On August 28, 1863, the passenger steam paddle SUNBEAM went to the bottom in a fierce storm on Lake Superior called by some as a hurricane. All on board, reportedly 30 crew and passengers, were lost except the wheelsman John Frazer. The following recounts the event in Beers History of the Great Lakes and tells of the horrible ordeal the survivor when through.
“SUNBEAM Lost on Lake Superior.–The steamer SUNBEAM was lost in a hurricane on Lake Superior August 28, 1863, with all on board, except John Frazer, the wheelsman. She was a passenger steamer, plying between Superior and Portage lake. She left Superior August 26. The story of the sole survivor is substantially as follows: When the SUNBEAM came out from Ontonagon, the wind was blowing fresh from the north. A gale struck them several hours later, the wind shifting to north-northeast. She rode the storm till next morning, when the captain attempted to put her about to face the gale, as she had become unmanageable and all hopes of reaching Copper Harbor, 24 miles east, had failed him, and as there was no harbor west that could be entered in such a storm nearer than Bayfield. The sea was so rough that it was only occasionally they could see the steamer MICHIGAN, less than two miles distant. Before attempting to turn around, the boat was headed two points north of east, the wind, a little east of north, striking her quarter. When they put her about she fell into the trough of the sea and rolled terribly. Unable to move her by machinery, they ran up her jib, but she failed to come up or pay away and the jib was hauled down. Her engine was in motion but doing no good. The jib was hauled up a second time to try for the shore but she could not be made to right up into the wind. About this time she careened, her pilot house lying flat with the water. She was held in that position by the gale; the successive waves beating against her with such force as to break her to pieces, and she soon filled with water, and sank. It was conjectured that the water had got between her side and her false side, water logging her and rendering her unmanageable.
“The captain had told Frazer to stick to the wheel and do what he could to turn her if she righted again, but when Frazer saw no hopes of her coming up again, and with the mad waves running over her he broke the window on the upper side of the pilot house and made his way to the small boats. Of these there were three, two lifeboats and a yawl, but one of the lifeboats had disappeared. The two remaining boats were filled with passengers and crew. Frazer got into the yawl where he had only standing room, but just then a women, he thinks the chambermaid, begged to be taken aboard. Frazer jumped out upon a piece of the hurricane deck, and the woman was taken aboard. The self-sacrificing wheelman lashed himself to the fragment of deck with the signal halyards of the flagstaff, floating near, and soon after picked up a demijohn, which he secured with the ends of the rope.
“When Frazer left the wreck the upper cabin had been swept off, and she soon after gradually settled and sank, bow downward. He thinks that there were still some passengers below. Frazer saw the yawl go down, and also saw the lifeboat upside down and two men lying crosswise upon it, swept out of sight. He was on the raft from 8 o’clock Friday evening until 2 o’clock Saturday afternoon. He neared the shore where the red sandstone rocks rose in an almost perpendicular cliff. The waves dashed his raft to pieces against the rocks, cutting his forehead and bruising his knees and shoulder. He fell back into the water, but the next wave dashed him against the rocks, where he caught upon a shelving projection and crawled into a small cavern. Here he remained about eight hours waiting for the wind to subside and the sea to go down. Then, weak and benumbed from cold, he crawled up on shore. He was about 35 miles above Eagle river and 12 or 15 miles from Portage, across the country. He remained on the shore till Monday afternoon, when he signaled to a party coasting along the shore in a small boat from Ontonagon, and was rescued. The crew numbered 21 persons, and there were six or eight passengers aboard. Frazer was the only survivor.”
The SUNBEAM was built in 1861 at Manitowoc by the W. Bates and Sons shipyard for the Goodrich Line as the VICTOR. When she came out, she had screw wheels on the side which worked independently of each other. These screw wheels and machinery were an experiment. An experiment that basically failed. Within a few months the wheels and machinery were replaced with a beam engine and regular paddle wheels in Chicago and she was renamed SUNBEAM. She was a popular and fast steamer measuring nearly 170 feet in length and 24 feet in beam.
Suzette Lopez
Photo credit: Great Lakes Marine Collection of the Milwaukee Public Library and Wisconsin Marine Historical Society.
