In November of 1913, a storm unlike any other descended on the Great Lakes.
And despite not forming over the world’s massive oceans,
it would go on to rival the strength of a hurricane with ferocious winds,
blinding snow, and towering 35-foot, or 11-meter waves.
I’m sure you can imagine what it might be like to be a ship in those conditions.
This is the story of the White Hurricane, and as always, viewer discretion is advised.
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For many people, when they think of lakes, they might think of calm waters,
gentle waves, and shorelines in view in every direction.
But for people who live in and around North America’s Great Lakes, the perception is different.
People who’ve been out on the water in a storm on one of them now that they are much, much different.
The Great Lakes that border parts of the United States and Canada are the largest group of freshwater lakes
in the planet, with a total area of 94,000 square miles, or 244,000 square kilometers.
And in total, they contain an astounding 21% of the entire world’s freshwater by volume.
And for context, if you were to spread that amount of water across the entire continent of North America,
it would be 5 feet deep all around.
The lakes that make up what are known as the Great Lakes are Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron,
Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario.
And due to their incredible size, the five Great Lakes actually behave more like seas or even small oceans.
Horizons are often distant, and the waters can be more than just a little bit choppy.
Rolling waves also aren’t uncommon, and neither are strong winds and currents;
and they can reach great depths, too.
The deepest part of the Great Lakes can be found on Lake Superior, with a depth of 1,332 feet, or 406 meters.
And another unique aspect about the Great Lakes is that due to their size, similar to the oceans,
they take longer to cool in the winter and warm in the summer.
So in fact, while the areas around the shorelines do turn to ice during the winter,
the middle sections of each lake usually don’t freeze over fully.
This, in addition to their total area, helps create their own weather ecosystem,
which usually manifests in the form of what’s called the lake-effect snow.
This can occur anytime between late fall and early spring and is the result of westerly winds
picking up the warmer air and moisture from the lake’s surface.
As this warmer, wetter air meets the colder, drier air on the coast,
moisture concentrates to produce what can sometimes be heavy snowfall.
And while meteorologists can spot conditions that are primed for lake-effect snow,
it can be difficult to accurately determine how long lake-effect snow will last and how much of it will fall.
As you might imagine, this is especially important for cargo freighters, as the Great Lakes
have long been significant waters for the shipping industry.
All the lakes are interconnected by various natural waterways, meaning a port as far west of Duluth, Minnesota
has access all the way to the Saint Lawrence River on the eastern half of New York State.
And while we do have significantly better technology and systems in place to provide a clearer picture
of upcoming weather for everyone, that just wasn’t the case more than a hundred years ago.
In 1913, the Weather Bureau, which today is known as the National Weather Service,
was already in operation, but their methods were fairly primitive compared to what we might see on news channels today.
And a particular problem with the Great Lakes is that they can often be so unpredictable,
that by the time observations were made and readings were taken,
the hand-drawn weather maps meant for ship captains could easily be completely out-of-date by the time they were distributed.
And this was even the case for the signal stations that utilized a system of flags, pennants, and lanterns
to update changing conditions in every Great Lakes harbor.
Typically, using different combinations of the three signals, harbors would indicate to ship captains
what the next 24 hours would be like, including wind speed, wind direction, and potential precipitation.
This information would then help them chart a proper course or make appropriate plans to avoid
the worst conditions on the Great Lakes.
Tragically, though, there were no weather models or signal systems at the time that were good enough
to keep up with the magnitude of what would come in November of 1913.
November in particular can be an interesting month for the Great Lakes.
This is usually when the seasons really start to change for the northern midwest and northeast
of the United States and relative parts of Canada.
And when the 470-foot steamer known as L.C. Waldo left port in Minnesota on November 7th,
it did so in weather that was calm and temperatures that were warm for that time of the year.
The ship was bound for Ohio with a crew of 22, including the captain’s wife and her mother,
and a ship dog, along with a full load of iron ore.
Now, because conditions can start to become more temperamental in November,
cargo companies usually rush to fulfill as many orders as possible before the winter season sets in
and the shipping season closes until springtime.
However, as the Waldo set out for what should have been a routine trip through Lake Superior into Lake Huron
and finishing in Lake Erie, no one had any idea what kind of trouble was already brewing.
Cold dry air from Canada was moving south, and warm moist air was heading north from the Gulf of Mexico.
When they clashed, they created a growing weather system that quickly became massive.
Then as the cold air moved into the Great Lakes, it started to pick up moisture from the waters below,
which again, was warmer than the air.
This caused the storm to start to spin the same way a hurricane would.
And unfortunately, when the storm started to gather strength on November 6th,
the Weather Bureau had only predicted moderate to brisk winds for the 7th with some occasional rain.
This initially mild forecast wasn’t nearly enough to deter Captain John W. Duddleson of the Waldo
from delivering his supply of iron ore to Ohio.
And simultaneously, many other ship captains felt the same way about the report
and went about the Great Lakes’ shipping lanes as normal.
However, by just 10 AM on the morning of November 7th,
it appeared to the 112 Weather Bureau signal stations around the Great Lakes,
that conditions were deteriorating fast.
The weather system that moved into the western region of Lake Superior, was heading quickly toward Lake Michigan
and picking up a lot of steam along the way.
The signal stations and ports then hoisted a square red flag with a black center, as well as a red pennant.
This indicated to captains that storm winds would be blowing from the southwest at 55 miles, or 89 kilometers an hour.
The western Great Lakes region then started to get hit by these winds,
and by nightfall, Lake Superior signal stations were reporting sustained winds of 60 miles, or 97 kilometers an hour,
and gusts up to 80 miles, or 130 kilometers an hour.
To put that into perspective, winds that are characterized as hurricane-force are those in excess of
74 miles, or 119 kilometers an hour.
That means that the storm was already reaching hurricane-force winds.
And to put this into perspective further, the largest waves on the Great Lakes are thought to reach
as much as 35 feet, or 10 meters high.
That’s almost the full height of the Waldo.
In waves that big, as a ship moves down into the valley between two waves,
it’s as if there are walls of water encasing the ship in all directions.
The Waldo, which was well into Lake Superior, obviously couldn’t help but notice the winds picking up
as the storm system caught up to the ship.
The lake’s waters had started to turn to violent whitecaps, and then shortly after that, the precipitation started.
A combination of heavy snow and icy rain fell, quickly reducing visibility for John and his crew.
And further complicating sailing conditions were the sustained winds of 60 miles an hour
that created these huge waves that broke against the bow.
Water was also constantly streaming across the deck, and the rapidly falling temperatures
took over to begin turning it into ice.
So before long, the Waldo was nearly encased in it, adding tons of weight to the ship
as it rocked violently in the turbulent lake.
By 9 o’clock, things had gotten so bad that John was steering the ship based on compass readings alone.
For the next three hours, John and the crew did their best to just keep the ship upright and on its proper heading.
When midnight rolled around, the captain took a hard look at the map to see if he could identify
some place to take shelter from the storm.
And not too far ahead was Manitou Island, about midway across Lake Superior,
and his hope was that that area could provide the ship with at least some safety.
But then, after setting the Waldo in the direction of the island, a massive rogue wave
smashed into the side of the ship with so much force that it nearly destroyed the pilot house.
The destruction was so significant that it knocked out all the navigational equipment and left those inside
exposed to the bitter elements outside.
Without a compass now, John and those aboard were in trouble, but he knew there was a spare inside one of the ship’s lifeboats.
Getting it, however, would be treacherous because the deck was nothing but a complete sheet of ice at that point.
Still, if there was any hope of getting somewhere safely, he needed that compass,
so one of the crew was sent down to get it.
The man then skated and stumbled along the deck as the Waldo rocked violently,
but thankfully, he would manage to make it to the lifeboat and find the compass
before carefully making his way back to what remained of the pilot house.
John then continued to guide the ship toward Manitou Island, but there was much more trouble that lay just ahead.
Just west of the island was an islet which was barely more than a rock sticking out of the lake known as Gull Rock.
You can picture this as sort of the sharp peak of an underwater mountain.
And it was something that appeared on John’s map, but the only way to really avoid it was to spot it.
But obviously, with the relentless snow, along with the dark of night and the violence of the lake,
the lookouts didn’t stand a chance of seeing it.
Then, further complicating the issues the crew already had to confront, the ship’s rudder suddenly failed,
leaving the Waldo unsteerable and helpless.
So, just as the salvation of Manitou Island would be found at any moment,
the Waldo slammed into Gull Rock in the early hours of November 8th.
As the 8th got underway, the Weather Bureau released its morning report and upgraded the storm system to severe.
Those on the lake, however, were already well aware of this.
The storm had grown so large by then that it covered the entire basin of Lake Superior.
And as it moved east over Lake Michigan, winds there reached gale-force, which is a classification
of sustained winds just shy of 40 miles, or 63 kilometers an hour.
Around all the signal stations, gale wind flags were flown, yet many of the ship captains just sailed right by them,
believing their vessels could withstand gale-force conditions.
Those already on the lake, on the other hand, would have told a much different story.
Back aboard the Waldo, things were in complete chaos after the collision with Gull Rock,
although this development would present an opportunity to John.
As he considered what to do next and led the circumstances, he came up with an idea.
If he continued to run the engines, it might be enough to keep the ship aground on Gull Rock.
In his mind, the worst-case scenario would be that the heavy waves would toss the Waldo back
into the middle of the lake where it could receive even more damage.
So, deciding that this was the best course of action, John sent the order to the engine room.
Moments later, as hoped, this resulted in the bow becoming firmly wedged on Gull Rock,
but the force of the engines was placing immense pressure on the already damaged steel hull.
As this continued, the hull weakened and began to shred.
And as it did, a large crevasse formed horizontally on the deck, almost to the ship’s midway point.
With the Waldo taking on water, most captains might have already abandoned the ship, but John saw another opportunity.
If he could make the ship heavy enough, it might also prevent it from rebounding off the rock and back into the lake,
so he ordered that the lower compartments be purposely flooded.
Almost immediately once again, this actually seemed to work, and the Waldo seemed firmly planted in place.
With that settled, his priority became getting everyone to a safe area, and at that moment,
the best spot to keep everyone was an interior room just beneath the first deck, near the bow of the ship.
Upon getting these orders, many of the crew rushed to that room, and several of them attempted to guide
the two women aboard there, but they initially refused to leave the stern.
This was because, again, getting to the room would mean traversing the icy deck and braving the storm
for hundreds of feet, in addition to navigating over the widening crack that was threatening to split the Waldo in two.
The crewmen then agreed to carry the two women the entire way, and while it was a harrowing few minutes to get them there,
they reached the relative safety of the room unscathed.
And in almost perfect timing, almost as soon as those aboard gathered in the room,
the crack in the ship gave way, and the stern sheared off and fell into the lank and sank,
leaving the Waldo powerless.
Fortunately, the bow was already stuck on Gull Rock, but this meant that there was no power
and thus, no heat to keep the crew warm.
This also meant that all of the passengers of the Waldo were quite literally stuck in a small room
in the middle of Lake Superior, in the middle of the worst storm the lake had ever seen.
As the crew began to take stock of their situation, one of the ship’s engineers
believed he could fashion a stove out of some of the items on board.
So gathering several of the crewmen, they made their way to the captain’s quarters
where they set about detaching the bathtub from the ship.
Once it was freed, they carried it back to the room while others gathered up fire buckets
and started to kick the bottoms out of them.
Once the tub was in the room, they flipped it over, and using the buckets,
began to build a stovepipe leading out one of the portholes.
Then, once everything was all finished and set up, they began a fire and began burning wood
from the ship which started to make a bit of difference in the cold room.
Throughout the rest of the day afterward, crewmen would tear apart parts of the ship for firewood
while others tried to move around in the room to keep warm.
While the Waldo crew were just trying to survive conditions on Lake Superior,
Just to the southeast, Lake Huron was about to start catching the first bands of what would become known as the White Hurricane.
And many captains who left port on the morning of November 8th under the gale-force warning flags,
were very much regretting this decision by the night of November 9th.
During the early part of the day, conditions were what would be considered normal for a November gale,
And there were even signs that the storm was lifting as barometric pressures at some of the signal stations, started to rise.
This, however, would be a completely false hope.
The Weather Bureau issued reports to ship captains twice per day— once in the morning and once in the evening.
Between then, captains were on their own in determining what the weather might do, based on their observations alone.
The first report, on November 9th, came out at around 8 AM, and there was nothing concerning enough on it
to prevent more ship captains from entering the Great Lakes.
What the Weather Bureau didn’t know was that a second low-pressure system
had formed over the Carolinas and was moving fast toward the northwest after passing over Washington, D.C.
And ahead of this storm were strong winds that fed the system already wreaking havoc on the Great Lakes;
and the longer this occurred, the higher the winds blew.
And before long they also reached hurricane-force.
Already by 2 PM that afternoon, Buffalo, New York was reporting 80-mile, or 130-kilometer per hour winds
on Lake Erie, as the new low-pressure system continued rotating to the northwest.
As the two storms grew closer and closer, the winds only grew stronger,
and by late afternoon, ships on Lake Huron were racing to find shelter before things got any worse.
Unfortunately, though, many of them wouldn’t escape the massive waves that were forming.
At 8 PM, the Weather Bureau issued its second weather report of the day,
but it was already far too late to prevent a disaster.
The two storms were continuing on their collision course with hurricane-force winds that constantly changed directions
and swirling snow that blinded captains from anything just beyond their windshields.
When the report finally came through, the four western lakes— Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie—
were sitting underneath a weather system that had never been seen before.
By then, winds at Harbor Beach, Michigan, on the coast of Lake Huron, were gusting up to 90 miles, or 140 kilometers an hour.
On the scale used for actual hurricanes, the White Hurricane would have been considered a strong category 1.
And so, over just a 6-hour period on the night of November 9th,
8 ships would capsize or sink, and 187 lives would be lost.
At the same time that the White Hurricane was moving eastward that night, conditions weren’t any better at Gull Rock,
as the survivors of the Waldo tried to make it through the storm.
With food and water stored in a part of the ship that was now inaccessible,
things could quickly become dire if the ordeal was prolonged, and they didn’t even know if anyone on land
was aware of their position or that they had even wrecked.
Luckily, as it turned out, those on land did know about the Waldo situation,
but it’s unclear if this was the result of a passing ship or locals on land spotting it.
Either way, rescue stations nearby received reports about the Waldo, and despite the horrendous weather conditions,
began to mobilize in an attempt to save those on board before it was too late.
At the nearby Eagle Harbor, the large boat that would have handled the weather much better was being repaired,
so they were forced to use their 26-foot motorized vessel.
Just going out in the storm at all, regardless of boat size, was like a death mission,
but the Great Lakes rescue stations had a motto they lived by, which was:
“You have to go out, but you don’t have to come back.”
Despite this courageous sentiment, though, as the small motorboat left Eagle Harbor,
one local even said that someone should alert Washington because the entire rescue team wasn’t going to survive this.
But even still, they pushed into Lake Superior and were tossed around by the choppy waters.
Things weren’t progressing well at all, and after about 8 miles, or 13 kilometers from Eagle Harbor,
they turned back around when the small motor became completely encrusted in ice.
When they arrived back at the station, there was so much ice over the boat that some of the rescuers
froze to their seats and had to be chopped free with an axe.
Incredibly, though, once they were all unstuck, they quickly readied the larger boat,
hoping it was fixed enough to survive a successful rescue mission.
At another harbor known as Portage, which was further away from the wreck site, the rescue team didn’t fare much better.
Heading directly into the ferocious winds, they were quickly turned back, but instead of returning to the station,
they managed to find an inland waterway that would take them to the south side of the peninsula,
where Gull Rock was close to.
By doing this, they could use the northerly winds in hopes of reaching the disabled Waldo.
By the time November 9th turned into the 10th, the two massive, powerful storms had become one.
That morning, it began moving over London, Ontario, and the trailing bands were full of lake-effect snow that was relentless.
Further south, in Cleveland, Ohio, on the banks of Lake Erie, 17 inches, or 43 centimeters of snow fell that day,
and winds caused snowdrifts topping out at 6 feet, or almost 2 meters tall.
And even on land, many people got stranded.
Many streetcar operators were completely stuck in their vehicles for the next two nights
as lake-effect snow continued to bury the city.
However, finally, on November 11th, the storm started to lose steam as it moved away
from the Great Lakes that were feeding its intensity.
It was on this day that rescue crews from Eagle Harbor and Portage finally reached the wreck of the Waldo.
Despite being located only about 30 miles from the wreck site, the Portage crew
traveled more than 80 miles to reach it using their inland route.
And despite the storm out of the area, the waves are still fairly large, making it difficult
to tie off any of the boats to the wreck.
On one attempt, the Portage boat even scraped against Gull Rock, and the crew was worried they were taking on water.
The Eagle Harbor team, however, finally maneuvered their large boat against the hull of the Waldo.
When the two ships were tied together, one of the rescuers took off his boots and prepared to board the ship,
thinking his wool socks would give him better traction.
Because from the outside, what remained of the Waldo looked like something out of the Ice Age.
The entire bow of the ship was completely encased in frozen lake water.
Once he was aboard the ship, other rescuers followed behind him as they all shouted,
hoping anyone who survived the wreck might hear them and call back.
Meanwhile, inside the little room, the shouts were heard, and spirits immediately lifted
among the weakened, hungry, and dehydrated survivors.
Those inside the room then began to call back, and rescuers quickly traced down the source of the shouts.
However, when they got to the room, there was a new problem.
The ice had become so thick and all-encompassing that it even encased the room door, both inside and outside.
So next, while rescuers began to hack away at the ice with axes, one of the survivors did the same inside the room.
It took some time, but finally, enough of the ice that welded the door shut was chipped away from the door to be pushed open.
One by one afterward, the rescuers carefully guided those who’d been trapped onto the two rescue ships.
And incredibly, all 24 people and the ship’s dock would survive the ordeal.
In the end, John’s decision to run the engines at full bore to wedge the Waldo onto Gull Rock,
proved to be the difference between life and death.
In fact, it was so stuck on Gull Rock that it remained there until the following spring.
The destruction caused by White Hurricane started to come into view as the days passed, and it was immense.
At least 19 ships were destroyed in the storm and another 19 were stranded.
And among those lost to the storm, 12 sank, and many of those were the newest and largest sail
on the Great Lakes at the time.
But maybe more devastating than that was the loss of life.
On both land and the lakes, 250 people were killed, and 75% of the total death toll
was during the 6-hour period on the night of November 9th.
In total, the final cost of the damage came in at around $4.8 million.
Adjusted for inflation, that’s the equivalent of $149 million today.
In 2013, for the 100-year anniversary of the storm, meteorologists and scientists got together
to see if they could produce a simulation to really put into perspective how powerful the White Hurricane was.
They then poured over historical Weather Bureau documents and all the data that was still available to them,
and their findings were unthinkable.
The simulation produced wind gusts greater than 80 miles, or 129 kilometers per hour,
and waves of 36 feet, or 11 meters on Lake Huron.
What was truly astounding, however, was the length of time the lakes were subjected to these conditions.
Lake Superior endured 20 hours of hurricane-like conditions;
Lake Erie experienced 16; Michigan 13; and Huron 10.
And the White Hurricane still stands today as the most destructive and deadliest natural disaster in Great Lakes history.
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