Oh, hi.
This is Chelsea Handler from the Dear Chelsea Podcast. This episode is brought to you by O-Pill, the first over-the-counter daily birth control pill available in the US. I love shedding light on what's important for women's healthcare. And one thing that makes healthcare easier is making birth control more convenient to access. Well, let me introduce O-Pill. O-Pill is a daily birth control pill that is FDA approved, full prescription strength and estrogen free. Plus, there's no prescription needed. Finally, the days of needing a prescription for birth control are over, a sentence I very much enjoy saying. This is our moment to take control of our health and reproductive journeys because O-Pill is birth control in your control. O-Pill is available online and at most major retailers. Use code O-P-I-L-L-O-T-C, O-P-I-L-L-O-T-C for 25% off your first month of O-Pill at opill.com.
Welcome to the world of Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, the perfect gift for the music lover in your life. And now they're $50 off until December 29th. They even made Oprah's Favorite Things Gift Guide for 2024. Picture this, a walk on a sunny winter day. You can hear the satisfying crunch of snow beneath your feet and your favorite holiday song playing.
That's the magic we're talking about. Hear life and music at the same time. Act fast to shop Bose's holiday deals at bows.com slash iHeart. The holidays are here at the Home Depot, so let's get to decorating. Find your perfect tree and our huge assortment of shapes, sizes, and styles. Like the easy to assemble Jackson Noble Fir with pre-lit branches perfect for styling with all your favorite ornaments. Or the flock Starry Light Fraser Fir with over 1900 pre-lit memory wire branches that keep their shape so it's ready right out of the box. Find the perfect tree now at the Home Depot and enjoy free delivery on most holiday decor.
Subject to availability, see homedepot.com slash delivery for details. How do we go about supporting government leaders when we may not want to vote for or support any of them? Do babies who die in the womb go to heaven? Are there only certain reasons in the Bible that are valid for divorce? Is IVF an option for Christian couples? I'm Pastor Mike Novotny and these are just some of the topics I tackle in my new podcast, Taboo Questions with Pastor Mike Novotny. I answer questions for people just like you on essential topics that are not often discussed in church.
To listen, just search Taboo Questions with Pastor Mike. This is our American Stories. In 1913, the 16th Amendment was passed and Woodrow Wilson became president. But tragedy also struck the Great Lakes.
Here's our own Monty Montgomery with more on that event. In 1679, the Great Lakes were changed forever for the first time as LaSalle's Griffin departed from port, becoming the first ship to ever sail on the Great Lakes. And in 1841, the lakes were yet again changed when the Vandalia set sail, the first propeller driven ship to do so. An industry took off and by 1913, the Great Lakes had become a major and still developing transportation hub.
Here's Rick Mixter of Lake Fury with more on that. In 1913, we're talking about a mix of different types of transportation on the lakes. The sail was still somewhat viable. Most of those old sailing vessels, the schooners, had been turned into barges and were being towed by the more efficient steamers that didn't have to wait for the winds to be correct. But there were no highways at that time, so everything had to be moved, especially these amazing commodities we have on the Great Lakes. Coal, iron ore, grain, all of this stuff was moved in huge amounts, bulk amounts on these freighters and barges. You know, there were literally thousands of ships on the Great Lakes, hundreds that were regularly being used, many that were also laid up.
It would go by the flow of how much iron ore needed to be moved or later in the season as you got the grain cargos coming in, the coal that had to be stocked up for the wintertime. So you'd see more ships come out and many of those ships weren't in perfect condition. They were whatever could float, they could get these cargos in before the lakes froze up and then all that commerce stopped.
There weren't a lot of safety regulations. I mean, the ultimate safety is in the captain himself. He makes the call that will bring his ship and his crew in.
Every one of the captains on the Great Lakes are the most experienced meteorologist. I would replace anyone on television with a ship captain because their lives literally depend on their ability to be able to read the storm. But there were bonuses and incentives that sometimes helped to fight against that common sense that put many of these ships on the bottom.
And on November 6, 1913, those incentives were working against the better judgment of many captains trying to get one last run in before the end of the season. For a large storm was brewing on the Great Lakes, a storm that would go down in history as the big blow was simply the 1913 storm. The 1913 storm is one of the few storms where we had a dozen ships lost with all hands.
Everybody vanished. We don't see that very often on hurricanes, much less on the Great Lakes. And we also had storms and especially snow that paralyzed many of the largest cities on the Great Lakes, including Cleveland. So now, couple that with the fact that today we're still missing three of those wrecks.
We don't know where they're at. That leads into an amazing story that I think it still is interesting to tell today. The 1913 storm really started off of Lake Michigan, and as it swept up, it devastated two wrecks that were there. The Louisiana, which was actually a vessel that made it into the safety of Washington Bay on Washington Island, and it met up with the Halsted that had already been pushed ashore. And the crew would have been fine except some kind of a lantern or something fell over to cause a fire on board, and they had to abandon ship.
So the Louisiana burned right to the water line right there as one of the first casualties of the 1913 storm. And just north of there, that's where the Plymouth vanished with seven lives being towed by a very underpowered tug. The Plymouth was one of the vessels that was empty when it was lost. It was going up to the Straits of Mackinac to pick up a cargo of Cedar Post, and it was pulled by a very small tug called the James Martin.
There was a bunch of legal disputes that were happening with the company that was actually ordering the logs, the Hubel Company. This was to the point of them actually labeling the ship, meaning they put a lawsuit against the Plymouth, and the only way to protect it to make sure that they wouldn't be scuttled for insurance or somehow damaged, you know, to protect their interests, they moved an undersheriff who became a U.S. Marshal, and Chris Keenan came on board the ship to guard it. They were towing from Menominee, and they got up around the islands when the storm hit. It came out of the south at first, so they moved around St. Martin's Island and had dinner there and basically had everybody aboard the Plymouth where there was more room. And once the storm exposed their hide safe harbor, where now it's coming out of the north and starting to build to 60 miles an hour, they all jumped onto their respective ships, and they asked Keenan if he wanted to come on board the tug, and he thought his chances were better on the Plymouth.
He said, no, I'll stay on board this. He knew the ship had been rebuilt. It had just been re-caulked. They really thought because it was larger that that would be the safer vessel, but as they pulled through the straits and they got just below Poverty Island, a massive storm hit them at 60 miles an hour. The tugboat had to order the schooner to drop its anchor, a 3,000 pound anchor, to lock it into place so they could take off and reach safety.
There was just no way they could pull through those waves. Afterwards they came back to find the Plymouth and they found nothing, but later on a bottle washed ashore in Manistee and eventually Chris Keenan's body. The bottle spelled out exactly what had happened during that horrible storm. And the message in the bottle was written by Keenan, the unlucky marshal. He wrote, dear wife and children, we were left here by McKinnon, the owner of the tug Martin.
He never said goodbye or anything to us. Basically they laid out that they lost another man during the night and that the Hubel company owed him $35. So it was this note of just tragedy, of this despair of being lost, but also enough to tell his family, hey, by the way Hubel owes money. And as it turns out messages in bottles weren't that rare in 1913 or the stuff of urban legends. If you think about it in 1913, there was no radio.
There was no way to get a message out. And many of them had obviously galleys on board that would have bottles and mustard bottles have been used. Pickled bottles have been used, but certainly wine bottles too have been used to put these messages in.
And many times they'll put who's on board. Sometimes they would put, we're disappearing forever and a goodbye to their family. And we also saw blame in some of them as well. But during the 1913 storm, at least four messages came ashore and the majority of them were found to be not real. The one that came from the Plymouth though was written on a coal receipt that was actually from the coal company that gave coal to the Plymouth. So it lends a lot of authenticity to it. It also, when the family saw it, they really believed it was Chris Keenan's handwriting as well, except for a bottom part that had been written by another crewman.
And he had noted in there, I felt so bad that another man had written this for me. So this is one of those, those true notes that came out and really an eyewitness account from, you know, 12 ships that vanished without any kind of a survivor. This was the voice that they finally got from what exactly happened during one of these devastating sinkings.
But the storm wasn't yet done. All of a sudden the storm rushes past that lake, goes all the way up into Lake Superior. That's when it sinks the HB Smith. It puts the turret chief ashore. The LC Waldo was also pushed to shore on Keweenaw Peninsula.
And the leaf field was lost with all hands up by Pick Island. The biggest story on Superior at the time was the HB Smith. The Henry B. Smith was a large freighter, one of the largest lost in the big storm. Captain Billy Owen was in Marquette. The legend and all the newspaper articles that I've read said that Billy Owen had been criticized for having lake cargos all season. And if you read the stories coming out of Marquette, it really kind of plays out that Owen was furious when the iron ore froze because of a rain mist ice storm that kind of came in and froze all of the iron ore into the cars that the captain ran out and said, you've got to heat up those cars, actually put flame to the train cars to get that cargo into his boat. And then when the storm hit, he ordered the Smith to be literally tied to the dock so that they could withstand the storm and still take the cargo so he could get it down in a timely manner. Now, people do talk nowadays that maybe most of those stories weren't true, but there were a lot of boasting headlines about how he feared no storm and took off without even battening down all of his hatches. And as soon as the big snow squall came in, the ship vanished and we didn't find it for nearly 100 years. And you're listening to Rick Mixter tell the story of the 1913 storm that took down a dozen ships.
When we come back, more of Rick Mixter on our American story. Black Friday is coming. And for the adults in your life who love the coolest toys, well, there's something for them this year too. Bartesian is the premier craft cocktail maker that automatically makes more than 60 seasonal and classic cocktails, each in under 30 seconds at the push of a button. And right now, Bartesian is having a huge site-wide sale. You can get $100 off any cocktail maker or cocktail maker bundle when you spend $400 or more. So if the cocktail lover in your life has been good this year or the right kind of bad, get them Bartesian at the push of a button. Make bar quality cosmopolitans, martinis, Manhattans, and more. All in just 30 seconds. All for 100 off.
Amazing toys aren't just for kids. Get 100 off a cocktail maker when you spend 400 through Cyber Monday. Visit bartesian.com slash cocktail.
That's B-A-R-T-E-S-I-A-N.com slash cocktail. Congratulations to Easterseals Southern California on their first place win for innovation in customer service at this year's Unconventional Awards by T-Mobile for Business. Easterseals has used T-Mobile 5G to create immersive VR development tools that aid people with autism in addressing transportation barriers. These tools are shaping the way safe and personalized skill building is delivered. And for that, T-Mobile congratulates Easterseals Southern California for their unconventional thinking.
questions with Pastor Mike. The holidays are officially here at the Home Depot, which means it's time to deck the halls and your home with festive cheer. If you're on the hunt for the perfect tree, we've got you covered. Explore our huge assortment of trees in all shapes, sizes, and styles designed to fit any holiday vibe and every holiday budget like the Jackson Noble Fir. It's not only super easy to assemble, but it also comes pre-lit with 1200 color-changing bulbs and multiple lighting functions. Or maybe the flocked starry light Frasier Fir is more your style.
With over 1900 pre-lit memory wire branches that hold their shape, this tree is ready to shine right out of the box. Whether it's trees, wreaths, or twinkling lights, we've got everything you need to make your home holiday ready. So shop now at homedepot.com and enjoy free delivery on most holiday decor.
Subject to availability, see homedepot.com delivery for details. Welcome to the world of Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, the perfect gift for the music lover in your life. And now they're $50 off until December 29th.
They even made Oprah's Favorite Things Gift Guide for 2024. They're designed to give you complete openness to your surroundings while providing rich, private sound. Want to hear what that sounds like? Picture this, a walk on a sunny winter day. You can hear the satisfying crunch of snow beneath your feet and your favorite holiday song playing.
That's the magic we're talking about. Hear life and music at the same time. Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, now $50 off until December 29th.
Act fast to shop Bose's holiday deals at Bose.com slash iHeart. And we return to our American stories and the story of the 1913 storm. When we last left off, the storm had laid waste to Lake Michigan and Lake Superior and had already sunk many ships, including the Barge Plymouth and the large freighter, HB Smith.
Let's return to the story. After ravaging Lake Superior, the storm would soon turn to Lake Huron where the bulk of the ship sunk in the storm and meet their ends. One ship that did not sink though was the HB Hawgood with Ed Kanabi at the helm. Ed Kanabi was a local guy from the thumb who basically got sick of farming and went on board the ships and moved very quickly up to Wheelman.
I lucked out. I mean, as a journalist, you know, you start, you know, going through the storm itself and then trying to hit all of the anniversary newspapers. And that's where I found Ed was, you know, during the 50th anniversary and then the 60th anniversary, there were stories about this one guy that was part of the storms. But when I called him, his daughter told me that he had had a stroke and that he really probably didn't remember much about it, but she thought that he, you know, it'd be worth a try. So when I went to go talk to him, he was very, very hard of hearing. And I had to, you know, I was shouting questions to him and finally his daughter had to shout, tell him about the storm.
And he told such a riveting story that the hair on my arm stood up straight. So he was at the wheel when the H.B. Hawgood is going up and down the lakes. If you read the stories of the ships that survived, that was the way that they did it. They would stay out in the middle of the lake as best they could because running aground would be devastating. And they would turn around, which was the most difficult part in the storm. And they would head back down the lake and then just keep trying to keep their nose into the wind as best they can until the storm was over, hoping that it would eventually fade out.
Well, this storm went 60 miles an hour for 16 hours straight. So back and forth the H.B. Hawgood went until finally they got to the bottom of the lake and the captain ordered them to turn around again. He could see the lights of Point Edward. He knew he was close to Port Huron going into the St. Clair River, but he was not going to turn around. Kanabi had other ideas.
Here's Ed with what he did instead. He said, we got into the deeper waters and into the wind. That's when I really got scared.
I thought to myself, oh, no, you don't. There's a lot of abysmal. And I threw the ship out of control. They literally pitched it up on the beach near where a hotel was. So out of all of the ships that were lost during the 1913 storm, it was good news for the H.B.
Hawgood to be so close to civilization. That wasn't the case for many of the other ships. Like the Charles S. Price. The price had gone up and it had gotten the storm and somehow turned turtle. And the air that was still inside the vessel allowed it to float. So the bow was floating, but the stern was dragging on the bottom in about 70 feet of water. And it wasn't hard to see this giant, what looked like a whale of a black bottom boat out there.
And the newspapers guessed for days on exactly what freighter it was. And they couldn't get out there because the storm was still kind of brewing. So as it calmed down, they finally hired a diver named Baker to go down there. And he dove down and realized that it was so murky because of the storm tossed waters that he couldn't see. So he felt the letters and it was Charles S. Price upside down that he felt. He came back on board and wouldn't tell them the name until he got paid.
That's how much he trusted the newspapers. The ship itself, we still wonder what happened, but as we look at the course of the HB Smith and we look at several other ships that survived the storm by turning around, as they turned around, if they were iced or heavy on top of their decks, which we've seen many big storm victims, especially from 1913, we've seen frozen pictures of the ice that's accumulated on the decks, making them very, very top heavy, regardless of the cargo that's below it. And as they try to make that turn to try to, you know, as they run out of the lake and they want to come back down again, they make that turn. They expose themselves to winds that will push these long thin ships over. And that's what we think might've happened that it might've tried to turn.
And as it tried to turn, it rolled right over. We also know from the eye witness accounts that there were 35 foot seas that were there. So add in a top heavy vessel that was never designed to carry that much ice weight on top and a wind and a waves that were banging off of each shoreline and confused directions. And it could be easily imagined that one of those freighters would flip over and the price actually did it sat there and floated forever. And well, it floated for over a day and many newspapers got pictures of it. And then it slowly sank down to the bottom.
So they always knew where the Charles price was. The price was just one of the many ships that sank during the 1913 storm. In total, 12 ships would end up on the bottom of the great lakes and countless others like the hog good would be beached and battered on the shore. The storm was a truly horrific event. The legacy of the storm is that over 250 sailors lost their lives.
And the reality is that without radio or without, you know, really good accounts of, of who was actually on board these ships, there's times when sailors would just jump on board and there would be no real, you know, real record of them being on. So we'll never know the exact amount of people lost or the names of everybody who was lost. But to think of it in the terms of 250 sailors, that's 200 families that didn't have loved ones that came home from that storm. It was devastating to them and then add in the devastation that was felt by towns like Godrich, where most of that destruction, especially those human bodies came ashore. It was horrible for them as well. And the pictures of the long funeral marches that would go to the grave marker that's now in Godrich, you can imagine what that, you know, what that must have felt for them as well. The headlines and the stories that came out of there and the eventual stories that would be generated from those later on also add to the magnitude of what that storm was. It was one of the worst and in many cases called the king of storms on the Great Lakes.
So it probably will never be equaled. We now have better weather forecasting. We have satellites that fly over the top of the ships.
We have communication via satellite and via radio. It's just amazing what that technology is like today and forecasting, but we still have people that will try to better the lakes. You know, there's always that one that believes that they can get in. Fortunately, with our thousand footers, they're a lot less susceptible to the waves. But you'll be surprised that, you know, even the biggest of all freighters, including the Edmund Fitzgerald, were lost just because the captain made a bad call. Nothing can be built that would withstand the fury of the lakes when they get their very worst. And unfortunately, that's what happens in November as those lakes start to cool off and that that warmth from the lakes meets the cold Arctic air. We get horrible snowstorms and we get winds that just tear at ships in every direction and change on a dime.
And that could happen again tomorrow. There's still so many clues out there and every time a ship is found, we start to add another chapter. So I don't think the final chapter has been written on the 1913 storm. It's over a hundred years old, but we're still discovering new things about it.
And that's what makes it exciting. And you've been listening to Rick Mixter tell the story of one of America's great water tragedies. He also told the story of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which was riveting. And it's the rest of the story from the song you'd heard and the real story, the Gordon Lightfoot song, of course, and one of our other really good water disaster stories. One of our best is also, of course, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, the worst naval disaster in American history. Mixter, by the way, you can find his work at lakefury.com.
Listen to his podcast. And my goodness, it was a perfect storm. You had the frozen ice formations on the deck of the ships, 35 foot sea walls coming at them. And of course, the wicked winds, 12 ships down, all hands lost, 250 souls lost.
The story of the 1913 storm here on Our American Story. This is Tanya Raad from Scrubbing In with Becca Tilley and Tanya Raad. This is what you do when you've just found that statement handbag on eBay and you want to build an entire wardrobe around it. You start selling to keep buying. Yep, on eBay. Over that all black everything phase, list it and buy all the color. Feeling more vintage than ever? It's out with the new and in with the pre-loved. Next thing you know, you refresh your wardrobe basically without spending a dime. Yeah, eBay, the place to buy and sell new pre-loved vintage and rare fashion. eBay, things people love.
How do we go about supporting government leaders when we may not want to vote for or support any of them? Do babies who die in the womb go to heaven? Are there only certain reasons in the Bible that are valid for divorce? Is IVF an option for Christian couples? I'm Pastor Mike Novotny and these are just some of the topics I tackle in my new podcast, Taboo Questions with Pastor Mike Novotny. I answer questions for people just like you on essential topics that are not often discussed in church. To listen, just search Taboo Questions with Pastor Mike.
This is Lee Habib here. Do you wake up every morning dreading that first step out of bed because of foot pain? I know I used to. Then I tried PowerStep, the number one podiatrist recommended insoles clinically proven to relieve pain. I was skeptical at first, but from the moment I put them in my shoes, I felt the difference. Support and comfort exactly where I needed it.
Now I can go through my day pain-free. Go to PowerStep.com slash OAS and use code OAS for 15% off your first order. The holidays are here at The Home Depot, so let's get to decorating. Find your perfect tree and our huge assortment of shapes, sizes, and styles. Like the easy to assemble Jackson Noble Fir with pre-lit branches perfect for styling with all your favorite ornaments. Or the flocked Starry Light Frasier Fir with over 1900 pre-lit memory wire branches that keep their shape so it's ready right out of the box. Find the perfect tree now at The Home Depot and enjoy free delivery on most holiday decor.
Subject to availability, see homedepot.com slash delivery for details. Your teen requested a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber teen account. You drive your teenager around a lot to their friend Jacob's house, their other friend Jake's house, to James's, to Jayden's, to Jalen's, to a mom.
This is Jake's house, not Jacob's. Now with an Uber teen account, your teen can request a ride under your supervision. The ride with a highly rated driver and with live trip tracking, you'll follow along the whole ride to their friend's houses that all sound the same. Add your teen to your Uber account today. See app for details. Bye mom.
