SS George M. Cox: Wreck Event and Survivor Accounts

SS GEORGE M. COX, aground on the Rock of Ages Reef.

Larsen Collection

Wreck Event

The first voyage of Puritan as the newly appointed George M. Cox was also to be its last. On May 25, 1933 the ship left Chicago bound for Port Arthur to begin its new route in the passenger trade between those two cities. Intermediate stops were planned for Houghton and Isle Royale.

The steamer left Saturday May 27, from Marquette at 2:00 a.m. bound for Houghton with namesake George M. Cox and 124 others aboard (Daily Mining Gazette, May 27, 1933). The captain was George Johnson of Traverse City and the first mate was Arthur Cronk. There was also an eight-piece orchestra aboard ready to join in the festivities anticipated on the maiden voyage (Manistee News Advocate, May 24, 1933).

Cox arrived in Houghton and tied up at the Peninsula dock around noon after its ten hour run. The vessel was opened for inspection and hundreds of local residents toured the finely appointed cruise ship (Daily Mining Gazette, May 28, 1933).

George M. Cox left Saturday afternoon, May 27, 1933, for Isle Royale, but Cox ran hard aground off the west end of Isle Royale sometime before 6:00 p.m. Saturday evening while those on board ate dinner. The steamer Morris S. Tremaine intercepted a wireless SOS message from the stricken ship, and the first word reached Houghton about 8:00 p.m. Word of the disaster was received by Capt. Fred Sollman of the Portage Canal Coast Guard via Ft. William. The Coast Guard left immediately for the wreck site (Daily Mining Gazette, May 28, 1933).

A description of the wreck given by the 23-year-old ship's staff nurse, Adeline Keeling, who was taken to Port Arthur with Cox, the injured passengers and crew (New York Times, May 29, 1933):

"There was a heavy thud, followed by a series of crashes," said Miss Keeling. "The passengers were at dinner at the time. I saw a heavy buffet slide across the floor and crash into tables and a partition. I was in my stateroom and was thrown against a door and stunned. The stewardess, Beatrice Cote, helped me to my feet, and was herself knocked down in the second crash. She injured her back."

"There was no panic, but the steamer listed heavily to port and the passengers and crew rushed to starboard. It was impossible to lower the starboard boats because of the list of the vessel, but the port boats were lowered and ferried us all to the lighthouse."

Stern view of COX aground at Rock of Ages. Note starboard lifeboats in place.

Lake Superior Marine Museum

Five life boats were lowered on the port side; the boats on the starboard side were not launched because of the extreme port list. The passengers were loaded into the ship's lifeboats and towed to Rock of Ages by lightkeeper John Soldenski's motor launch. The passengers took turns warming themselves in the limited quarters of the lighthouse, and they were served hot coffee by the wife of the lightkeeper (Cleveland News, May 29, 1933).

The operational procedures of the U.S. Coast Guard at Portage Canal Station and aboard the cutter Crawford offer some insight into the Cox rescue operations. About 8:00 p.m. the Portage Station received the following telegram, from Port Arthur: "Steamer George M. Cox aground on Rock of Ages. In bad shape. Want assistance." ("Letter from F.C. Sollman, Officer in Charge, Portage Station to John Hanson, Bureau of Navigation and Steam boat Inspection," June 7, 1933). Within 10 minutes a lifeboat and crew left the station. The Portage crew arrived at the wreck site at 2:15 a.m. the morning of the 28th. All passengers and crew had been removed from the wreck and were safe on Rock of Ages.

• Stanley Sivertson: Wreck of the America

  
  

  Oral History 61: Stanley Sivertson 3 & 4

  Credit / Author:

  Dave Snyder: ISRO Archives.

  Date created:

  03/03/1987

  Audio Transcript

  When the America sank, it had all this fruit on it. It had a cargo of fruit for the wholesale houses over in Thunder Bay. They had bananas and all the fruits that you ever see in a store now, I guess. And they were all in wooden crates. So when the America went down, some of that stuff which was loose started floating up and came out. There was a gangway just about level with the water. So some of it that was close to that side gradually came out. And then when we found out that nobody's gonna salvage the boat anymore, my mother and dad had lost all their belongings on the boat when it went down. And the first things we went to do was to rig up some long pipe poles to go down the deck to see if we could find our trunks and suitcases and baggage. But then we started hooking on to some of these cases of fruit that floated up against the deck, against the upper deck where the passenger quarters were. So there was everything: lemons, and oranges, and apples, strawberries, and bananas. [???] and his father had, they lived in a house on Booth Island that had been a little hotel, eight room hotel, so they had the biggest house of anybody on Isle Royale. It was a two story house. They had one of those small rooms just about full of bananas that they got off the America. You know, they were just going to rot away anyway. But anyway, later on in the summer, well there wasn't hardly any fruit you could get if you went out there and tried to hook around with a pipe pole. In the meantime this Edgar Johns, he rigged up a pipe pole that was almost 65 foot long, and by golly that thing got down so far that he hooked onto my mother's trunk, my mother and dad's trunk. So we got that stuff, I remember, spreading it all around over the grass to try to get it to dry. You know, all the things she had from Norway. And my dad had some things there too. But anyway, it got so that pretty soon there wasn't hardly any fruit to get anymore because you couldn't reach it. It was jammed up under different places. But then, this must have been at least a month later, we got a storm from the north that comes right in that gap, you know. It was about the way the wind'll hit that shelter there, and during that fierce squall. And by golly when we got up and ran right down to our dock we had 'bout 20 cases of fruit right at our dock. It come drifting along the shore, you know, and was at every dock. But out on Grace Island there where the Martins lived, at the time, when they got up, you see that bit of sand - there's not much left of it now with the high water. But there used to be a long bit of sand that reached right across, you know, for about two, three hundred feet, nothing on it but sand and gravel. But when they come out that morning, right on the north side of that was lined up with cases of fruit and they said all they had to do was go out there and pick out the kind of fruit they liked best. Because they had so much fruit anyway, you know they had too much really. So that was the last of the fruit that floated up by itself.

The SS GEORGE M. COX in the summer of 1933.

Isle Royale National Park Archives

The Portage crew transported 43 persons from the lighthouse to Washington Island hotel dock on Isle Royale and returned to Rock of Ages. Captain Johnson requested the removal of baggage from the wreck, and 71 bags, suitcases and other baggage items were taken aboard the lifeboat and transported to the lighthouse, arriving there at 8:40. Twenty crew members were transported from the lighthouse to Crawford with some of the baggage, then 12 more of the Cox crew were transported to Washington Harbor.

Crawford arrived on site at 5:35 a.m., May 28, and anchored in 3 fathoms of water. Five minutes later the officer of the North Superior Coast Guard was aboard to brief the officers of Crawford. Captain Johnson was consulted on the disposition of the passengers and crew. Johnson responded that he wanted them taken to Houghton, Michigan. The Cox crew and passengers were loaded aboard, and the cutter proceeded to Washington Harbor to pick up the people who had been transferred there. The Coast Guard lifeboat from Grand Marais had engine trouble and was towed to the Singer Dock in Washington Harbor by Crawford. The ship encountered dense fog on the way to the dock, finally arriving at 8:55 a.m. In an hour, all remaining people were loaded and Crawford was underway to Houghton. The total aboard was recorded in the Crawford log as 113 ("Log of the U.S. Coast Guard Patrol Boat Crawford," May 27, 28, 1933).

Media Coverage / Survivor Accounts

New Orleans Times-Picayune: May 28,1933

Four persons were injured, one seriously, in the wreck, the first on the Great Lakes this season, but no lives were lost. The four, with George M. Cox of New Orleans ... and a nurse were brought to Fort Williams by the freighter M.S. TREMAINE and placed in a hospital

Mrs. Cox said Sunday afternoon that she talked with her husband Sunday morning at Port Arthur, Canada, by long distance telephone and that he suffered no ill effects from his harrowing experience.

The GEORGE M. COX, making her first trip of the season, was en route to Port Arthur, Ont., from Chicago to pick up 250 Canadian residents and take them to the Century of Progress Exposition at the latter city. Thirty-two of the persons aboard on the out bound trip were passengers ....

Plowing through a heavy fog, the steamer, with its passengers at dinner, struck an extended ledge of rock a short distance from Rock of Ages Lighthouse with such force that her engines and boilers were ripped loose. The impact threw the passengers to the salon floors and sent tables and chairs crashing against the walls.

Keepers of the Rock of Ages Light said they saw the spars of the steamer above the low-hanging fog and made frantic but futile efforts to attract the' vessel's attention with the siren. A few minutes after the vessel struck she had broken open and filled with water until her top decks were awash.

Only the, fact that the Lake was calm enabled the keepers of the light and the crew of the steamer to transfer everyone to small boats and rafts and avoid loss of life.

Shipwrecks of Isle Royale

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