By James Heinz
(Steinbrenner Story – Chapter Five)
Sophia Minch married a successful real estate businessman and lawyer named Henry George Steinbrenner I (1849-1929). He was reluctant to leave his successful real estate business to take over his wife’s family shipping business but eventually agreed to do so, at the age of 51. His father was George Steinbrenner I.
In 1901, Henry I and Philip J. Minch II combined the Minch and Nicholas companies into the Kinsman Transit Company. The company was named for the street in Cleveland that the family lived on. Sophia Steinbrenner would remain president of the company until her death in 1933 at age 73.
In 1963, Henry Steinbrenner II stated that 28 ships had sailed for what he described as “this family enterprise, ten wooden schooners, three wooden freighters, three iron freighters, and ten modern steel bulk carriers.”
Kinsman Transit would own a total of four ships named after Henry Steinbrenner I. The first one would die in tragedy and controversy in a manner eerily similar to what the late Gordon Lightfoot sang about in his classic song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
The HENRY STEINBRENNER I was launched in 1901 at Port Huron, Mich. She was a conventional Great Lakes steel bulk carrier of the type introduced by Henry Steinbrenner’s father and brother in law. She displaced 4,719 tons and was 427 feet long and 50 feet wide.
In a premonition of what would happen to the ROGER BLOUGH, it could be said that the STEINBRENNER’s birth was premature. She had to be launched ahead of time to avoid a shipyard fire. On March 19, 1901, the Jenks Shipbuilding of Port Huron caught fire. Just like with the ROGER BLOUGH, firefighters had to pour water on the hull of the HENRY STEINBRENNER I.
In a parallel to the EDMUND FITZGERALD, which was owned by Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., but leased to and operated by Columbia Transportation, the HENRY STEINBRENNER I was owned by Kinsman Marine Transit but operated by the Henry Steinbrenner Company of Cleveland.
The STEINBRENNER was sunk in a collision with the freighter HARRY A. BERWIND in the St. Mary’s River on December 6, 1910. She sank in a part of the river known as Mud Lake. She was declared a total loss.
The famous salvor Tom Reid examined her and found that her pilothouse was above water and only five feet of water covered her deck. Reid was given the contract to raise her for $35,000. As can be expected with a body of water named Mud Lake, the water was very muddy. Reid decided to wait until the river iced up. There would be no more vessel traffic and the water would be clearer.
When the river had 12 inches of ice on it, Reid and his team chopped a hole in the ice and sent divers down. I can identify with both ice diving and diving with the classic hard hat gear of the time, an experience I chronicled in an earlier article.
Arriving at the bottom they discovered not only the 25 foot wide hole that the HARRY A. BERWIND had put in the hold, but that the HENRY STEINBRENNER I had sunk deeper into the substance for which Mud Lake was named than had been expected, making the salvage more difficult.
The divers cleared the mud from the hole and applied a patch. They then waited until spring when they pumped her out. She was raised on May 10, 1910, and put back into service. She would sink one more time, and that time she would not be recovered.
On May 10, 1953, at 5:11 a.m. the HENRY STEINBRENNER I left Superior, Wis., with 7,000 tons of iron ore in her holds. As the late Gordon Lightfoot sang, “Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin…When they left fully loaded for Cleveland”. At the time the lake was “as calm as a pond,” according to Captain Albert Stiglin, and the temperature was 80 degrees.
Weather forecasts were favorable. They called for SE to south winds of 30-35 mph with occasional thunder squalls. The captain and crew felt they could handle it.
Around 3 pm that afternoon the weather report unfortunately proved to be inaccurate, and the winds increased to 30-40 miles an hour. Waves increased and began to wash over the decks. The crew had secured the hatches before leaving the dock but they braved the winds and waves to check them again.
The STEINBRENNER I had 12 telescoping hatches whose covers were secured in the closed position by Mulholland type clamps. Each hatch cover consisted of a number of 400 pound steel hatch leaves. The leaves were opened and closed with a winch. There were 28 clamps on each hatch. When closed, the hatch leaves were not completely watertight. Additional protection could have been provided by covering the hatches with tarpaulins. This was not done.
By 5 pm the sea conditions had deteriorated to the point where the line from “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” comes to mind: “When suppertime came the old cook came on deck and said ‘Fellas, it’s too rough to feed ya.”. Only a quarter of the crew could make it to the galley for a cold meal. You know the seas are rough when merchant mariners can’t make it to the galley for dinner.
At 8 pm the STEINBRENNER I would have had cause to remember the line from the song that says “At 7 pm a main hatchway gave in” if the song had yet been written, because at 8 pm the watch noticed that one leaf from the port side hatch cover of #11 hold had come loose. The hatches were numbered starting at #1 directly behind the pilot house and the numbering proceeded towards the stern with the hatch farthest to the rear being #12. #11 hold was the hatch second farthest from the pilot house.
Seas were now sweeping across the deck occasionally, and pouring down into the cargo hold through the #11 hatch. Third mate George Wiseman and three crewmen secured traveling lines to the main deck lifeline and worked their way aft from the pilothouse, having to travel almost the entire length of the spar deck, in order to secure loose hatch cover.
Again and again the ice cold waters of Lake Superior swept the deck, knocking the men down. Without their lines they would have been swept off the deck into the lake. As the men struggled with the hatch cover, a wave knocked seaman Thomas Wells into the cargo hold. Thanks to the traveling line, he did not fall all the way to the top of the iron ore cargo, but apparently dangled in midair swinging like a pendulum until the others pulled him back up.
Wells, no doubt feeling like James Bond’s martini (“Shaken, not stirred”) was escorted into the stern cabin to recover. The other three returned to the #11 hatch and secured the loose hatch cover leaf. Imagine yourself on a wet, rolling deck with waves of icy water pouring over you as you wrestle with a 400 pound steel object. However, they were only able to hand tighten the clamps. Feeling that conditions were too rough to return to the pilot house, the men remained in the stern cabin.
By 11 pm the weather forecast had reached new heights of inaccuracy, with winds increasing to 80 miles an hour with 20 to 30 feet waves. By 430 am the same hatch cover leaf had worked loose again but sea conditions meant going out on deck would be suicidal. Both ballast pumps were started instead and suction started on both sides of the #4 cargo hold.
At 6 am the next morning Stiglitz ordered full left rudder and full power to bring the ship around to an opposite course. This was done to try to give the after end of the spar deck enough shelter to allow the crewmen in the stern cabins to secure the hatches. This did not work and after 10 minutes the ship resumed its normal course.
At 6:30 am a wave crashed through one of the forecastle observation doors. The door was resecured by two men jamming heavy planking behind it, only to have the waves force the door open again and hour later, to be resecured in the same way. The wooden door was two inches thick, and a third wave tore the door, hinges, jam, bracing and lock out. One hand later recalled that the waves moved the pilot house three feet back.
Captain Stiglin remembered: “solid water was pouring in over both sides of the ship. There was no way to stand on deck.” One of the men who had previously secured the #11 hatch cover said, “water was pouring into number 11 hatch at the stern. Every time she rolled, the hatch would roll and water poured in.”
By 7:00 am the next morning the other hatches on holds 10, 11, 12 were working loose and the ship was becoming sluggish to handle, an indication that her belly was full of water. The temperature had dropped to below freezing.
At 7:00 am Captain Stiglin acted out the lyrics from a song that had yet to be written: “The captain wired in he had water comin’ in and the good ship and crew was in peril” by sending a radio message advising other ships of exactly that. Captain Stiglin told his crew to dress warmly and then gave the order that all merchant seamen dread to hear:
“Put on your life jackets.”
At 7:36 am Captain Stiglitz gave the only order that merchant seaman fear more than that:
“Abandon Ship”
The STEINBRENNER I sank stern first about 15 minutes later about 15 miles south of Isle Royale Light in about 600 feet of water.
Although the STEINBRENNER I’s struggle had ended, the crew’s struggle was just beginning. One survivor reported that the seas “were like mountains.” He reported that the ship had listed to starboard, making it impossible to launch the port lifeboat. He said that the ship “made a complete turn and listed”, throwing the men into the water. Some of the men had not been able to get to their lifejackets.
Another survivor who was swimming in the water felt the heat from the exploding boiler, but the heat did not last long in the freezing cold water. I dove in Lake Superior in August and it was freezing cold then. If the crew did not drown in the water they could freeze to death in the water, like those who escaped the TITANIC.
The forward pilot house crew did not have access to the lifeboats, which were on the stern of the vessel. They only had access to “a raft”. It consisted of what could best be described as an oil drum sandwich, with oil drums in the middle and slatted squares of wood on the top and bottom. The raft was 6 feet by 12 feet and was rated to carry 15 men.
Captain Stiglin found himself in the water. He was sucked under by the suction of his former command leaving the surface, but was able to break free and reach the surface. He surfaced near a raft containing 4 of his crew, who pulled him aboard. They had to wait four hours on the raft while waves washed over them.
The crew at the stern managed to launch the starboard lifeboat. That was not as easy as it sounds. WMHS files state: “They had to get the heavy canvas covers off in gale force winds, swing the davits outboard, and try to lower the cumbersome boat. Inasmuch as the ship had rolled and developed a starboard list…the starboard boat was dropped out of control.” Seven men got into the boat.
The men then tried but failed to launch the port lifeboat. They then disconnected it so that when the ship sank out from beneath it, the lifeboat would float free. When the STEINBRENNER I sank the boat did exactly that, but one of two men who were trying to insert the plug in the boat’s drain hole was swept away. The other man was swept by waves across the boat and slammed into the other side of the boat and died of his internal injuries. The lifeboat filled with water but did not sink, wallowing about semi submerged in the waves.
Those who got into the semi submerged port lifeboat made no effort to bail, since they did not have a bucket, and the waves broke over the boat and filled it with water so fast there was would have been no point in bailing anyway. After about an hour and a half in the freezing water, exhaustion and hypothermia made the men physically unable to bail anyway. When the port lifeboat was recovered, it was found to have a vertical gash in it a foot long.
One port lifeboat survivor attributed him and his boat mate’s survival to their weight and size. He claimed that immersion in the cold water reduced his weight from 223 pounds to 183 pounds in 4 hours.
Although the waves sank the ship and killed many men, they saved one man’s life. He was going to jump overboard when he was restrained by another crewman who told him he would never make it. The crewman who was washed overboard opened his eyes and he was washed down the middle of the ship, and saw himself passing over 4 or 5 hatches.
Several crewmen chose to remain aboard the STEINBRENNER I, reasoning, as one survivor said, “What the hell good is that little boat going to be if the big one goes down”, reasoning that many of the people who did not survive the TITANIC had adopted as well.
One of these men was the third assistant engineer. When the starboard lifeboat was launched, someone forgot to disconnect the line that tied it to the vessel. No one had a knife to cut it, when the third assistant arrived, he untied it, but made no effort to leave with it, choosing to go down with the ship.
Another member of the engine room crew performed better. Although the engine had been stopped when the abandon ship order was given, before leaving the engine room he opened the throttle a little so that the ship would “run away” from the lifeboats so that they would not be in close proximity to the boilers if they exploded when they came into contact with ice cold water, which the STEINBRENNER I’s boilers did.
He had learned this trick as a member of the merchant marine in World War II, where he had been torpedoed and sunk twice in the cold North Atlantic.
Captain Stiglin’s radio message had been heard. Seven vessels responded, but in the heavy seas it took them several hours to arrive. The WILFRED SYKES and the JOSEPH. H. THOMPSON arrived at the same time. The THOMPSON rescued the five men on the raft.
The D. M. CLEMSON rescued the seven men in the starboard lifeboat. A survivor described seeing “that big tin stack” of the CLEMSON and described it as “a miracle”. The CLEMSON missed the lifeboat on the first pass, which brought the lifeboat dangerously close to the ship’s churning propeller. On her second attempt, the CLEMSON was able to haul all seven men up to her deck on the end of a manila rope.
The WILFRED SYKES was 35 miles away when she heard the call. She spotted the half submerge port lifeboat when it appeared on the crest of a wave. The lifeboat was pulled to the SYKES by a rope, and a Jacob’s ladder was lowered to the boat. The first crewman to be rescued clung to ladder with a death grip but could not apparently muster the strength to climb it. The crew of the SYKES pulled up both the ladder and the crewman, but then the rope securing the boat broke.
The captain of the SYKES then brought the ship around in a full circle, which took an hour to complete. This was done to position the SYKES as a sort of moveable breakwater, in order to reduce the seas. Then, in an act of bravery, SYKES third mate Arthur Ritter and nine men volunteered to man one of the SYKES’ lifeboats and lower it into the stormy lake to rescue the remaining men in the port lifeboat.
The captain of the ONTADOC, watching the three rescue ships in action, remarked, “I wonder sometimes that they didn’t turn over.”
Fourteen crew were rescued and ten bodies were recovered from the water, but another seven have never been found. As the song says, “Superior, they said, never gives up her dead. “
When the survivors arrived at the Soo, Henry Stewart’s experience after surviving the wreck of the WESTERN RESERVE was repeated. Kinsman gave each man a $300 “sinking fee” but deducted from it the cost of new clothing the company supplied so that the men could appear before the Coast Guard. The families of the dead or missing crew also received $300 but company did not deduct the cost of new clothing. Many of the surviving crewmen complained they did not have enough money to buy a beer.
There is an old saying in maritime law that I just made up: “Where there’s a wreck, there’s a writ.” Captain Stiglitz was apparently aware of this principle invented by a man who had yet to be born, since the first thing he did when he arrived at the Soo was go to a hotel and confer with the company’s lawyers.
And now, as if we did not have enough tragedy, the lawyers got involved.
After the sinking, in addition to the failure of the company to provide beer money, there were several points of controversy. The first was the condition of the HENRY STEINBRENNER I itself.
Members of the crew did not describe the ship in glowing terms. They made statements like: “Nothing worked aboard the ship as it should. We were taking water something awful for nearly 12 hours before she went down.” Another stated that “For my money she just wasn’t seaworthy.” Still others described their former workplace as “a scow barge”, “a bucket”, and “just too old.”
Another point of contention was the condition of the clamps on the after hatches. Crew members stated that the threads were stripped on some of the clamps that held the hatches closed.
But the biggest issue raised was the aforementioned failure of Captain Stiglin to order tarpaulins rigged over the hatches.
The Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation considered all of these issues. The STEINBRENNER had been inspected by the insurance company on May 4, 1953, and passed. The ship had been dry docked for her five year inspection in February 1953 and passed both that and her annual inspection.
The Board concluded that there was no evidence that any of the clamps with stripped threads were on the after three hatches that failed, that the stripped clamps could be made to fit as tightly as any other clamps if the threads were wrapped in marlin, and that news reports concerning the clamps were exaggerated.
The Board found that the working of the vessel in heavy seas caused a general loosening of the clamps, and the heavy seas knocked over the loosened clamps. The hatch covers, no longer fastened by the clamps, were then knocked free by the waves.
As for the tarpaulins, the Board concluded that if they had been deployed, they “would have served to reduce the general working and loosening of all the clamps, and helped prevent the free entry of water between the hatch leaves.”
However, in its most controversial finding, the Board did not fault Stiglitz for not putting the tarpaulins on. They concluded that any prudent captain would have made the same decision, given the conditions and forecast at the time the decision was made. They found Stiglitz not guilty of negligence. They concluded that the sinking was “An Act of God”.
The Commandant of the Coast Guard disagreed. He considered it not an Act of God but rather an Inaction of Man, and initiated further disciplinary actions. On a happier note, the officers and men of the rescue ships received gold medals, savings bonds, a bronze plaque, and other awards and commendations.
The Board’s decision may have been influenced by the weather conditions. To give you some idea of how bad the weather was that day, on May 10th five tornadoes struck northwest Wisconsin and southeastern Minnesota. Four of these were F4 tornadoes, with winds up to 260 mph. The fifth was an F3 tornado. The temperature at Superior dropped 40 degrees overnight. The weather front apparently reached as far south as Texas, where 34 died and 400 were injured by two Texas tornadoes. Another Great Lakes skipper with 44 years’ experience said it was the worst storm he ever saw.
Perhaps the closest connection between the STEINBRENNER sinking and the Gordon Lightfoot song is this quote from Wikipedia: “Norm Bragg, who survived this wreck in Lake Superior, was a watchman on board the SS Daniel J. Morrell, when it sank in Lake Huron. He helped his crew understand their plight, gave quick advice and said, “It’s been good to know you.”
NEXT: THE WRECK OF THE ANNA C. MINCH
Photo at top of page: HENRY STEINBRENNER #96584 with clam shell loading.
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
