If you haven’t yet, please consider checking out my latest magazine piece about the ships upon and beneath the Great Lakes.
Titled “Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes,” it begins:
The scale of the Great Lakes is often underestimated by those who’ve yet to visit their shores. Largely responsible for the peopling of the Midwest, they hold 95 percent of the United States’ surface fresh water. Caribbean-appearing in the summers and home to Bering Strait demons in the winters (the “witch of November” that Gordon Lightfoot sang of), the Great Lakes are the resting place of some 6,000 vessels and more than 30,000 souls. Sudden gales, rocky passages, and fresh water’s proclivity to flash-freeze on vessels’ superstructure and decks conspired to sink any and all, whether they be passenger liners packed with Dutch immigrants or weathered ore ships with a seasoned crew. None were safe. When the winds rise on the shore of Lake Michigan, the only Great Lake that shares no shoreline with Canada, it’s easy enough to hear the wails of the dead or see movement ’round the fog-ensorcelled lighthouses. A Midwestern mariner, I struck out to see what I could learn of the flesh, steel, and timber revenants of the Great Lakes and the increasingly translucent stories of warships that float upon them still.
You can read the rest here.
Some bonus images from the trip:
Comments