On August 30, 1892, shipping magnate Peter G. Minch set out with his family and 22 crewmen aboard his ship, the SS Western Reserve, for a pleasure cruise through Lake Superior — but a storm sank the vessel, leaving all but one of them dead.
Great Lakes Shipwreck MuseumThe wreck of the SS Western Reserve, found in Lake Superior 132 years after the vessel went down.
On a summer night in 1892, the SS Western Reserve set out for a leisurely cruise through the Great Lakes. But disaster struck midway through the voyage and the ship, considered one of the safest vessels of its day, quickly sank, dooming all but one of the 28 people aboard. Now, after 132 years, the wreck of the Western Reserve has been found deep in the waters of Lake Superior.
The Discovery Of The SS Western Reserve In Lake Superior
According to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS) the wreck of the SS Western Reserve was recently detected at the bottom of Lake Superior, 60 miles northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan.
Great Lakes Shipwreck MuseumThe bow area of the Western Reserve.
GLSHS Director of Marine Operations Darryl Ertel and his brother and First Mate, Dan Ertel, had been searching for the wreck of the Western Reserve for two years. In the summer of 2024, they finally succeeded while conducting scans of Lake Superior.
“We side-scan looking out a half mile per side and we caught an image on our port side,” Darryl Ertel explained. “It was very small looking out that far, but I measured the shadow, and it came up about 40 feet…we went back over the top of the ship and saw that it had cargo hatches, and it looked like it was broken in two, one half on top of the other and each half measured with the side scan 150 feet long… [T]hen we measured the width and it was right on so we knew that we’d found the Western Reserve.”
Great Lakes Shipwreck MuseumOne of the lights on the Western Reserve.
Finally, more than a century after it went down, the doomed ship had been discovered.
“Reaction to the discovery was pure elation,” Corey Adkins of GLSHS told All That’s Interesting. Noting that the ship would be the subject of future study and a documentary, he added, “To see something that has been lost over 132 years brings a lot of pride to our organization.”
Darryl Ertel, however, felt something more than elation. Finding the Western Reserve also gave him an eerie feeling.
“Knowing how the 300-foot Western Reserve was caught in a storm this far from shore made a uneasy feeling in the back of my neck,” he remarked. “[A] squall can come up unexpectedly… anywhere, and anytime.”
Indeed, it was a violent squall that doomed the Western Reserve in 1892, when a summer pleasure cruise turned into a perilous, and ultimately doomed, fight for survival.
The Dramatic Final Hours Of The SS Western Reserve Just Before It Sank
Great Lakes Shipwreck MuseumThe Western Reserve was considered one of the safest — and fastest — ships of its day.
No one expected that the Western Reserve would go down. One of the first all-steel vessels to sail on the Great Lakes, the ship was thought to be among the safest ships of its day. Not only that, it was exceedingly fast, leading one newspaper to describe it as “the inland greyhound.”
There were no signs of danger when it embarked upon what would prove to be its final voyage, en route to Two Harbors, Minnesota, on August 30, 1892. The ship’s owner, Peter G. Minch, surely thought it would be a simple cruise when he set out with five family members and 22 crewmen.
But after the ship left Whitefish Bay, the water became so rough that the crew was forced to briefly drop anchor. Then, shortly after the Western Reserve made its way into Lake Superior around 9 p.m. that night, the summer squall increased in intensity, battering the ship with gale-force winds and waves.
To the horror of the 28 people on board, the Western Reserve started to break in two.
Great Lakes Shipwreck MuseumA depiction of the ship breaking apart, and of its only survivor, wheelsman Harry W. Stewart.
Within 10 minutes, the ship sank. Though those aboard had managed to escape onto two lifeboats — the Minch family in one and the crew in the other — the waters were so rough that the crew’s lifeboat sank almost immediately, with only some able to make it into the surviving lifeboat. By 7:30 a.m., the second lifeboat managed to make it within one mile of the shoreline near Deer Park Michigan, before it too overturned.
Only one person of the 28 passengers and crew, wheelsman Harry W. Stewart, managed to survive the sinking after swimming a mile to shore.
In the words of GLSHS Executive Director Bruce Lynn, “Every shipwreck has its own story, but some are just that much more tragic.”
In some ways, perhaps, the tragedy lingered long after this sinking. Experts soon determined that the ship’s pioneering use of steel had hastened its demise, as the material proved too brittle to withstand the gale. And though American and Canadian lawmakers heeded this warning and forbade the use of such steel in future shipbuilding, British lawmakers did not. Almost 20 years later, British builders used a similar steel to construct the Titanic.
After reading about the wreck of the SS Western Reserve, discover the stories behind some of history’s most famous shipwrecks. Then, learn about the doomed voyage of the HMS Wager.
