1916 — May 8, freighter S.R. Kirby sinks, Lake Superior storm, 8m no. Eagle Harbor, MI-20

— 21 Institute for Great Lakes Research, CMU. “S.E. Kirby, Built May 24, 1890, Bulk Propeller.”
— 21 Supervising IG, Steamboat Inspection-Svc. Annual Report…[IG] for [FY1916] 1917, 21.
— 20 Berman, Bruce D. Encyclopedia of American Shipwrecks. 1972, p. 261.
— 20 Blanchard estimated death toll.*
— 20 Brooklyn Daily Eagle Almanac. “General Chronology of 1916.” 1917, p. 550.
— 20 Evening Chronicle (Marshall, MI). “S.R. Kirby Sank in Superior.” May 9, 1916, p. 1.
— 20 Maritime History of the Great Lakes. “Kirby, S.R., (St. S.), 1916, Official No. U116325.”
— 20 Nash, Jay Robert. Darkest Hours. 1977, p. 696.
— 20 Swayze, David D. Shipwreck!…Directory…Shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. 1992, p. 129.
— 20 Thompson, Mark L. Graveyard of the Lakes. Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 2004, 273.
— 20 Wolff, Julius F., Jr. Lake Superior Shipwrecks. 1990, p. 157.

* Blanchard: We cannot explain why the U.S. SIS shows twenty-one deaths when virtually all sources at the time and since show twenty deaths. We suspect that the exception (Institute for Great Lakes Research) followed the U.S. SIS reporting.

Narrative Information

Maritime History of the Great Lakes:
“S.R. KIRBY Built May 24, 1890 Bulk Propeller – Composite
U. S. No. 116325 2338 gt – 1823 nt 294’ x 42’ x 21’
Foundered 8 miles north of Eagle Harbor, Mich., Lake Superior, May 8, 1916; 21 lives lost.
Detroit/Wyandotte Shipbuilding Master List
Institute for Great Lakes research
Perrysburg, Ohio.”
(Maritime History of the Great Lakes. “Kirby, S.R., (St. S.), 1916, Official No. U116325.”

Maritime History of the Great Lakes: “Steam screw S.R. Kirby. U. S. No. 116325. Of 2,338.66 tons gross. Built 1890. Vessel foundered May 8, 1916, off Eagle Harbor, Mich., with 22 persons on board. 20 lives were lost.
Loss reported of American Vessels
Merchant Vessel List, U. S., 1916.”
(Maritime History of the Great Lakes. “Kirby, S.R., (St. S.), 1916, Official No. U116325.”

Maritime History of the Great Lakes:
“Steam screw S.R. Kirby. U. S. No. 116325. Of 2,338.66 tons gross; 1,823.28. Built Wyandotte, Mich., 1890. Home port, Detroit, Mich. 294.0 x 42.0 x 21.0
Merchant Vessel List, U. S., 1897.”
(Maritime History of the Great Lakes. “Kirby, S.R., (St. S.), 1916, Official No. U116325.”

Nash: “1916…May 8, S. R. Kirby…20 [deaths]. The 2,338-ton steam side-wheel iron vessel, built in 1890 foundered near Eagle Harbor, Mich.” (Nash. Darkest Hours. 1977, p. 696.)

Supervising Inspector General, Steamboat-Inspection Service: “On May 8, 1916, the freight steamer S. R. Kirby left Ashland, Wis., loaded with iron ore, and when between Eagle River and Eagle Harbor, Lake Superior, foundered during a severe storm, resulting in the loss of 21 officers and crew. The only survivors were the second mate and a fireman.” (Supervising Inspector General, Steamboat Inspection Service. Annual Report…for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1916. Washington, DC: GPO, 1917, p. 21.)

Swayze: “S R Kirby. Bulk freight composite steamer of 2,338 t. [tons] and 294 ft., launched in 1890 at Wyandotte, MI.

“Lake Superior: This iron and wood vessel was the largest composite steamer ever built on the Lakes, but she was no match for the spring blizzard-gale that ended her career on May 8, 1916. She was carrying a load of iron ore when the power of the storm became too much for her engines and she began to be pushed to shore. While trying to avoid dreaded Sawtooth Reef, near the top of the Keweenaw Peninsula, she broke her back in the big waves, then drifted to the reef and sank. 20 of her 22 crew perished in the freezing storm.” (Swayze. Shipwreck!…Directory…Shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. 1992, p. 129.)

Thompson: “S.R. Kirby, 1916.

“In spite of the pleadings of Secretary Redfield and the efforts of the steamboat inspectors, overloading was blamed for the loss of the steamer S. R. Kirby and twenty crewmembers on Lake Superior in 1916. The Kirby was a 294-foot freighter built by the Detroit Dry Dock Company in 1890 for the North Western Transportation Company. In its twenty-sixth year of operation in 1916, the Kirby had a reputation around the Great Lakes for being overloaded much of the time. The root of the problem is that when a ship is loaded with a heavy cargo, like iron ore, the cargo hold is only about two-thirds full when the ship is carrying the maximum safe tonnage. With lighter cargoes, like grain or coal, the hold could be filled right to the hatch coamings and the ship would still not be carrying its maximum safe tonnage.

“The maximum safe tonnage leaves the ship with a reasonable amount of freeboard, the distance between the waterline and the deck of the ship – or the amount of the hull not submerged. An adequate amount of freeboard is needed to ensure that the deck of the ship is not constantly awash and the vessel has some reserve buoyancy.

“A shipping company’s profits depend in large part on how much cargo each of its ships carries in a year. Similarly, for much of the industry’s history, a significant portion of a captain’s income for the year was in the form of a bonus based on the amount of cargo his ship carried during the season, or the number of trips it made. Given those economic incentives, some shipping companies and many captains would load their ships beyond the safe limits, especially in the ore trade. In doing so, ships like the S. R. Kirby often left the ore docks seriously overloaded. With the lakes calm during so much of the shipping season, they generally got away with the overloading.

“On the evening of May 7, 1916, Captain David Girardin pulled the Kirby away from the ore docks at Ashland, Wisconsin, towing the barge George E. Hartnell. Both were heavily loaded with iron ore, loaded beyond the limits that most captains would consider safe. As the two ships headed out past the Apostle Islands, the surface of Lake Superior was like a mirror – flat calm It was a fine spring day, and perfect sailing weather….

“The day after the Kirby left Ashland, an unusual spring storm of hurricane intensity ripped across the lakes. The powerful winds soon piled the surface of the lake into towering waves….

“The subsequent investigation of the sinking by officials of the Steamboat Inspection Service revealed that while the Kirby had been designed to load to a depth of fourteen feet, she had a draft of nineteen feet when she let Ashland. The left the ship with only a scant two feet of freeboard. In 1916, a ‘safe’ load for the freighter would have left her with at least seven feet of freeboard.
Wolff: “1916….on May 8. All of northeastern Minnesota and the whole western lake region was visited by a veritable northwest hurricane. Duluth clocked winds of 76 mph. Destruction was considerable….Caught by the roaring gale off Eagle Harbor was the 294-foot, 2,388 ton composite steamer S.R. Kirby with the 352-foot, 3,265-ton steel barge George E. Hartnell in tow. They had cleared Ashland the night before in good weather. Captain David Girardin of Detroit was in command of the Kirby, one of the best known navigators on the Great Lakes and reputed for his ability to weather the worst of storms….

“Very heavily loaded with iron ore, the Kirby, and her barge were finding rough going. The Kirby’s 1,250 horse-power engine could make little headway in the gigantic waves. About 10 a.m., the 504-foot steel steamer E.H. Utley under Captain C.C. Balfour passed her, downbound. Captain Balfour thought the Kirby was in a bad way. He signaled her, asking if she needed assistance, but Captain Girardin did not reply. Still worried abut the Kirby, Captain Balfour pushed his 1,650-horsepower vessel ahead slowly, keeping the Kirby in sight. About an hour later, when the Utley was two miles to the east, Captain Balfour was horrified to see the Kirby crest a giant wave, snap in two, and disappear. He immediately ordered the Utley put about and sped to the scene, but all the Utley crew could see was reddened water from the iron ore cargo and masses of debris. Realizing that the barge Hartnell was rapidly drifting toward the dreaded reefs off Eagle Harbor, Captain Balfour drove the Utley alongside the barge, put a line aboard and proceeded to tow the Hartnell to the safety of Bete Grise Bay on the sheltered side of Keweenaw Point.

“The captains of two other powerful steel freighters had also witnessed the catastrophe. Captain William Landon of the 532-foot, 1,800-horsepower Harry A. Berwind crisscrossed the sinking are and spotted two figures on a piece of wreckage. By handing from the Berwind’s ladder, her first mate plucked the Kirby’s second mate, Joseph Mudray, from the precarious perch and got him aboard. The second castaway unfortunately slipped off and drowned moments before rescue. The giant 549-foot 2,000-horsepower Joseph Block also challenged the seas for hours, and her crew lifted Fireman Ott S. Lindquist off another piece of debris. These were the only survivors….” “Twenty men went down with her.” (Wolff. Lake Superior Shipwrecks. 1990, pp. 155-157.)

Newspapers

May 9, Evening Chronicle, Marshall, MI: “Duluth, Minn., May 9. – Plunging through Lake Superior in the teeth of a sixty-mile gale…the lake freighter S.R. Kirby sank, with a loss of twenty…when her boilers blew up, according to the second mate of the Kirby, who arrived here today. The mate, who was picked up by the steamer Berwind, up-bound, said the Kirby carried a crew of 22 and that the crew of the barge Hartwell, which she had in tow, had a crew of seven. Besides himself, he said, one other member of the Kirby’s crew was saved, being picked up by the steamer Joseph Black, down-bound.

“When the boilers exploded the Hartwell was cut loose….The mate claimed to know definitely that the Hartwell’s crew of seven, with Captain Oliver Pitts and Engineer Sylvester Smith of the Hartwell, took to a lifeboat which was swamped and that the nine were lost. The steamer Utley, he claimed, later picked up the abandoned Hartwell. The Kirby and Hartwell were both from Ashland, Wis., where the Kirby had been loaded with ore.”

“Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., May 9. – Twenty members of the crew of the steamer S.R. Kirby are believed to have perished in the sinking of that vessel last night after a desperate twelve-hour fight against a sixty-mile gale sweeping Lake Superior. The Kirby went to the bottom off Eagle Harbor. Details of the disaster were brought to the Soo today by the steamer Joseph Block. The Block had succeeded in rescuing one member of the Kirby’s crew. Seven members of the crew of the bard Hartwell, which was in tow of the Kirby, are believed safe.” (Evening Chronicle, Marshall, MI. “S.R. Kirby Sank in Superior.” May 9, 1916.)

May 12, Buffalo Daily Courier in Maritime History of the Great Lakes: “Houghton, May 12. – The Eagle Harbor coast guard yesterday rescued from a floating piece of wreckage from the lost steamer Kirby, the vessel’s mascot, Tige, a bulldog owned by Capt. Girardin. As soon as the dog reached shore it jumped from the surfboat and took to the woods. The guard is searching for the animal, and will send him to Capt. Girardin’s widow at Detroit.

“A body found yesterday has been identified positively as that of E.M. Douglass, mate of the Kirby, whose home was in Detroit. It will be sent there for interment.” (Buffalo Daily Courier
May 13, 1916; cited by: Maritime History of the Great Lakes. “Kirby, S.R., (St. S.), 1916, Official No. U116325.”)

May 13 newspaper article in Maritime History of the Great Lakes: “Nineteen lives were lost when the freighter S. R. Kirby ran onto the rocks in Keweenaw Bay, Lake Superior, Monday, and was smashed to pieces. The vessel left Ashland Sunday and had smooth sailing until Monday noon when it ran into a severe storm. Only two were rescued; Joseph B. Murdin, second mate, of Chicago and Otto Lindquist, fireman, of Pequaming, Mich. The steamer was captained by David Girardin, of Detroit. Five of the crew were from Marine City.” (Unnamed Newspaper article dated May 13, 1916 cited by Maritime History of the Great Lakes. “Kirby, S.R., (St. S.), 1916, Official No. U116325.”)

May 14, Buffalo Daily Courier, in Maritime History of the Great Lakes: “Tells of Escape”
“Milwaukee, May 14. – James True, second engineer on the ill-fated Kirby, who is visiting his brother, told of his escape.

“We were well out in the lake and heading for the Soo, when suddenly and without warning the boat crumpled up, broke in two and went down…the boilers exploded after the vessel broke up.

“When the boat began to go to pieces the whistles were blown. Capt. Girardin, who was in his quarters, raced to the bridge and stuck to his post until he saw it was necessary to desert. As the boat was going down, the members of the crew dashed about seeking pieces of timber, life buoys and rafts, and then jumped. The captain dived over the railing, and I saw Bingo, an English bull terrier, follow him. The last I saw of him the dog was swimming along close to the captain’s side.

“The captain, first mate, Otto Lindquist, fireman of Pequaming, and Cy. Smith, oiler of Marine City, had a raft, and I was on a life buoy. The captain was clinging to the raft, and finally let go. The steamer Berwind picked up Joseph Mudra. The steamer Block rescued Lingquist and Smith, and I got onto the barge Hartnell, which the Utley towed behind Keweenaw Point.”

“This is True’s second escape in less than a year, as he was a member of the crew of the American steamer Leelanaw sunk off the coast of Scotland by a German submarine.” (Buffalo Daily Courier. “Tells of Escape,” May 15, 1916; cited by: Maritime History of the Great Lakes. “Kirby, S.R., (St. S.), 1916, Official No. U116325.”)

Sources

Berman, Bruce D. Encyclopedia of American Shipwrecks. Boston: Mariners Press Inc., 1972.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle Almanac 1917. “General Chronology of 1916.” 1917, p. 549. Google digitized: http://books.google.com/books?id=YhMXAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Evening Chronicle, Marshall, MI. “S.R. Kirby Sank in Superior.” May 9, 1916, p.1. At: http://www.newspaperarchive.com/PdfViewerTags.aspx?img=102699024&firstvisit=true&src=search&currentResult=0

Institute for Great Lakes Research, Central Michigan University. “S.E. Kirby, Built May 24, 1890, Bulk Propeller.”

Maritime History of the Great Lakes. “Kirby, S.R., (St. S.), 1916, Official No. U116325.” Accessed 9-7-2009: http://www.hhpl.on.ca/GreatLakes/wrecks/Details.asp?ID=16460&n=10156

Nash, Jay Robert. Darkest Hours – A Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters from Ancient Times to the Present. New York: Pocket Books, Wallaby, 1977, 792 pages.

Sault St. Marie (Mich.) Evening News. “Believe Kirby Loaded Greatly Over Capacity.” 5-10-1906, p. 1; in Thompson, p. 276.

Supervising Inspector General, 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, 1916. Washington, DC: GPO, 1917. Accessed 12-4-2020 at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015073345210&view=1up&seq=7&q1=kirby%201916

Swayze, David D. Shipwreck! A Comprehensive Directory of Over 3,700 Shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. Boyne City, MI: Harbor House Publications, Inc., 1992.

Thompson, Mark L. Graveyard of the Lakes. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2004.

Wolff, Julius F., Jr. Lake Superior Shipwrecks: Complete Reference to Maritime Accidents and Disasters. Duluth, MN: Lake Superior Port Cities, Inc., 1990.