The Retread Ranger Station

Outer Island Light Station, September 5, 1905

Cleaning, triming Lamps and Lens. Clearing away rubish and logs from Boat Ways and the foot of Tram Way. The too Assistants arrived from Bayfield, 10 AM, with mail and provisions. The First Assistant, Thomas E. Irvine, brought his young Wife with him, also brought Robert Irvine, his Uncle, a Brother of the Keeper, who had not seen each other for 28 years.

“Say, Pop, anything happen while I was away?”

Sand Island Light Station, September 5, 1905

SW breeze, clear and warm. Keeper got the Statement from the Engineer. They struck at 5:45 AM but did not blow the whistle till 30 minutes after. Officers and men cut off from going aft. Captain, two Mates, two Wheelmen, two watchmen. All that got drownded. The crew all say they seen my light in Sand Island Light and Devils Island Light. The crew of 11 was taken care of by Napolian Reaboux a farmer living 1 1/2 miles up in the wood from the beach. A man who was on the beach hunting cows at the time the crew landed showed them the way up to the farm. Name of man unknown. Many pleasure boats were out to the wreck.

For clarification: six crewmen from the Sevona landed on the beach at Sand Island, where they were given succor by none other than our friend Fred Hansen, grown up and on his own now. Eleven more survivors made it to the mainland shore, encountering a man who was searching for some lost cows, who guided them to the home of farmer and logger Napoleon Rabidoux.

Sadly, though, the captain and six others were trapped on the forward section of the broken ship, with no access to the lifeboats. They tried escaping on a raft made from hatch covers, but all perished before reaching shore.

Outer Island Light Station, September 4, 1905

Cleaning, triming Lamps and Lens and other necessary work. Tending to the rescued men. They were all able to go along the beach looking for the bodies of those that perished. None were found. They all got back to the Station by Noon.

While at dinner, the Steamer “Venezuela” came in sight looking for her consort, which was the “Pretoria”, which she could plainly see as it looks like too thirds of her Spars is above water. We signaled the Steamer. She sent a boat ashore at 2 PM, and took the men off. The sea was pretty well run down so that they did not have any truble in landing here.

The “Pretoria” hailed from Duluth. She belonged to Captain James Davidson of Bay City, Mich. She was loaded with iron ore from Aloucies (Allouez) Bay for South Chicago. I expect She will be a Total Wreck as her decks is all coming ashore.

Sand Island Light Station, September 4, 1905

NE fresh and cloudy, cold. Keeper got ready to take crew to town with sailboat when the tug R. W. Currie came out to pick them up at 9:00 AM. Mr. Frank Shaw and Ambrose Gordon and Edward Stuffel went out to help look for the bodies. They found three, one in Justus (Justice) Bay and two in East Bay.

Keeper learned through the Capt. of tug Currie that the other life boat landed in Sand Bay mainland with 11 of the crew. They left the wreck at 2:00 PM with the 7 men on the bow of the steamer no way to get off. Keeper left for town with the tug to get the Statement of the Wreck from the Engineer. The tug took the four bodies to town at 6 PM. Keeper returned with the tug on her second trip.

In the aftermath:

Outer Island Light Station, September 3, 1905

Cleaning, triming Lamps and Lens. Doing what we could for the comfort of the Captain and his four men who was saved last night. They are all much improved today after a good nights rest and sleep. Weather moderating.

Sand Island Light Station, September 3, 1905

NNE Gale and heavy rain, fog. At 10 AM Keeper E. Luick and Assistant F. A. Hudson went around the beach when about 1 mile from light we found a dead man among the wreckage. Keeper got help from East Bay to help get him up in the woods. Two of the wreck(ed) steamer crew. At 6:45 PM the tug Harmon came out from Bayfield to view the wreck but there was only the stern left.

And things turn tragic:

Outer Island Light Station, September 2, 1905

Cleaning, triming Lamps and Lens. Tending Signal. A Terable gale blowing from the NE, the Bigest Sea that I have seen since I have been at the Station which is eight years. About 2:30 PM, sighted a Schooner at anchor about too miles NE of Station.

About 4 PM seen small boat leaving Schooner. I, the Keeper, huried down the beach with a white flag in my hand, and a piece of rope to render what assistance I could. I helped to pull five men ashore, pretty well escausted. Five were drowned.

The crew consisted [of] Captain Charles Smart and nine of a crew. The Captain, Mate, and three Seamen were saved. Four Seamen, and the cook who was colored, was drowned.

That’s right- alone in his lighthouse, Keeper John Irvine faces one of the worst disasters in the history of the Apostles Islands and rises magnificently to the occasion, saving the lives of half the foundering vessel’s crew.

“But wait!” as they say, “There’s more!”

Over at the other end of the archipelago, on the same day, another big ship is sinking as well:

Sand Island Light Station, September 2, 1905

NE terrible gale & heavy rain & fog. At 5:45 am a steamer whistled a distress, not visible, but for fog and heavy raining. We were unable to see or tell where the steamer was only knew she was NE of the station.

At 10 am, it clear up some so we could see a steamer drifting in/out the East side of the station where she soon struck bottom. We could see no life on board or see any distress signal. We patrolled the beach from 10 to 12 but found nothing. At 12 the pilot house started to break away and at 2:00 the forward mast went overboard.

From 2 to 5 pm we patrolled the beach and found one trunk. And all the cabin work and mast left along the shore and found or seen one man which was going back and forth in the sea but life was extinguished. We tried to get him but was unable to do anything as the sea did not bring him close enough.

At 2:00 pm one life boat with 6 of the crew came ashore at East Bay and found shelter with F. A. Hanson. The other boat made for York Island with 11 of the crew, four women was along.

Two ships sank among the Apostles in that storm: the huge wooden schooner-barge Pretoria off Outer Island, and the very modern steel steamer Sevona off Sand Island. A total of twelve men lost their lives, but had it not been for Keeper Irvine’s courage and presence of mind, the total might have been higher. Interesting also to note that, though popular folklore has Emmanuel Luick watching helplessly from his Sand Island tower as the ship sinks before his eyes, his own words show that he had but a limited view of the situation. (And contrary to claims made years later– possibly encouraged by Mr. Luick himself– he most certainly did not go out on the lake to try and save the doomed men.)

If you’re interested, I’ve written a detailed account of this tragic episode: The Day The Ships Went Down.

Outer Island Light Station, September 1, 1905

Cleaning, trimming Lamps and Lens. Tending Signal. Second Assistant left for South point for Bayfield with Mrs. Sheure, the Keeper’s Sister, at 9:20 AM.

Hmmmm… this means Keeper John Irvine has the lighthouse all to himself tonight, since the First Assistant, his son Thomas, left a few days ago to get married, and is not expected back with his bride for a few days yet. Outer Island is a long way from anywhere, to be out there solo.

Ah, well… Mr. Irvine is a veteran lightkeeper, a former sailor with many years of maritime experience. He should be fine on his own.

So long as nothing too drastic happens in the night.

Sand Island Light Station, Friday, August 31, 1900

NE breeze & Clear Devils Island Light visible. Keeper lifted his herring net & got 35 suckers & one herring. At 11 AM Mr. F. Hanson & his Mother came over to see what I could do for her Sore eye as it pained her very much.

By this point we all know Fred Hansen, the fisherman’s son who shows up so often in the Sand Island logbook; now it’s time to meet his mother. Dorothy Hansen (great-grandmother of my friend Bob Dahl) was born in Norway c. 1842, and came to the U.S. with her husband and children in 1893. Sadly, she was crippled with rheumatism for much of her later life: the c. 1911 photo below shows her already in a wheelchair some nine years before her death. (The little girl is her granddaughter Dorothy, Fred’s daughter.)

I’m assuming that Fred rowed his mother up to the lighthouse; the round trip walk would have been nearly four miles. Let’s hope Ella Luick- barely more than a teenager herself- was able to do something for Mrs. Hansen’s eye. Or did Emmanuel write this? Hmmmm… Ella usually referred to her husband as “Mr. Luick,” rather than “the keeper.” Maybe he was the one expected to do first aid.

Myself, I would have gone the other direction down the shore to find Anna Mae Hill: she was the one on the island who knew how to take care of things. Maybe she wasn’t around.

Ashland Breakwater Light Station, August 30, 1921

Done general work. The Str. Edward Jeeves (sp?) and derrick Scow put a load of rock on the breakwater this a.m. On going to light tonight I could get no light in the tower the shore end of the cable was all right but the Tower end was dead. Put a oil Lamp in the Tower and Stayed their all night. Navigation fair all lights vis wind half a gale N.W. to N.E. partly clear.

Working conditions at the small concrete lighthouse marking the entrance to Ashland Harbor were quite different from life on the islands. The Ashland keeper lived on shore, in a comfortable house still standing near the “AmericInn” motel on the east side of town. Built very late in the game (1916) this lighthouse was electrically powered from the start. On most evenings, the keeper could simply flip a switch to light the beacon, but as this entry shows, that was not always the case.

Image glommed from the web page of the Apostle Islands Lighthouse Celebration, for whom I’ll be doing the keynote Friday after next. Tickets still available!

Raspberry Island Light Station, August 29, 1910

In some way unknown to the Keeper, the door leading into the tower from the Assistants quarters got locked sometime after the Keeper called the 2nd Assistant’s watch time of call midnight. The Assistant could not get in the tower that way, nor had the presence of mind enough to go in the tower in another which there are two ways that were not locked, nor did not call the Keeper to enquire into the matter. Consequently, the Light did not flash after 3 A.M. for the want of winding the clock, which was a very poor lookout for the man on watch. -Keeper

Oh, dear.

Raspberry Island Lighthouse: keeper’s big apartment on the right, assistant keepers’ smaller apartments on left. (RHIP) And yes, there are three ways into the central staircase.

Sand Island Light Station, August 28, 1899

Calm and very hot. Calm until 11 AM Clouded and thunder Storms in N. at 12 noon the Str. Yacht Stella with a party of 14 came to visit the station. At 1 PM a very heavy Squal set up from NNE and lasted till 3;30 PM when the Yach left for Camp Stella on the South of Sand Island. Keeper and wife picked wild cherries for fall.

Camp Stella, a rustic retreat near the southeast point of Sand Island, was one of the first ventures into the tourist economy that eventually came to dominate the region. Established by the local politico and booster Sam Fifield, and named for his wife, the camp operated from 1887 through about 1912.

Raspberry Island Light Station, Keeper’s Diary, August 27, 1888

Last night and all day a dense smoke hung over land and water, much to the impediment of navigation. Left the windows open during the night and my room soon was filled with a penetrating odor. Prairies and pineries afire somewhere.

Francis Jacker had no fog signal to tend at Raspberry Island, but on Outer Island, where providing an adequate water supply for the steam-powered foghorn remained a constant problem, the keepers did their best to provide guidance through the smoke:

August 27, 1888 – NE, fresh. Run Signal from 3 AM till 12 Noon when the water give out, and we had to stop the Signal. Second Assistant left for Bayfield 11:30 AM with letters to the Inspector and Engineer reporting that the water give out. The weather still continues thick with smoke. Cannot see much over a mile and blowing NE.

The Upper Midwest was a tinderbox during the logging era. In his classic Fire in America, historian Stephen Pyne paints the picture vividly:

The first railroad entered northern Wisconsin in 1870. It was succeeded a year later by the worst forest fire disaster in American history… For about 60 years this pattern was repeated throughout the north woods. Fires of unprecedented size and intensity rampaged over small villages and towns of moderate size and thereby earned names as historic events.

The fires were the product of a particular set of conditions: wholesale logging, which made the Lake States from 1880 to 1900 the chief source of timber and an unrivaled tinder box of abandoned slash; farmers looking for cheap, easily cleared land and not averse to using fire for land clearing; and railroads, whose transportation potential made both logging and farming economically feasible and whose brakes and smokestacks were a frequent source of ignition.

This great era of holocausts began about 1870 as all three elements first came together; its last deadly outburst came in 1918; and it concluded only in the 1930s with the exhaustion of virgin timber and the abandonment of agricultural settlement. Logging had supplied the fuel; agricultural land clearing had furnished the ignition; and the railroad had been the catalyst for their interaction.

It is a measure of the scale and persistence of these fires that the resulting smoke was often thick enough to impede navigation on Lake Superior; year after year, keepers’ logs contain several days each summer with the remark, “Sounded signal for smoke.”