By James Heinz
(Steinbrenner Story – Chapter Two)
The steel bulk carrier WESTERN RESERVE was launched at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1890. She was the largest bulk carrier on the Lakes when she was launched. WMHS files say she displaced 2,392 tons and was 300 feet long and 41 feet wide with two Scotch boilers and a triple expansion engine. At the time of her launching she was the first steel bulk carrier of the classic Great Lakes design.
On September 1, 1892, an exhausted, soaking wet man staggered into the isolated U.S. Lifesaving Service station at Whitefish Point, Mich. His name was Harry Stewart. He was a wheelsman on the WESTERN RESERVE.
He was also her sole survivor.
Stewart said that on August 31st the WESTERN RESERVE was upbound empty from the Soo. At 9 o’clock that night she was headed directly into a storm about 60 miles above Whitefish Point on course for the Keweenaw Peninsula. At that time there was a terrible crash and the freighter broke in two “halfway up the rigging.” She sank in ten minutes in 400-600 feet of water.
All 21 crew and 6 passengers were able to get off in two lifeboats. 17 people, including the owner and his family, got in the wooden boat. The remaining 10 people got into a metal lifeboat, which promptly capsized. The wooden boat was only able to pick up two survivors from the other boat.
The wind which had been westerly now veered around from the north, “making considerable seas.” The wooden boat remained afloat in the heavy seas until about 7 a.m. on the morning of September 1st, when about ten miles from Whitefish Point and a mile from shore, it too capsized.
Stewart said that he lost sight of the others “but the cries of the children, the screams of the women, and the moaning of the men were terrible for a few moments, when all became silent”, which is how the survivors of another ship called the TITANIC that sank on its maiden voyage described their experience.
Stewart was able to swim to shore and was completely exhausted by the time he got there. He lay on the beach somewhere between Grand Marias and Deer Park, “almost unconscious” for an hour before he could move and then he could hardly walk and had to half crawl the 10 miles to the lifesaving station.
He attributed his survival to his wearing a “heavy knit close fitting jacket which he says alone saved him”. Stewart had been in his bunk when the WESTERN RESERVE broke in half just like the late Dennis Hale, sole survivor of the DANIEL J. MORRELL, whose nameboard is mounted on the wall of the WMHS archives room directly above where I sit typing this story. Hale was also in his bunk when the MORRELL broke in two and also attributed his survival to his close fitting woolen navy pea jacket.
Stewart told reporters that the ship went down with its engines running, that the crew did not panic, and that he had to jump across a crack three feet wide in the deck at the forward hatch to get to the lifeboats. He looked down into the crack and saw that only the bottom plates were holding the two halves of the ship together.
Stewart’s story was not universally accepted. Skeptics said that Stewart could not have seen the crack in the dark of the night, and if the ship had broken in two at the middle the ends of the ship would have sagged down 10-12 feet, which he did not report. The rudder chains would have snapped, causing the ship to “round to” into the trough of the waves.
As you can imagine the sinking of the WESTERN RESERVE caused a great deal of consternation in Great Lakes shipping circles, particularly among the owners of ships identical to the WESTERN RESERVE, to say nothing about how the crews of those identical ships must have felt.
This was exacerbated by the disappearance of the WESTERN RESERVE’s sister ship W. H. GILCHER in a storm on October 28, 1892, only two months after the WESTERN RESERVE, although no one survived to tell her story. The only clue was that the “stringbacks” which held the canvas covers on the lifeboats had been cut with an axe, indicated the crew did not have time to remove the covers in the usual way, indicating a rapid sinking, particularly since the lifeboats were never found and were thought to have gone down with the ship.
Eventually it was decided that because sea conditions were not rough enough to cause her to break up, the GILCHER had collided with the schooner OSTRICH which went missing in the same area at the same time. Superstitious sailors said the GILCHER sank because she had been launched before being named, like the failure of the champagne bottle to break at launching had doomed the ROGER BLOUGH.
Others believed the GILCHER had broken in half like the WESTERN RESERVE due to the apparent rapidity of her sinking and because a steel ship would not sink if it was hit by a wooden schooner.
Although neither wreck has been found, eventually it was decided that the WESTERN RESERVE sank because of “hogging”, a condition when a ship headed directly into a heavy sea finds itself supported in the middle by a big wave with the bow and stern of the ship suspended in air.
The ship, not being designed to support its own weight out of water, breaks in the middle from the top down as the unsupported weight of the bow and stern pull down on the middle, like snapping a twig in the middle by pulling on both ends.
The WESTERN RESERVE was out of the water about 50 feet at both bow and stern, with only 2/3 of her 300 foot length supported by water, and this produced “shearing” which is the failure of the rivets as the plates they are bolted to, work and twist.
WMHS files indicate that the cause may have been the type of steel used. This was the beginning of the steel age and of maritime metallurgy. The Bessemer process had just been perfected, which enabled the production for the first time of large quantities of cheap steel.
The vulnerability of Bessemer steel to the frequent “compression, extension and torsion loads experienced by these types of vessels”, was not understood, which is a fancy way of saying that the steel couldn’t handle the bending and twisting it was subjected to. In addition, Bessemer steel becomes brittle at low temperatures like the ambient water temperatures in the Great Lakes.
When the wreck of the TITANIC was found, examination showed that it used the same type of steel as the WESTERN RESERVE, and the steel is thought to have hastened the great liner’s sinking.
This problem may have been made worse by the design of the classic bulk carrier, which placed the superstructure at both ends of the ship. Ocean going vessels of the time always had their superstructure in the middle of the ship, which helped hold the ship together.
Given the fact that the first steel bulk carrier broke in half and sank after only one and a half years of service, some speculated at the time that the design of bulk carriers should be changed, noting that a wooden schooner would not have broken in two like that. The design of bulk carriers remained unchanged. And hundreds of these kinds of ships were built in the years to come that did not break in half.
At the time of the sinking a steel ship breaking in half in heavy seas was unprecedented, although this tragedy was a precursor to the DANIEL J. MORRELL and CARL D. BRADLEY sinkings, both steel bulk carriers that broke in half in heavy seas with no warning because they used a type of steel that became brittle at low temperature and could not handle the twisting of the ship exacerbated by their unique design. In their case it was deja-vu all over again.
The loss of 27 people aboard the WESTERN RESERVE was tragedy enough but what was particularly tragic was that the owner of the ship and most of his family died on the ship. Peter Minch was a respected Great Lakes captain who had retired from the lakes to manage his own fleet of nine ships, one of which was named after his sister Sophia F. Minch and one named after his son Philip Jacob Minch II.
Sophia Minch would go on to marry a man named Steinbrenner.
Peter Minch became a sailor when he was 14 years old. He retired from the Lakes before his father died in 1887 and became the manager of the family shipping line and shipyard. He had the family shipyard construct the WESTERN RESERVE to his specifications, designing the first steel bulk carrier on the Great Lakes.
There is a Wikipedia web page dedicated to chronicling the stories of inventors who were killed by their own inventions. For example, the man who owned the company that invented the Segway was killed while riding a Segway. Captain Peter Minch does not appear on this list, but he should.
He invented the type of ship that killed him.
Peter George Minch, his wife Florence, his son Charley age 10 and his daughter Florence age 7 died aboard the WESTERN RESERVE along with his wife’s sister and the sister’s daughter. Peter Minch’s body was one of 16 recovered by the life savers and was identified by his engraved pocket watch. WMHS files indicate that the bodies of Peter Minch’s wife, daughter, and sister in law were also recovered although other sources disagree.
A piece of the WESTERN RESERVE remains. A 1988 article in the WMHS files state: “A few months after the sinking the WESTERN RESERVE starboard light came ashore on the Canadian side and was shipped to Philip Jacob Minch II. He placed it in his home and kept it burning nightly in memory of his loved ones. After his death in 1944, the lantern was electrified and mounted near the top of President Garfield’s home in Mentor, Ohio, now a museum. An automatic timer turns it on at dark.”
Wheelsman Stewart rose to become a Great Lakes captain himself in the Minch family line but never forgot how the family refused to aid him after his survival and treated him “shabbily”. That would provide precedent for the way the family would treat the survivors of another Great Lakes sinking.
NEXT: NUTTY PHIL AND THE WRECK OF THE ONOKO
Photo at top of page: WESTERN RESERVE color painting by R. D. Wilcox.
Photo Credit: Great Lakes Marine Collection of the Milwaukee Public Library and Wisconsin Marine Historical Society.
____________________________________
James Heinz is the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s acquisitions director. He became interested in maritime history as a kid watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures on TV. He was a Great Lakes wreck diver until three episodes of the bends forced him to retire from diving. He was a University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee police officer for thirty years. He regularly flies either a Cessna 152 or 172.
GEORGE STEINBRENNER, GREAT LAKES SHIP OWNER – Chapter One
THE WRECK OF THE WESTERN RESERVE – Chapter Two
NUTTY PHIL AND THE WRECK OF THE ONOKO – Chapter Three
SOPHIA MINCH AND THE WRECK OF THE SOPHIA MINCH – Chapter Four
HENRY STEINBRENNER I, GORDON LIGHTFOOT, AND THE WRECK OF THE HENRY STEINBRENNER I – Chapter Five
THE WRECK OF THE ANNA C. MINCH – Chapter Six
HENRY STEINBRENNER II AND THE SHIPWRECK THAT BECAME A SHIP AGAIN – Chapter Seven
AN OLDIE BUT A GOLDIE: HENRY STEINBRENNER II AND THE J. B. FORD – Chapter Eight
HENRY III AND GEORGE STEINBRENNER III: LIKE FATHER LIKE SON – Chapter Nine
KINSMAN TRANSIT IS IN TROUBLE – Chapter Ten
GEORGE III SAVES KINSMAN TRANSIT – Chapter Eleven
GEORGE III SAVES AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING – Chapter Twelve
