shore of Lake Superior, 1912.

 Just published, this book is available in paperback, digital, and large print editions.  

Links:

Paperback

Kindle

Large Print

 

Note: the digital edition has a interactive table of contents, footnotes, and the font size can be easily changed to suit the reader.

Back Cover:

Top: The author’s grandmother is fourth from the left.  She is sitting with her friends on the west bank of the Brule River near the N.P. Johnson Bridge on County FF, 1920. [Cloverland, Wisconsin]

Bottom outside: The author and her sister Judy playing in the Brule River, 1947.

Bottom inside: The author’s grandfather, Axel Pearson, with his team of horses, 1920.