1914 — Nov 19, storm, steamer C.F. Curtis/two barges sink near Grand Marais, MI –27-28

— 28 Ratigan, William. Great Lakes Shipwrecks & Survivals (New Revised Ed.) 1969, p. 260.
— 28 U.S. Steamboat-Inspection Service. Annual Report 1915, p. 15.
— 28 Zenithcity.com. “November 19, 1914: Three vessels wrecked on Lake Superior.”
–14 steamer C. F. Curtis
— 7 schooner Annie M. Peterson
— 7 schooner Seldon E. Marvin
— 27 U.S. Congress. House Documents Vol. 25, 64th Cong., 1st Sess., 1916.
— 14 (# for C.F. Curtis) U.S. Bureau of Navigation. Merchant Vessels of the U.S.…1915, p 422.

Narrative Information

Ratigan: “Off these shores [between Grand Marais and Munising, Lake Superior south shore], on the ominous day of November, 1914, Captain J. P. Jennings was towing two schooner barges, the Annie M. Peterson and the Seldon E. Marvin, with the steamer C. F. Curtis. All three vessels were of a respectable size, abut two hundred feet each, and they were laden deep with lumber bound for Tonawanda, near Buffalo. The tow carried a combined crew of twenty-six men and two women – a cook and a stewardess. During the night Captain Jennings ran headlong into a blizzard. What happened thereafter is guesswork. The tow must have parted, the barges crashed, and the steamer foundered. The bodies of six men and the two women were found, all frozen stiff, two days later about eight miles from Grand Marais. Wreckage and eight more bodies came in along the Au Sable banks. Somehow two survivors reached shore. Their tracks could be seen in the snow and sand. But they had not come across an abandoned logging camp with a derelict cookstove and left-behind matches. They had frozen to death on the beach of eternal ice.” (Ratigan, William. Great Lakes Shipwrecks & Survivals (New Revised Ed.) 1969, pp. 260-261.)

U.S. Congress: “November 19, 1914, north gale with snow. Steamer Curtis, 522 tons, length 196 feet, beam 32, depth 13; with barges A. M. Peterson, 599 tons, length 190 ½ feet, beam 33, depth 13; and S. K. Marvin, 589 tons, length 175 feet, beam 33, depth 12 feet, in tow. Total loss of fleet; 27 drowned; none saved.” (U.S. Congress. House Documents Vol. 25, 64th Cong., 1st Sess., 1916. )

US SIS: “On November 19, 1914, the steamer C.F. Curtis, with the barges Selden E. Marvin and Annie M. Peterson in tow, encountered a storm of unusual violence with the result that the steamer and barges foundered in the vicinity of Grand Marais, Mich., the crew of all three vessels, a total of 28 persons, losing their lives.” (U.S. Steamboat-Inspection Service. Annual Report 1915, p. 15.)

Zenithcity.com (Nov 19, 1914): “On this day on Lake Superior in 1914, the steamer C. F. Curtis and two barges under her tow wrecked seven miles east of Grand Marais on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. On the 19th the Curtis was headed to Tonawanda, New York, towing the lumber barges Annie M. Peterson (formerly a three-masted schooner) and Seldon E. Marvin, when she steered all three vessels directly into a November gale. All three vessels were lost, as were 28 men, fourteen on the Curtis and seven each on the Peterson and the Marvin. It was another huge blow to the vessels’ owners, the Edward Hines Lumber Company, which had lost three other vessels just the week before. The area in which the Curtis, Marvin, and Peterson went down, reported the Duluth News Tribune, was ‘lined with the hulks of sunken ships…the worst spot on Lake Superior’ and ‘the Graveyard of the Great Lakes.’ In October 2003, Grand Marais residents spotted the remains of a shipwreck off shore about 6 miles east of the harbor. They are thought to be what remains of the Annie M. Peterson.” (Zenithcity.com. “November 19, 1914: Three vessels wrecked on Lake Superior.” Zenith City Press (webpage).)

Sources

Ratigan, William. Great Lakes Shipwrecks & Survivals (New Revised and Enlarged Edition). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1969.

United States Bureau of Navigation, Department of Commerce. Forty-Seventh Annual List of Merchant Vessels of the United States…For the Year Ended June 30, 1915. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1915. Digitized by Google. Accessed 4-4-2022 at: http://www.archive.org/stream/merchantvessels00unkngoog#page/n5/mode/1up

United States Congress. House of Representatives. House Documents Vol. 25, 64th Cong., 1st Sess., 1916, “Supplemental Report on Reexamination of Harbor of Refuge at Grand Marais, Mich.,” War Department, U.S. Engineer Office, Duluth, Minn., May 26, 1916, p. 49. Google digitized. Accessed 4-4-2022 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=BJk3AQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=clmson&f=false

United States Steamboat-Inspection Service. Annual Report of the Supervising Inspector General, Steamboat-Inspection Service to the Secretary of Commerce for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1915. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1915, 53 pages. Digitized by Google. Accessed 4-4-2022 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=zrPNAAAAMAAJ

Zenithcity.com. “November 19, 1914: Three vessels wrecked on Lake Superior.” Zenith City Press (webpage). Accessed 4-4-2022 at: http://zenithcity.com/thisday/november-19-1914-three-vessels-wrecked-on-lake-superior/