Curt Brown discusses his book “So Terrible a Storm: A Tale of Fury on Lake Superior,” which chronicles The Great Storm of 1905, also known as Mataafa Storm of 1905. The cyclone storm brought death and destruction for those on Lake Superior during the intense weather event.
On November 27-28, 1905, dozens of ships were on Lake Superior making the season's last run when the storm, named after the steamship Mataafa, hit the coastal region. It brought storm-force winds and heavy snows destroying or damaging about 29 vessels, killing 36 seamen. The disaster was so extreme that, in its wake, Congress appropriated money for the now-famous Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior.
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KURT: About six years ago, I had my family up at Split Rock Lighthouse, a popular icon, of course, on the North Shore, and I don't know if it was the tour guide or a little pamphlet, but the little seed was planted that somebody said that this lighthouse was built, and Congress appropriated $75,000 to build this lighthouse because of the great storm of 1905. So curiosity hit me, and I said, what storm? And that turned into an obsession, and that blossomed into a book.
CATHY: Well, let's talk about that storm. Of course, it was an amazing storm. But I'm wondering, is there any way to rate how fierce that one was versus the one that took down the Edmund Fitzgerald?
KURT: Well, there's a guy who wrote a book in the 1940s, of course, which would be before the Edmund Fitzgerald. And he quoted the old-timers back then, who said that compared to all the other storms, this was the worst in terms of three days of constant winds, snow, and the temperature, I think went from 30 to 10 below in a matter of like three hours.
CATHY: Of snow.
KURT: Everybody, of course, knows the Edmund Fitzgerald because it happened only 33 years ago and Gordon Lightfoot and made it a pop culture, kind of song in the back of all of our head. But this storm, according to the old-timers in the '40s-- of course, no one remembers it anymore-- they rank this as the worst blow, especially on that part of the Minnesota part of Lake Superior, Duluth, and the North Shore, and up to where Split Rock Lighthouse was built.
CATHY: Let's set the scene, because, of course, this is at the end of the shipping season in November of 1905. And there already had been a number of shipwrecks that year, but this one was big. And you had a lot of ships on the lake trying to get one last load in or out of the Twin Ports.
KURT: Well, there had just been a bad storm the weekend before. This was Thanksgiving weekend. And the belief at that time-- meteorology was more advanced than I thought when I got into this project-- but still, the captains in their gut didn't really believe the weatherman, the forecaster up in Duluth.
So they were of the belief that when there's a big storm, that's going to be followed by a lull, that you'll get a few calm days, and that they could make one more run of ore, and barley, and wood, and whatever else they were hauling across down to Pittsburgh and Cleveland, get some money in their wallets for the three-month winter off season to keep their families warm.
So they took one last run, but in a one, two punch kind of way, this storm hit right after the other storm. And that's what caught a lot of these captains out on the lake. Like you said, about 30 ships were on the lake when the storm hit.
CATHY: Let's take a look at a couple of those ships in particular. Let's start with the Madeira, which, of course, for folks who've driven on 61 old, current 61, you're going to notice a ship's anchor in this kind of dilapidated rundown. It used to be a trading post, that's off the Madeira. She sank pretty close to Split Rock Lighthouse in that area.
KURT: Yeah, the Madeira was a barge. It was common in those days that a big ore ship would then tow behind it a barge full of the same stuff, the iron ore. And it was just towing that one along. Well, the two split apart. One of them landed safely on the beach, the Edenborn, and the Madeira kept smashing into the-- what is Gold Rock, which is just right adjacent to where Split Rock now stands.
And the story behind that one, there was a seaman named Fred Benson, a Scandinavian seaman who climbed up the cliff with a rope in his hand. Imagine the waves smashing his back. He crawled up kind of like a spider, getting lashed by these waves that, I'm sure, paralyzed him in between every wave. But he made it to the top of Gold Rock cliff, threw the rock down with a stone on the end and saved everybody aboard the barge.
There were nine in the crew. One guy didn't make it. A guy named James Morrow tried his own way. Tried climbing the mast and jumping for it, and realized that wasn't going to work, and got washed away. And so Benson saved all, but one member of that barge crew.
CATHY: If you see Gold Rock, of course, it's a fairly sheer cliff. And climbing up that would have been just, I can't imagine that.
KURT: Well, and especially the move that he made, the instinct to jump. Here, you are jumping off a boat in the middle of a storm. And if that wasn't enough, then every four or five seconds a huge wave is smashing him in the back with freezing water.
CATHY: That's the Madeira. Is it the Mataafa? Is that the pronunciation?
KURT: That's how you pronounce it. The Mataafa is really the central character, if you will, of my book. And this boat was heading out of Duluth when the storm hit and tried to circle back and make it into Duluth. It basically, kind of t-boned the piers there that stick out from Duluth's harbor.
And the whole town of Duluth, 10,000 people, they estimated, lined the beaches and build bonfires, and kind of watched either as gawkers or as good Samaritans, trying to help them find the boats, find their way into the harbor. The crew members in the back, knew they were in trouble. Three of them made the run to the front while everybody watched, gasping.
This was only 700 feet off the Duluth beach, which just amazes me. Not to give the book away, but the guys in front were able to survive through the night by keeping each other awake, building a fire in a bathtub. The guys in the back, I'll just suffice it to say, didn't fare as well.
CATHY: There are still remnants around Lake Superior of that storm, 1905. I mentioned the Madeira's anchor, the Mataafa. Are there any remnants of her on the bottom at all?
KURT: Well, the Mataafa was actually in. A lot of these boats were actually put back together, patched up, and sent back out, and had another 40 years of service. There is in Canal Park down in Duluth. I was there a few weeks ago, and there is a museum that has a few of the artifacts, including an old ore from one of the lifeboats of the Mataafa and an old ax from the Mataafa.
One of the boats I write about the, Ira Owen, which sank with everybody on board. It was carrying a load of barley off by the Apostle Island, sank with everybody. Like I said, that boat's never been found, so it's one of the thousands of shipwrecks that litter the bottom of the Great Lakes.
CATHY: The stories in the book of these various vessels that went down, just amazing. Of course, what came of that storm was Split Rock Lighthouse.
KURT: Well, there were also some more subtle changes in the shipping industry, too. The Mataafa, for one, was just had this huge deck. It's a 470 foot boat. And if you were out on the deck, you were in trouble.
After this, the ships that were coming out of the yards, the new ships, which were bigger, 500, 600 feet, they all had under deck passages, so nobody would be caught out on the deck. They also changed rules, so they had to have a line from the front of the boat to the back of the boat, in case you were out there, that you wouldn't get washed away. So it really did change a lot of things subtly. And, of course, the icon and the lasting memorial is the Split Rock Lighthouse.
CATHY: Well, Kurt, Thanks for stopping by.
KURT: Thanks for having me, Cathy.