Crosby’s Legacy Lives
By James Heinz
Crosby’s legacy lives on in the wrecks of the ships he once owned.
One of these ships is the CONESTOGA. In September 1918, she was sold to the Canadian Lakeports Navigation Company, whose president was Crosby’s son Frederick Crosby, and she was altered to fit through the Welland Canal.
On May 21, 1922, at 2 am while downbound, a fire of unknown origin broke out in the engine room while the ship was in the lift lock #27 of the Galop Canal one mile west of Cardinal, Ontario. Her 22 man crew stood to their posts and fought the raging fire until the ship was flushed out of the canal and drifted along the shore until she grounded, burned to the waterline, and sank. Two of her crew suffered burnt hands from handling burning hawsers.
WMHS files state: “Lakeports was purging the fleet of these old wooden vessels and it has often been felt that the fire was intentionally set.” Vessel and cargo loss was valued at $250,000. Her cargo of 30,000 bushels of wheat was salvaged the following summer.
The wreck of the CONESTOGA is a popular dive site. WMHS files record that the ship lies about 200 feet from and parallel to the shore in about 18 to 30 feet of water. Her grave is marked by her engine and stack, which stick out of the water. The wreck has been intensively salvaged over the years. Both her anchors are gone, one of which was illegally removed and placed in front of a motel in Ogdensburg, New York. Her Milwaukee made 14 foot propeller is still there but missing one of four blades due to an unsuccessful attempt to remove it with dynamite. Her rudder, boilers, engines, capstans, and winches still remain. A video of her made by divers can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsywiKH1Dns
WMHS files show that in 1917 the former NAOMI was sold to Atlantic coast interests. In 1918 she was taken over by the United States Shipping Board. On March 31, 1919, she was transferred to the US Army Quartermaster’s Department, renamed the GENERAL ROBERT O’RILEY and used as a hospital ship in New York Harbor. She returned to the Lakes in December 1919 and was purchased by the Seymour Line, renamed the PILGRIM and put on the Milwaukee-Racine-Chicago run after she had remained idle in the Milwaukee River for a couple of years. When the Seymour Line failed, she was bought by her original owners the Goodrich Line, which restored her original name, WISCONSIN, but kept her on the Milwaukee-Racine-Chicago run.
WMHS files show that on October 22, 1929, the WISCONSIN encountered a fierce storm on Lake Michigan while sailing from Chicago to Milwaukee. Her captain, D. H. Morrison, said that the waves were the worst he had seen in 26 years on the lakes. He described winds of 45 to 50 miles an hour, causing waves so big that, in his words, “Giant waves swept over the bow of the WISCONSIN hour after hour. Tons of water were dashed over the pilot house. I feared that any plunge into the running sea might smash the pilot house as if it were an egg shell.” A trip that usually took 8 hours took 20 hours, with the WISCONSIN fighting her way into Racine harbor, and then fighting her way back out and into the storm
When asked why he did not remain in shelter in Racine harbor, Capt. Morrison made two statements that would come back to haunt him: “On this line we make it a point of coming through in any kind of weather”, and even more ominously, that “the greatest fear in a running sea is that of a shifting cargo.”
October 29, 1929, is known as Black Tuesday because that is the day the stock market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression. It was a Black Tuesday on the Great Lakes as well, since as one author put it, “…the market wasn’t the only thing that went under on October 29, 1929.” That day a great storm sank five ships on Lake Michigan. One of them was the WISCONSIN.
The ship left Chicago in the early evening bound for Milwaukee, sailing into a northeast gale that observers said was not as severe as the October 23rd event that she had survived. She was carrying a mixed cargo of boxes of iron castings, boxed freight consisting of paint, varnish, toy trains and planes, and margarine, and three automobiles: a Chevy, an Essex, and a Hudson.
WMHS files show that at 11 pm, as the ship was crossing the Illinois border, a crew man discovered water leaking into the ship from a port side coal bunker. The cause was never determined but it is believed that the leak was caused by the same shifting of the cargo in a running sea that Capt. Morrison had feared.
The crew started the pumps but the intakes became clogged. By midnight there was six feet of water in the hold. By 1 am the engine room fires had gone out. By 2 am the lights had gone out and by 3 am there was 15 feet of water in the hold.
Perhaps the best way to track the sinking of the WISCONSIN is by the Morse code radio signals that she sent that dark and stormy night:
1:10 am: “We are four miles off Kenosha. Fire holds all flooded. In immediate danger. Please stay with us.”
1:40 am: “Please get captain of steamer ILLINOIS. Tell him we need help.”
2:15 am: “Due to sink any time now. For God’s sake send help.”
2:35 am: “Fires out. No steam. Rush boats for tow before it’s too late. We may save her. Captain Morrison.”
2:50 am: “Power weakened.”
3:00 am: “S.O.S., S.O.S., S.O.S”
3:40 am: “Can stay up half hour longer. Is help coming?”
Up until this time the story of the WISCONSIN’s sinking closely parallels that of the TITANIC. In both cases the engine room crew and the radio operators stayed at their posts until the last moment. But the last message sent by the WISCONSIN has an even more eerie parallel to the TITANIC:
4:34 am: “Not enough boats for all of us.”
In response to the 2:15 am message, help was indeed coming. Two tugs responded. One turned back due to three feet of water in the hold and a rumored crew mutiny. Another tug arrived but fouled it’s propeller on a floating rope. The Coast Guard dispatched boats from Racine and Kenosha, one of which arrived at 4 am.
Unfortunately, by that time the ship was listing so badly that lifeboats on one side could not be used. At 4:30 am the captain ordered the crew to abandon ship and dropped the anchors. By 7 am the ship had rolled onto its port side and at 7:10 am the WISCONSIN sank stern first. The vessel was valued at $250,000 and her cargo at $200,000.
The WISCONSIN had set sail with 64 crew and 4 passengers. Amazingly, in waves estimated as being 50 feet high, the crew was able to launch lifeboats that rescued 52 people. Captain Morrison was not one of them. He was alive when he was rescued by the coast guard, but collapsed and died after reaching shore. Nine bodies were recovered from the Lake.
Like the TITANIC, the WISCONSIN had her own soap opera story to tell. As WMHS files tell it: “A woman identified one of the bodies as her husband and arranged for its shipment to Chicago. Later, a second woman demanded the same body, claiming she was his wife. When informed that another woman had claimed the body, the second woman left immediately for Chicago.”
The WISCONSIN was forgotten until 1934, when a local fisherman hired Chicago hard hat diver Frank Hefling to find out what was snagging the fisherman’s nets. Hefling used dynamite to blow a hole in her side in an effort to salvage the cargo. Litigation stopped his salvage efforts. The wreck was forgotten again until sometime in the 1960s when Dick Race found the wreck. He brought up some artifacts, including an anchor, the engine room clock, and the ship’s safe, which contained rolls of nickels. In 1963 divers found three skeletons in the wreckage.
WMHS files describe the wreck’s current condition: “Today the wreck lies listing to starboard with her bow north. Her upper cabins were blown off when she sank stern first in the mud, though a section of cabin lies on her stern starboard. The top of WISCONSIN’s deck is about 110 feet. At the stern is her fallen stack and engine. There is a mass of timber and debris in her center section. The bow has a capstan, bollards, and steering post. Along her sides are cargo holds. The port stern hold accesses the vintage autos. Another entry is the dynamited salvage hole near the starboard bow. Of the wreck’s bow is a lifeboat and off the stern are cabin remains.” Divers report finding her former name GENERAL O’RILEY exposed by paint peeling off the wreck.
I personally dove the wreck several times in the 1980s and 1990s, including with one diver who reported auditory hallucinations on the wreck. The ship has greatly deteriorated over the years; when I dove it the deck was still intact. It has since collapsed into the hold.
Even if you do not dive, you can still visit the WISCONSIN. And the WMHS can help you do it. The Southport Light Station Museum in Kenosha has an entire room dedicated to the wreck of the WISCONSIN. The pride of the exhibit is the WISCONSIN’s binnacle, which was removed by the legendary Great Lakes shipwreck hunter John Steele when such removals were legal, and donated to WMHS. WMHS has loaned the binnacle to the Southport Light Station Museum.
If you don’t know what a binnacle is, it is the housing for a ship’s magnetic compass. The binnacle is made entirely of non-magnetic materials to shield the compass from magnetic interference, especially on an iron or steel ship. The brass hood over the top of the binnacle shields the light over the compass from bridge users so that the light does not ruin their night vision.
In addition to the binnacle, the centerpiece of the exhibit is a ¼ scale wood/plastic/resin model of the WISCONSIN before it sank, built by local model maker Ronald Luttrell. The model is 56 inches long, and it took Ron 6.5 months to complete in 2013. It took longer because, just like the real NAOMI, the model was badly damaged and had to be rebuilt after Ron fell down the stairs while carrying it.
Ron’s research into the WISCONSIN has revealed what he thinks is the cause of her sinking. When the ship was lengthened in 1909, the three feet added on each side was called the “bustle”. According to Ron: “Two weeks before her sinking, when she made a stop in Racine, she hit a pylon and hit it so hard that it shifted all the cargo to one side. When she came to the dock, she was listing heavy to starboard.
“They got her to the dock and unloaded all the cargo. Now the ship was sitting level again.
“She went back to Chicago, but with the accident, her bustle was damaged but was sitting high out of the water. The leak was never detected.
“Well, on that fatal night, she had a load on her and now was sitting lower in the water. Later that night, when the storm started getting worse, the bustle would start leaking. As the ship tossed and turned with the big, heavy waves, the plates in the bustle started to move and shift, which made a lot more water start to flood the ship at a faster rate.”
In addition to these artifacts, the exhibit contains a porthole, life preserver, life jacket, and fire axe recovered from the wreck of the WISCONSIN, as well as storyboards that tell the ship’s story.
But the greatest artifact of Crosby’s to survive is the wreck of the JOHN V. MORAN. On June 14, 2015, the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association, in cooperation with legendary Great Lakes wreck hunter Dave Trotter, located a huge side scan sonar target sitting on the bottom of Lake Michigan. MSRA received assistance from the Michigan State Police Underwater Recovery Unit, which in July 2015 used a remotely operated vehicle to record hours of video that confirmed that the sonar target was the MORAN.
Wikipedia describes it: “The wreck of John V. Moran rests upright and remarkably intact in 365 feet of water. Her pilothouse is intact, her mast, with rigging, is still in place and there is still glass in her windows. Her anchors and all of her railings remain in place. The only piece of her wreck that appears to be missing is her funnel. The remotely operated vehicle also located a hole in the starboard side of John V. Moran’s hull, and some minor damage at her port bow. Her discoverers called her ‘the most intact steamship wreck on the bottom of Lake Michigan, if not all of the Great Lakes.’”
Having viewed the photos of the wreck posted on the MSRA web site: http://www.michiganshipwrecks.org/shipwrecks-2/shipwreck-categories/shipwrecks-found/john-v-moran , I must agree with them. The ship appears virtually unchanged since the day she went down, apart from a light coating of mussels. Unlike many steamers that sink so rapidly that compressed air blows the deck houses off the ship and brings down the masts, the MORAN must have sank so slowly that her deckhouses are intact and her mast is still standing.
The greatest legacy left by Edward Crosby is described as: “It looks like it is just moored at the dock waiting to sail away.” But Crosby’s legacy lives on in one more place. His family had one more voyage to make together.
Harriette moved from Milwaukee to California in the 1940s and lived there until her death in Los Angeles on February 11, 1941. Interestingly, her death certificate lists her “husband” as “Edward B. Boudoise” but in fact they were never married, and as far as we know, never saw each other again after she left Paris. Andree’s Find-A-Grave web page simply does not list a father.
It was Harriette’s wish to be interred with her mother but at the time her daughter, now Andree Hathaway, could not afford the cost of reopening the crypt. Therefore, Harriette’s body was cremated and her ashes interred in an adjacent crypt in Fairview Mausoleum.
The Crosby family’s last voyage together was about to begin.
The Find-a-Grave website says: “By the 1990s The Fairview Mausoleum had fallen into abandonment and disrepair. It was located right next to a large High School, smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood, and it had turned into something close to a classic Halloween Spook House. Fortunately, the deceased occupants continued to rest undisturbed while neighborhood kids and vagrants explored and camped out in the sprawling structure that was surrounded by an overgrown stone and wrought iron fence.”
By 1996 the mausoleum was in danger of collapse and so the remains of almost 1,000 people were removed and reburied. The City of Milwaukee was responsible for most of the reburials. The mausoleum, which could be seen from I-94, was replaced with a city firehouse.
Edward Crosby’s remains along with those of his wife and daughter were buried at Graceland Cemetery, Milwaukee. Encyclopedia Titanica says that their organization was responsible for the reburial and for their gravestone which marks them as TITANIC passengers, as seen in the photo.
The Crosby family was together at last.
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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.
Photo at top of page:
WISCONSIN arriving at Chicago dated 1929. Great Lakes Marine Collection of the Milwaukee Public Library and Wisconsin Marine Historical Society.
Other photos:
