True Tales of the Great Lakes (1976. Corr. 5th Printing)

Here is another of Dwight Boyer's books on the world's largest inland seas. His painstaking research has uncovered many long-forgotten adventures and tragedies of freshwater ships and sailors. He offers new material on the dramatic events that took place on each of the lakes during the terrible storm of 1913, a four-day weather convulsion in which twelve ships and their crews vanished forever, and approximately 300 sailors perished. Here too is the tragic story and the bitter aftermath of the capsizing of the excursion steamer Eastland, which sank in the Chicago River in 1915 with a loss of 835 lives. In a lighter vein there is the tragicomedy involving the City of Dresden, which had to jettison 500 kegs and 1,000 cases of whiskey to the delight of the farmers of Long Point on Lake Erie.This memorable collection contains many more authentic stories of ships, people and happenings. They run the gamut from sacrifice and superb bravery to carelessness, poor judgement, wanton disregard for human life, and often just plain bad luck.