Steamship America
The America, docked at Tofte, Minnesota, from a painting in Howard Sivertson’s book, Schooners, Skiffs and Steamships, Stories Along Lake Superior’s Water Trails.
“Come over here! Can you see it?”
Excited murmurs rippled across the deck as we nosed up to the diving buoy. Captain Bennie Oberg had seen the wreck hundreds of times, yet he was patient with us as we jostled to get a better look.
The bow of the SS America rests a mere 4 feet below the surface, ghostly grey but visible through clear green water.
This was our television crew’s first visit to Isle Royale and the beginning of a journey. We came to find stories and to document tangible evidence of the steamer’s legacy for a special broadcast on Duluth’s PBS station, WDSE-WRPT.
In the early part of the 20th century, the America was an elegant, 182-foot package freighter that served fishing families, businessmen and tourists. It traversed the waters from Duluth to Grand Marais, up to Port Arthur-Fort William (today’s Thunder Bay), around Isle Royale and back down the shore three times a week. Its crew of 30 delivered news from the outside world, mail and vital supplies, picking up the fishermen’s catches for mainland use.
All of that came to an abrupt halt June 7, 1928, when the steamer ran aground at Isle Royale, eventually sinking. Despite having passengers on board, the only casualties were a dog tied to the stern, some cargo and the ship itself.
Over time, the America and its story have become a darling in these parts. Our job is to dive into the myths and discover the true history. Was the sinking really suspicious? Why did attempts to salvage the boat fail? Why, after nearly 90 years under water, is it so fondly remembered?
We expected to hear about heroic maritime adventures, iconic fishing families, divers and daring entrepreneurs. We found all that and more, a sampling of which I’d like to share here with you. Even under water, the story of the America continues to this day.
Steamship America
On our way to the island, artist Howard Sivertson stood on deck of Voyageur II with us, swaying comfortably with the motion of the waves. He grew up on the island in a commercial fishing family and has heard stories about the America all his life. He calls it a lifeline – the Isle Royale connection. “It was a fast ship and a fun ship to be on. It being the connection to Duluth and civilization, that was pretty important.”
The America stopped at the larger docks to deliver supplies and collect the fishermen’s catches. Where it was too shallow to dock, 100-pound kegs of fish were transported to the ship by skiff at all hours of the day and night and in all sorts of weather.
“It was really hairy,” Howard recalls stories he heard.
By the time we reached Tobin’s Harbor, Howard had told us about Isle Royale’s copper mining past, the cove where a British schooner was hidden during the War of 1812, and the location of several resorts once scattered around the island.
Voyageur II is a modern-day match to the America. With its jovial crew, it travels clockwise around the island with mail, freight and passengers, May to October.
When we entered Tobin’s Harbor, John Snell stood on the dock with an outstretched hand – an automatic gesture of hospitality in keeping with island tradition. He caught the line, tied it off and turned to grab the mail.
At the dock, a quaint red post office holds mailboxes hand-lettered with names of island families who fished or summered in the area – just the kind of visual we were looking for, expressing a sense of the remote yet lively communities that the America served. The dock also once welcomed stylish tourists to Tobin Harbor Resort and other island lodges.
Ellie Connolly’s grandfather built a cabin nearby in 1914. A few years earlier, he had traveled 600 miles by train, 150 by boat and then had fallen in love with the island. Charles Parker Connolly, a Unitarian minister in Levenworth, Kansas, valued spiritual renewal and good fishing. His wife, Ellen, and mother in law, Mary, were less enthralled the with island’s remoteness.
Ellie says there was something about the America coming around the corner that made the ladies feel less isolated and alone.
“Boat day was huge because people were coming and going. There were regular visitors that people looked forward to seeing … and, of course, the mail, and then the supplies. You’d go down there and meet everybody and say, ‘OK, come over for cards on Wednesday.’”
A close-knit group of summer residents still gathers for picnics and bonfires today. That’s where we encountered casual speculation about why the America sank. Was an insurance claim involved?
Jim Marshall Collection
Steamship America
A historic photo of the America afloat, packed with passengers on its North Shore route.
Many around the fire had heard the claim and pointed to the circumstances. Competition from the automobile after the highway extended up the shore meant fewer vacationers and fishermen on the mainland relied on the water transportation provided by America.
“There was strong suspicion that it was an insurance sinking,” explains Grant Merritt, who has long family ties to the island. “That’s a question we’ll never be able to answer.”
The insurance claim theory doesn’t sit well with Lake historians like Thom Holden, retired director of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lake Superior Maritime Visitors Center in Duluth. “It was an accident that happened, just plainly an accident.”
Jim Marshall Collection
Steamship America
Just after it wrecked on Isle Royale in 1928.
Still, the wreck did occur after workers carved Highway 61 out of Minnesota’s wild North Shore, usurping the Lake as the only supply route. Fast, regular and reliable, America had reigned as the transportation queen for two decades, but its dominance was ending.
What did happen then, in the early hours of Thursday, June 7, 1928? The America was steaming through the North Gap under command of Mate John Wick, leaving Isle Royale’s Washington Harbor, when it hit a submerged reef and started taking on water. When the bilge pumps failed to keep up, Captain Ed Smith made the call to beach her.
The vessel ran hard aground on a rocky shoal and water poured in. Soon those on board were forced to lower the lifeboats and abandon ship. The ship came to rest with its bow, wheelhouse and forward deck out of the water. The stern settled to a depth of 85 feet.
Not far from the wreck site, we met brothers Tom and Bill Johns, descendants of the man who built the first summer resort on the island in 1892. The family is working with the National Park Service to restore the Johns Hotel and maintain the national landmark.
Their father and grandparents relied on the America to get to the island and had disembarked from the steamer hours before it sank. They got off at a nearby dock at 2 in the morning and went home. By 4 a.m., they were alerted that the America was sinking.
“Sure enough, it was sinking over there and the lifeboats were in the water and everything.” As Bill relates the story, Captain Smith was reluctant to leave his vessel, telling his would-be rescuers, ‘I’m going down with the ship.’ It kept sinking until Smith was standing with water up to his feet, and it then stopped. The captain eventually stepped off the boat and was transported to safety.
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Shipwrecks of Isle Royale National Park
Steamship America
An old schematic of the wreck done by J.L. Livingston for the National Park Service.
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Jim Marshall Collection
Steamship America
Mike Pinkstaff, left, with another diver during the attempted salvage of the America in 1965.
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Jim Marshall Collection
Steamship America
The stern of the America was completely under water very quickly after it was beached.
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Steamship America
The America, a frequent subject for artist Howard Sivertson, as depicted in his Tales of the Old North Shore, Paintings and Companion Stories.
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Steve Ash
Steamship America
The author watches Jay Hanson fly a drone from the Wenonah for aerial shots.
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Steve Ash
Steamship America
Jutting out at Hovland, Minnesota, America’s old dock remains a favorite vantage point. Built in 1902, fishermen once awaited the ship’s arrival here.
Our contacts at Isle Royale reminded us that the America is now part myth, part fact, obscured just below the waterline of living memory. Each person we encountered has had the story handed down to them.
The America made regular, reliable stops in treacherous waters, piloted by men who knew the Lake intimately and navigated without the convenience of radio or modern radar. Safely transferring goods to shore took ingenuity. Virginia Reiner at the North Shore Commercial Fishing Museum in Tofte tells her favorite story.
In the early 1900s, John and Andrew Tofte, identical twins, rowed their fishing skiffs out to meet the America in rolling seas. The daring plan was to transfer a pregnant cow onto a platform set between their boats and row her carefully to shore. Their success impresses to this day. “Pretty good, creative engineering I’d say!” exclaims Virginia.
Creative engineering is a hallmark of all of those connected to the America. Cindy Hayden points to the example of her dad, Jim Marshall, who owned this very publication.
As a young entrepreneur and eager diver, Jim acquired salvage rights to the vessel 30 years after it sank. He led an audacious, ultimately doomed, effort to raise the boat to the surface in the mid-1960s.
Courtesy Steamship America
Steamship America
Park Service rangers survey the America above and below the Lake.
Jim’s comprehensive archives offer a fine example of his curiosity and attention to detail. His research reveals a passion for problem solving, for history and for the America.
“It was a gutsy move. But that was my dad,” Cindy says of Jim, who died in 2006. “I think he became hooked on the history of it and the value it had for the entire region.”
The wreck of the America was accessible and relatively shallow. It fast became a favorite attraction for Lake Superior divers, engendering so much affection that as time and the forces of nature took their toll, volunteer divers created the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society and invested hundreds of hours developing ingenious ways to stabilize and preserve what they could.
The society launched repeated diving expeditions. Members devised strategies to reinforce walls and tie the structure together in a race against time.
“We were trying to prove that this was viable,” explains Ken Merryman of the GLSPS. “From what we did, there’s at least a 10-year span where people got to explore the America” as a more complete experience.
Today, it’s painful to see the wreck deteriorate for divers who love it. “It’s hard for me to dive the America today,” Ken says. “A lot of the areas that we loved are gone, or broken off. Mother Nature always wins.”
Nature does run its course. In 2010 America lost more of its roof and skylights during a big October storm. The walls inside continue to shift and separate from the hull. In a few decades, physical signs of the America will truly be history.
Its less tangible self will still be shared in stories, documentaries, paintings and books. The ship is a window on the culture of the North Shore. It connects a legacy of hospitality and shoreside tourist resorts with fish houses from a century of commercial fishing and the docks that supported settlement of Minnesota’s north coast. That rich history is unsinkable.
Karen Sunderman produces “The PlayList” for WDSE-WRPT and plans on hiking the length of Isle Royale in 2016.