By James Heinz
(Steinbrenner Story – Chapter Seven)
One of the ships Henry II owned was the GEORGE M. HUMPHREY, which had been built in 1927 at the American Shipbuilding Company in Cleveland. She displaced 8,021 tons, was 586 feet long and 60 feet wide.
In a dense fog and heavy rainstorm, on June 15, 1943, at 2:50 am while downbound and loaded with14,000 tons of ore, she was rammed by the upbound D. M. CLEMSON two miles off Old Mackinaw Point in the middle of the shipping channel near the center of the Straits of Mackinac. The CLEMSON saw the HUMPHREY crossing its bow and ordered full astern but the order did not have time to take effect before the CLEMSON sliced deep into the HUMPHREY’s starboard side, almost cutting her in half.
If the CLEMSON had remained in place, her hull would have blocked the hole she had made in the hold of the HUMPHREY and perhaps saved her victim from sinking. However, the full astern engine order then took effect, and the CLEMSON backed out of the hole in the HUMPHREY, allowing lake water to pour into the hole.
The HUMPHREY sank 20 minutes later in 77 feet of water. Of her 39 man crew, 31 were rescued from her lifeboats by the LAGONDA and 8 others were picked up by the CLEMSON. It was the latest and most severe of ten collisions that had occurred on the Lakes in the previous two weeks.
The pride of Kinsman Transit now rested on the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac. Her masts stuck slightly above the surface in the middle of the ferry route between Mackinac City and St. Ignace.
Lawsuits totaling $2,000,000 were filed in admiralty court. Kinsman valued the HUMPHREYS at $1,088,000 and her cargo at $70,000. The CLEMSON suffered $55,000 in damages. A year later a federal judge decided that the fault was equal on both sides and awarded Kinsman $495, 000 in damages. The insurance underwriters could not get any bids to salvage the HUMPHREY and surrendered their claims to her. Kinsman also received an insurance payment for the HUMPHREY, since she was considered a total loss.
Henry II should not have been so quick to settle.
The Army Corps of Engineers wanted the obstruction in the main shipping channel cleared. They paid Captain John Roen to do so. Roen had the option to destroy the wreck or raise her, with the provision that he could keep her if he could float her. No ship of her size on the Great Lakes had ever been raised before, and many experts did not think that it could be done.
That did not deter Captain Roen. John Roen had come to America in 1906 and had been involved in Great Lakes shipping since that time. If the Great Lakes had salt water, he would have been a crusty old salt. He worked his way up from deckhand to tug owner to towing and salvage company owner. He had his own shipyard in Sturgeon Bay, and had successfully salvaged several ships previously, including the SINALOA and the FRANK J. PETERSON after the 1940 storm, and the SPARTA in 1941.
Roen, sensing his limitations in this situation, hired MIT graduate James Robinson to make calculations as to the distribution of the cargo and the ship’s center of gravity. Roen also determined that the easiest way to raise the ship was not the best. Blowing enough air into her ballast tanks after the tanks had been repaired would have brought her up, only to see her capsize once she did.
On October 20, 1944, divers discovered that the CLEMSON had left a 20 foot by 21 foot hole in the HUMPHREY’s starboard side abreast of the #3 hatch. This was a late date to begin operations that far north. The Gales of November were only 11 days away.
The first order of business was to remove the iron ore cargo. Four divers carried out the dangerous task of using dynamite to break up the iron ore, which had congealed and compacted due to settling and the pressure of the water on it. Their task was made harder by the strong current in the Straits, which I know well from having dived there.
Cranes with clam buckets scooped out the chunks of ore. The divers were in danger of being trapped under crumbling, shifting heaps of iron ore. Before they stopped operations in December, they had removed about 8,000 tons of ore, which Roen sold at $3 a ton.
Compressed air hoses were connected to the ballast tanks of the HUMPHREY by divers who penetrated the wreck to connect the hoses to valves in the engine room. Roen had rigged a manifold to distribute compressed air through the hoses into the ballast tanks. The pump pressure and the time required to fill each tank with air was recorded.
Roen was not idle in the winter months. A 30 inch metal model of the 140 feet midsection of the wreck was made and tested in water to determine if there were any problems with suction to be anticipated, and to see if pumping compressed air into the ship would raise her without capsizing, using the data previously recorded.
On May 6, 1944, Roen returned to the wreck and removed another 2,000 tons of ore. They found that over the winter the wreck had “eased back” from the gummy clay of the lake bottom, eliminating many of the anticipated problems with suction. High water, strong currents, and bad weather delayed the salvage further until midsummer.
The reduced suction force was 600 tons, instead of the estimated 2,000 tons. This meant that a suction breaking device built over the winter consisting of an 80 foot tower and blower pipes was not used.
The iron ore that could not be lifted was pumped out using a 12 inch air lift. Two pipes bolted to the outside of the airlift pipe each had a 300 psi water jet pumped through them and directed at the ore.
This agitated and broke up the ore and turned it into a sort of sludge, which was in turn sucked up to the surface through the air lift. The current dispersed the sludge, except on some days when it did not, and the sludge settled back onto the wreck.
Divers also sealed any split seams in the hull with quick sealing marine cement. A path to shallow water was dragged and determined to be free of obstructions.
Divers then removed 300 of the wreck’s 1.25 inch rivets 45 feet below the surface of the lake using a steam hammer invented by Roen. This left 50 equally spaced holes through which lifting cables could be inserted. Fifty ring plates were inserted in the holes along the ship’s gunwale. Blocks (as in block and tackle) were inserted in the holes.
Then two and a half miles of 7/8 inch cable were woven between the blocks, which were then attached to blocks on the side of the barge MAITLAND, which was moored directly above and straddling the wreck. The cables interlacing the two vessels together were continuous and equipped with pulleys, which provided a self-adjusting feature.
The barge’s ballast tanks were partially pumped full of water to lower her in the water to a draft of 17 feet. Then, at the same time, the cables to the barge were tightened, the barge pumped out her ballast, and compressed air was blown into the wreck’s ballast tanks.
The barge had a lifting capacity of 6,000 tons, compared to the 5,400 ton weight of the wreck. The air pumped into the wreck’s ballast tanks provided enough buoyancy to reduce the wreck’s effective weight to 3,000 tons.
This did not raise the wreck to the surface, but moved it about seven feet off the bottom. The barge/wreck combination was then towed into shallower water until the wreck touched bottom again. The procedure was repeated five times, moving the wreck a mile and a half closer to shore.
During the first lift, one corner of the hull of the HUMPHREY stuck firmly on a sand bar, on the opposite side of which the water was 90 feet deep. The MAITLAND had to spend the night in position over the wreck until the wreck could be lifted over the bar the next day.
The first lift was on August 7th and the last was on August 29th. By that time the wreck was only 14 feet below the surface, shallower than the 17 foot draft on the MAITLAND.
Then Roen brought in the barge HILDA. The HILDA and the MAITLAND were then positioned on either side of the wreck parallel to her sides. The cables were re-rigged so that the wreck was suspended in a cradle of cables between the two barges.
During the winter, the hulls of both barges had been divided in half longitudinally by a bulkhead. Instead of filling the barges’ ballast tanks with water as had been done with the MAITLAND, water was pumped into the side of each barge hull farthest from the wreck and compressed air into the side of the hull closest to the barge, providing additional lifting power.
The HILDA was smaller than the MAITLAND, and could not lift her half of the wreck, so she was positioned toward the stern of the sunken vessel and the rest of the lifting force required was provided by pumping more air into the forward port ballast tank of the HUMPHREY.
That would lead to disaster.
The barges were pumped out slowly and as they did so the lifted the wreck. This was repeated three times as the wreck was at first lifted seven feet off the bottom and the wreck/barge combination was moved to within a half mile of shore in 40 feet of water. Her pilot house broke the surface on August 13.
An air hose pumping air into the port side forward ballast tank developed a kink, which caused the starboard tanks to fill with more air than the port side. This caused the starboard side of the ship to break free of the water and “pitch wildly back and forth”. The HUMPHREY was in danger of rolling over and capsizing, just the thing Roen had tried to avoid.
Roen and Robinson had not anticipated this, but a quick thinking crane operator blasted the air hose with a shotgun, allowing the ship to settle back down on an even keel. Reports do not explain why there was a shotgun aboard the salvage vessel. Perhaps it was to deter the notorious pirates of Mackinaw City.
On September 5, 1944, the deck of the HUMPHREY was six feet out of the water. The forward end of the wreck was then tilted so that divers could patch the 400 foot square hole in her side with a patch made of canvas and timbers a foot square.
On September 8th, water was pumped out of the HUMPHREY’s holds at the rate of 3,000 tons per minute. On September 10th, the HUMPHREY was fully afloat.
The HUMPRHEY did not look like the trim ship she had been before the sinking. The winter ice had flattened her pilot house and smokestack, damaged her aft end, and the suction from the sinking had carried 300 tons of coal from the coal bunkers into the engine room and as far aft as the steering gear.
However, the damage did not stop Roen from putting her smokestack and boiler back into operation, as well as her steam whistle. On September 17th, Roen personally steered the former shipwreck into Sturgeon Bay under her own power and blowing her own whistle as a crowd of thousands cheered and other ships blew their whistles.
Roen estimated that the salvage cost him $250,000. In exchange he got a ship valued at $1 million. He reconditioned her for $500,000, renamed her JOHN ROEN, and put her to work. He sold her in 1948 for exactly $1 million to Boland and Cornelius, who converted her to a self-unloader. She was towed to Taiwan and scrapped in 1988.
Roen made $1 million on an expenditure of $750,000, a profit of 25%. It must have made Henry Steinbrenner II jealous.
NEXT: AN OLDIE BUT A GOLDIE: HENRY STEINBRENNER II AND THE J. B. FORD
Photo at the top of page: GEORGE M. HUMPHREY sailing.
Photo Credit: Great Lakes Marine Collection of the Milwaukee Public Library and Wisconsin Marine Historical Society.
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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
