Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Shipwrecked Chryslers and the Forgotten Treasure of Lake Superior

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Shipwrecked Chryslers and the Forgotten Treasure of Lake Superior · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
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all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
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designers, and everything in between.
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Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder.
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How did they get that job or become that person?
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The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
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Some might argue that treasure hunting is a thing of the past,
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that we've discovered, plotted, surveyed, and satellite mapped all
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there is to discover on this planet.
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But in reality, treasure hunting comes in all sorts of different forms.
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Consider for a moment American Pickers on History Channel.
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Aren't they searching for treasure?
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And with the rise in popularity of shows like The Curse of Oak Island,
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Skinwalker Ranch, and Lost Gold of World War II, it would seem that treasure
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hunting is still alive and well.
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There is another facet of searching that's especially intriguing to
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me, and has been brought to the surface as recently as last year.
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Take, for instance, the discovery of Ernest Shackleton's
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lost vessel, The endurance.
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You're right, Don.
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And our audience is probably wondering what this actually has to do with cars.
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As we reported on drive through episode number 20, March of 2022, there was a
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shipwreck containing millions of dollars of high end vehicles like Porsches,
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Lamborghinis, Bugattis, and more.
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And this isn't the first time vehicles have been lost at sea.
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And with us tonight is author and explorer, Larry Jorgensen, who joins us
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to talk about a little known shipwreck that cost Detroit hundreds of vehicles.
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So welcome to Break Fix, Larry.
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Thank you.
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It's a pleasure to be here and talk about one of my favorite subjects,
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which is shipwrecks in Upper Michigan.
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Well, normally we would ask folks about their motorsports or vehicle enthusiast
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origin story, but in this case, I think we need to dive right in, pun intended,
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into the beginning of this story.
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So from what we understand, this all came about because a single
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photograph set it into motion?
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Right.
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I was visiting up in Copper Harbor, Michigan.
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That's way on the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Lake Superior.
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And when I was up there, I picked up a little tourist brochure.
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It had a picture and about a paragraph and a half about a shipwreck.
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The more I looked at it, the more I thought, this is an amazing story.
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And I started doing research on it.
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You have a personal tie to this particular area of Michigan as well.
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So what drew you, again, to that photograph, to that pamphlet?
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What were you doing in the area that drew you back into this whole story?
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Way back when I was, as they say, a news dog for a television station
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in green Bay, that was my first introduction to the upper peninsula.
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So much history up there.
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I went up because at that time there was a strike of copper miners going
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on that ultimately led to the closure of all the copper mines in that area.
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So I was covering that as a news dog, I was interviewing people
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and became fascinated with the peninsula of upper Michigan.
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After that, I would go up for other stories.
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After the strike issue was resolved, I just made it a point that if there was
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something going on, In upper Michigan, I wanted to be the guy up there to cover it.
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Fortunately, at some point in my career at the station in Green
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Bay, I got to be the news director.
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So it was easy to say, I'm going to take care of this one.
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I'm going to upper Michigan.
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We covered a lot of stories up there.
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We covered the last run of the passenger train that went from
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Milwaukee to the upper peninsula.
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We were on that train, covered lots and lots of important stories.
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Really fell in love with the area and after I got out of television,
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radio news, because I'm originally from northern Wisconsin, it was easy
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for me to get access back up there for just for fun, for snowmobiling.
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Back in the late 60s, early 70s, when what is that?
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That's a snowmobile.
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You know, so I've got a lot of history with the Upper Peninsula.
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Moving into that regional situation that you've got there.
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You've got a personal touch.
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You've got a personal connection to the region.
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Captain William Mackin, he was the one in charge of the city of Bangor ship.
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Does he have any family still around to tell the stories that he told?
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No, he doesn't.
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Long since gone.
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He stayed with Nicholson after the accident.
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And then finally, as Nicholson changed hands, new owners came in, he was
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moved on, you know, and he became.
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The captain of the ship that carries cars to the Mackinac Island
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hired by the state of Michigan.
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And that was his last job.
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And he did that for many years.
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I have been able to talk with the granddaughter of the
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family that actually saved.
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The crew, after they were finally rescued from the boat and almost froze
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to death before they were finally brought into civilization, a lot of
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them were badly, badly frostbitten.
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It's a wonder they didn't lose limbs.
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Those are the kind of people I could find to talk to.
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Some of the pictures came from the daughter of the captain of
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the Coast Guard rescue boat.
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He was, besides being the captain of the rescue boat, he
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was an amateur photographer.
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What a man to have on the spot, right?
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And there are some fantastic photos, thanks to Captain Glazer and his
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daughter, who passed the photos on down, and we got access to them.
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It made the whole book to have access to those photos.
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So there was no loss of life with the city of Bangor accident.
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Is that right?
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No loss of life.
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And how many men were on board or how many people were on board that ship?
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23 after they hit the wreath, the way they got to shore is they were
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able to chop a lifeboat free from the ice that had already accumulated
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and they would take the lifeboat and, you know, back and forth until they
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got everybody from the ship on shore.
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Then the problem is.
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Now what do we do?
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Some of these guys, you know, were dressed like they just come from Detroit.
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We're going to a party or something.
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I mean, he had loafers on and you know, they were not prepared for the challenge.
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They were about to get into a four feet of snow and near zero
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temperatures to make matters worse.
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There's no communications.
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No one knows.
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The ship was crashed.
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Basically what makes it an amazing story is the ship was carrying 240
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brand new, brand new as in 1927, Chryslers from Detroit when it
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hit a reef and the ship was towed.
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When you look at the maps of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes,
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it's not on there, nowhere.
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And there's been 6, 000 shipwrecks on the Great Lakes.
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This one, for whatever reason, is, I don't want to say it's a secret,
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but it just sort of tucked away.
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Few people knew about it, but nobody really got excited about it.
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Here it is, a shipwreck where the cars were actually rescued.
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You know, in those days, it was not uncommon for those
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big steamers to carry autos.
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You didn't have good roads and big trucks hauling autos around.
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So a good way to transport new autos from Detroit.
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To wherever, as long as you could reach it on the great
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lakes was on boats, big steamers.
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So was that a more effective than by rail as well, or did they kind
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of go back and forth depending?
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They had rail, but they found out that you could get a lot of cars on a big steamer.
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And water rates are always less than land rates.
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If you could get there with a ship.
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You were gonna save money in the process of delivering that car.
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And so they used it wherever they could.
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So you mentioned something really interesting, 6,000
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shipwrecks on the Great Lakes.
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Why so many?
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Is there a common thread here, even with the ship that we're gonna
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be talking about in more detail?
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The City of Banger, it's called.
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What's the Deal?
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Why so many shipwrecks?
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You take the history of the Great Lakes, that goes back quite a while and you
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had a a lot of in the early years.
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poorly constructed ships, bad weather, no communications, no weather warnings that,
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hey, you know, such as a storm is coming.
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So there was a lot of them in the very early years.
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And the people that study this say, yeah, there's 6, 000 that have been recorded.
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And there's been people that have said, and there's probably a lot
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more that were never even recorded.
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Now Lake Superior is nasty.
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It is probably the one that gets the most in the way of shipwrecks because
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the lake is so big and so deep.
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I mean, look at the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a good example.
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That hasn't been that long in history.
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Basically it got into such a storm that the Edmund Fitzgerald
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was carrying taconite, iron ore.
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And it was heavy.
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The waves were so big on Lake Superior, one wave lifted up the front of the
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boat, another wave lifted up the rear of the boat, and the center, where the
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cargo is, was suspended with no support, and the boat basically broke in half.
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I've talked to a diver who has gone down to it, and he said,
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absolutely, that's what happened.
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The ship was broken in half, and it is on the bottom of Lake Superior.
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Like most shipwrecks on the bottom of lakes like Lake Superior, it's preserved
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and The water will preserve it forever.
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How many ships are still at the bottom of Lake Superior?
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Lots of them.
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I don't know if anybody's ever recorded that, but you talk to the
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divers, the great lakes are one of their favorite places to dive
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because they can go down to and see these ships that are well preserved.
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It's cold, fresh water.
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that preserves them.
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Every once in a while, you know, you'll see a story where they have
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found another wreck and were able to document it, what it was and so forth.
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And occasionally even one will sort of, I don't want to say surface, but
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the water will change as such that part of it will actually be seen on shore.
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Those are not big ships, by the way.
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Those are smaller yachts, you might call them, that went down in the very early
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years of traveling on the Great Lakes.
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There's a lot out there.
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Lake Superior is pretty rough.
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Is it a geological phenomena?
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A weather phenomena?
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I mean, lakes generally, they have their waves and their moments, but they're
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not usually rough like the ocean.
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I've been in Lake Superior when it's been just absolutely, almost like a mirror.
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But you get a good weather system come in and that lake gets vicious.
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It's so big and so deep.
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The weather systems can just really whip up a big lake storm.
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And that's what happened to the banger.
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Keep in mind that the ship was not originally intended to be a auto carrier.
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It was originally intended to haul.
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Iron ore, it was intended to haul grain.
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It was a basic carrier on the Great Lakes.
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Well, the Nicholson Transport Company in Detroit got into hauling automobiles.
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At one point, they had like 12 ships that their task was to haul automobiles.
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It took remodeling, if you want to call it that, of the ship.
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They would put in a good solid lower deck, put in an elevator, On the upper
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deck, they would completely level it.
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Openings where cargo would normally be brought in were gone, completely
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redesigned to accommodate automobiles.
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And Nicholson was one of the biggest.
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At the time of the banger, they had 12 ships.
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They had converted.
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into auto carriers.
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One of them, in fact, was built in the same shipyard, like a half
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a year after the, uh, bagger.
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The two ships were actually owned by the same person, the same group of
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people that financed building them.
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And they had them built to be regular cargo haulers on the Great Lakes.
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They sold them to Nicholson and that's how they became auto haulers.
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And to put this in perspective for our listeners, you have to remember
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that At the time, we're talking the mid to late 1920s, an auto carrying
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ship is a relatively new thing.
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It's a new thing, and if it had been previously used for iron ore or other
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things, the problem that they ran into with the Banger, and I presume others,
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they would ride higher in the water than the boat was designed for when
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it was designed to be an ore carrier.
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Consequently, when it got into a storm, like the Banger did, it would really get
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tossed around, and that's what happened.
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It got tossed so bad, the captain lost the rudder, they lost complete control of
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it, and that's how it ended up crashing on this reef off of the Copper Harbor.
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To add to the problem, Captain Mackin, bless his heart, He thought that
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they had sailed past Copper Harbor, that they were west of Copper Harbor.
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He made that determination because he thought he saw a well
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known mountain that is at Copper Harbor called Broccoli Mountain.
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Well, the fact of the matter is they were still east of
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Copper Harbor in Lake Superior.
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So the guys finally get off the boat, they get to shore, they say, okay, If we
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can get to Copper Harbor, there's hope.
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At that time, it's a little town, what, two, three dozen people that are
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brave enough to live there year round.
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So they think, okay, what we need to do is we need to walk east.
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That's what we need to do because the captain says we're west of Copper Harbor.
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They weren't.
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They were east.
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They wandered aimlessly until somebody realized they were
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going in the wrong direction.
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They had to turn around, work their way back.
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The one night they got back, they sort of camped out, if you want to call it
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that, not too far from the abandoned ship, but they were on shore, obviously.
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They continued along, and it was to the point where they were beginning
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to think, we're not going to make it.
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Some of them were really badly, badly frostbitten.
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As it happened.
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There was another shipwreck that same time.
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I mean, there were 5, 999 other ones, right?
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Well, this one occurred the same time, and it was east of where the banger
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was, and a little bit further down on the peninsula, kind of went ashore.
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In fact, later it was floated and used again.
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But two of the mates from that ship were able to get on shore, and they walked
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quite a distance before they were able to get a telephone, whatever a telephone
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was in those days, and they called the Coast Guard rescue station at Eagle
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Harbor, and the Coast Guard was out to rescue them, not knowing that here's this
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crew from the banger that's wandering around lost in the Upper Peninsula.
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They actually, the Coast Guard crew went by the abandoned banger.
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not knowing it when they went to rescue the crew.
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They got the second crew, I think that was about 19 guys, onto the rescue boat.
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They're coming back and all of a sudden the captain of the rescue
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boat sees the abandoned banger.
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So he pulls in, no sign of life, obviously.
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So they continue on towards Copper Harbor.
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Well, they get a little further on and there's a little bay.
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And they spot these guys struggling through the snow, so the captain
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pulls in and he yells at them, build a fire, build a big fire, stay where
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you are so I know where you are.
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When I get the first crew to safety at Copper Harbor, I'll
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come back and get you guys.
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We're talking about a shipwreck and basically there's two
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shipwrecks I've always been involved in, which was Titanic.
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And then there was Andrea Doria, which of course was also carrying
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a Chrysler, which leads me to believe if you're going to ship your
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Chrysler, don't put it on a boat.
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Just forget it.
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Chryslers and boats don't get along.
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But during the whole rescue mission for the men aboard the city of Bangor, there
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was a sheriff and his wife's name was Ida.
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And Ida was one terrific cook.
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Yeah.
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Well, the crew from the Bangor finally.
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Got the Copper Harbor, you know, we got a little town and then we
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got 50 some rescued ship crew men.
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Where are we going to put them?
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Well, the ones from the other ship, most of them were convinced they could
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go to Eagle Harbor where the Coast Guard had a facility there for them.
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Where were the rest of them going to go?
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Well, there was the Berg home.
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Mr.
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and Mrs.
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Berg said, we'll take them in.
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And it was a chore just getting them to the home because some of
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them were so badly frostbitten.
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Covered with snow, just exhausted that it was a chore just to get
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them the half mile to the house.
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Mr.
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Berg had slaughtered two hogs in the fall.
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So they had pork and they had a cow that was described as the best producing cow
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in the town and they had some chickens.
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So they had provisions and they said, we'll take them in.
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Not knowing how long they were going to have them or if when they fed them,
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if would be replenished before spring.
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First of all, the guys came in and they just crashed around the
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old stove and started to thaw out.
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One of the children, and this was told to me by the granddaughter, his job was
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to mop up the water as they Little by little, they, there are fed, the ones that
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are most seriously injured, cross bit, whatever, they are able to get them to the
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hospital in Laurium because the same auto dealer in Calumet had been experimenting
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with this, you know, tracks on, um, like the old Model T snowmobile thing.
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In fact, he's the one that took the insurance agent out to look
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at the wreck with a snow vehicle.
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He would take the ones that were seriously injured in his little
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snowmobile into Loriam to the hospital.
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The rest of them, little by little, were taken by sleigh into the hospital.
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This was not an overnight project.
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This took a while.
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They finally got them.
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All to the hospital, some of them ended up staying there a couple months
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before they were able to be released.
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And I was told that some of them sort of formed a relationship with nurses and
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decided they didn't want to go back home.
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There may be some families in the Keweenaw Peninsula that are directly related to
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crewmen who were on the, uh, banger.
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We haven't been able to track that down, but it's a good
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story that we've been told.
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Anyhow, After this is all done, he runs for sheriff and he's elected.
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Well, the county seat is not Copper Harbor.
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It's Eagle River, Michigan.
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So they move there and he's the sheriff.
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She's sort of the undersheriff assistant or whatever.
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The story that was told to me by her granddaughter was that when.
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Someone would commit a crime and would be found guilty, have the choice of
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paying his fine or going to jail.
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He would usually select jail because it was known that Ida was
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a good cook, just like you said.
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So anyhow, he's sheriff.
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For a full term, he runs for reelection and he is reelected.
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His term is to start in January.
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In December, he has a second term.
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He's helping someone who's stuck in the snow with his vehicle.
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He gets pneumonia.
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He dies like several weeks into his term.
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Who becomes sheriff?
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Ida becomes sheriff.
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Not only does she become sheriff, she runs and successfully reelected two more times.
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She is written in Michigan history as one of those notable women in history.
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You know, she was quite a lady.
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In the book, there is a copy of a Christmas card that they received
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when they were in Copper Harbor from the first mate of the banger who.
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His home was in Ohio and he had gotten back to Ohio and he had sent them a
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lengthy, not just Merry Christmas, but thanking them for saving the crew,
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the hospitality, everything they did.
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The granddaughter who has told me so much about them, they
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have a little summer home.
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She's from Indiana, but they go up in the summer to Copper Harbor and I met with
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her twice and the second time she comes up and she says, I've been digging through
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grandma's boxes and look what I found.
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And it's that Christmas card.
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She allowed me to take it, to copy it, to put it in the book.
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So at this point, you got two shipwrecks at the same time.
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One is run aground, and then you've got this banger with a big hole in the hole.
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Taking on water, but it's not sinking.
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No, it couldn't sink.
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It's high on this reef, you know.
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But the cars are Submerged somewhat or relatively safe.
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Well the cars in the lower deck some water now We need to also add to this.
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We said there were 240 Chrysler's there were 240 cars Six of them were whippets.
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They were made in Toledo how they ended up in Detroit on that ship I
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haven't been able to find out what six whippets were on that ship.
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And the irony in that is that the Willys Overland whippet, for those unfamiliar
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with the car, eventually would merge into the Chrysler corporation many,
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many years later, one big happy family.
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We've got 200 and some Chryslers, six whippets.
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Now, when the ship got into this tossing and turning in the storm.
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There was a string of 13 cars, all chained together under one chain on deck.
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That chain broke and those 13 cars are on the bottom of Lake Superior.
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To this day, to this day, they didn't make it.
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There was another car when the ship hit the reef, it threw the
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car, this one particular car off.
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It was so badly damaged.
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It ended up going ashore, not.
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And it was so badly damaged that when they finally got the cars out of there,
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that one had to be taken out by slay.
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And ultimately it was sold to an auto dealer in Calumet,
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Michigan for 25 for parts.
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Yeah.
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So we, we did have some vehicle casualties in this, but basically over 200 of them.
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We're able to be rescued if you want to use that term salvage, whatever, and
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brought to the little town, the Copper Harbor, there's a couple of pictures
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in the book of 200 and some Chrysler's lined up in the town of the town.
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There's a little village of Copper Harbor, probably population.
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What?
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24, 30.
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I don't know.
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You know, there's more cars than there are people there.
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Yeah.
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A long shot.
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So now we've got them there.
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The other thing in trying to get the cars there, it's winter, it's cold.
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First of all, they waited for two months until the ice froze around the reef.
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Okay.
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So now we can get the cars off the boat onto the reef.
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First, they thought, well, we'll build a road through the woods to Copper
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Harbor, which was about six, seven miles.
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And they got about a mile with that project, and they said,
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no, that's not going to work.
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Somebody said, wait a minute.
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The ice along the shore is solid.
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Let's drive the cars along the shore.
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And there was enough ice frozen that you could actually get them,
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drive them to shore on the ice.
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Some of the batteries didn't work.
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Some of them didn't even have batteries.
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So the ones that had batteries that were working, they would
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drive those to Copper Harbor.
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Somebody would take the batteries back, you know, this was the way it went until
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we got all the cars into Copper Harbor.
23:42
Larry, was there somebody paying for these cars to get off the ship?
23:46
I'm assuming the insurance would have just reimbursed Chrysler.
23:48
Once the, uh, ship was declared a total loss and that came pretty quick.
23:53
The insurance guy was there like very soon after the wreck and declared it.
23:57
A loss.
23:58
Walter himself went up and looked at it and agreed it was a loss.
24:02
Walter Chrysler decides, Got a ship with a bunch of my cars on it.
24:06
I want my cars back.
24:08
In which, in those days, you know, you could get them back
24:10
and spruce them up a little bit and put them back in the market.
24:12
So he hired a salvage company from Duluth.
24:16
And it was in fact the salvage company.
24:19
I don't think Walter paid for it, probably his insurance company did.
24:22
The salvage company from Duluth came up with this plan.
24:25
They said, wait till the ice freezes, we can get them off the ship, off the reef,
24:30
and we'll get them to Copper Harbor.
24:32
So they posted a guard shack out there for two months to watch cars, make
24:37
sure, you know, and finally, the way I described it, they got the cars off.
24:42
There's a great picture in the book.
24:44
They build a ramp from the reef up to the top deck.
24:47
So the cars on the top deck would come down and then the cars on the lower
24:51
deck would be raised to the top deck and they would come down the ramp.
24:55
So they finally got them all off.
24:57
The ones on the top, and again, photos that we were able to get,
25:02
show that some of them were so badly covered by ice and snow, you didn't
25:06
even know there was a car there.
25:07
There's pictures of these guys packing away on ice and snow
25:11
to uncover these cars on top.
25:14
So we get them to Copper Harbor.
25:15
Now the salvage company, they agreed on a fee of like 140, some 150 a car for
25:23
every car that is returned to Detroit.
25:25
So how do you do that?
25:27
Well, they're in Copper Harbor.
25:29
The distance from Copper Harbor to the closest railroad.
25:32
Goes back to your question.
25:33
Can they all on rail is about 40 miles sounds simple, except it's
25:38
wintertime and that road hasn't been plowed for a long time.
25:43
And you've got places on that road where snow is 10, 12 feet deep.
25:48
Now what that whole peninsula, there's two counties that make up the peninsula.
25:52
So there's two County highway crews that are pressed into action,
25:57
trying to plow the road open, which they never plow in the winter.
26:00
If you live in Copper Harbor in the winter, you better make sure
26:04
you have provisions till spring.
26:06
They work for two weeks.
26:07
They actually bring in a new type of plow.
26:10
It's one of these turbine powered plows.
26:13
It was just being developed over in Minnesota.
26:16
And they bring that in to finish up the last 10 miles of the journey.
26:20
They finally get the road.
26:21
Oh, in the meantime, they've been hauling gas by tanks on slay to
26:26
copper Harbor, because eventually we want to drive the cars to Calumet
26:30
to get them on a train, right?
26:32
Okay.
26:32
So we got a road open.
26:34
We got fuel.
26:35
We only got two dozen people that live in this town.
26:38
The salvage company says, tell you what, I'll pay anybody five
26:42
dollars to drive one of those cars from Copper Harbor to Calumet.
26:47
Boy, there were a lot of kids at ditch school that day.
26:51
And whoever, people just, in doing the book, you talk about talking to Relatives
26:57
of, you know, descendants of, I'd talk to people who said, Oh, yeah, my grandfather
27:01
drove one of those cars, you know, or my uncle, you know, so anyhow, this is
27:06
where it really gets interesting because think about it, you're going to be paid 5.
27:11
To drive a new Chrysler down this 40 mile road.
27:16
But you got a Chrysler.
27:17
We know for sure one of them didn't make it.
27:19
Of course, as you do, as you start researching the story,
27:22
you have people that come up to you and say, I know so and so.
27:25
When you get closer to Calumet, there's some side roads, and some of
27:30
those sort of disappeared, you know.
27:32
You got your choice, 5 or a new Chrysler.
27:35
It doesn't take anybody real smart to figure that out.
27:38
And we've got photographic proof of this.
27:41
Well, I'm proof of one of the Chryslers too, but we know the
27:44
Whippets didn't go back to Detroit.
27:46
If the insurance company or Walter himself was paying for this rescue,
27:51
he's not about to bring a bunch of Whippets back to Detroit.
27:54
That wasn't part of the deal.
27:55
He wants his Chryslers back.
27:57
In the book, there's a picture of one of the Whippets that in fact ended up
28:03
at one of the places in Copper Harbor where the, the crewmen were taken in.
28:08
Ended up with one of those whippets.
28:10
Ultimately, it went to somebody else.
28:12
The picture in the book, the shed it was in is about to fall down.
28:16
And here's this whippet.
28:18
It ultimately got sold to somebody else for 500.
28:21
So there's one whip.
28:22
Talk to a lady who's with the historical society, who back when she was very young,
28:28
bought a whippet at an estate auction.
28:31
There's two, the hotel in Calumet has a display on a wall back there, and it
28:38
has two wooden wheels from a Whippet.
28:41
That's three.
28:42
So we're missing three.
28:43
The best guess is whoever had them when they became immobile,
28:48
just to the trash yard with them.
28:49
We're convinced no Whippets went back to Detroit.
28:52
And the other funny thing too, you know, City of Bangor.
28:55
She was converted, what, in 1926.
28:57
That's when the wreck took place and Chrysler had only been in
29:00
business just a little over a year.
29:02
It's a brand new company.
29:03
At that time, you know, 26, 27, 28, those were key years for Chrysler.
29:08
It kicked them up to the point where they were what, like
29:10
number four in the industry.
29:12
They were innovators, so to speak, in those days, they were on to
29:16
something that people were buying Chrysler's, that's for sure.
29:19
To Don's point, they were brand new Walter Chrysler obviously was known
29:23
in the community, but the company itself was still basically newborn.
29:26
And then to shell out all this money between the drivers, the return fees
29:31
to get him on the trains, you know, obviously there's money coming back
29:34
from the insurance company, but he was paying for the insurance.
29:36
There was a lot of expense.
29:38
Because of the shipwreck.
29:40
And then you kind of wonder yourself, how did Chrysler afford it?
29:43
Yeah, it wasn't worthwhile.
29:45
They figured the salvage company cost, and it was over 30, 000.
29:49
And then they figured another four to five thou to get the cars back to Detroit.
29:53
In today's dollars, in today's economy, in 2023, 30, 000 in 1926,
30:02
27 is equal to nearly half a million dollars in payload on that ship.
30:08
So that's not chunk change by any stretch of the imagination.
30:12
That is a significant amount of money in the 1920s.
30:15
And it makes you wonder, did Chrysler just lose money hand over fist on these cars?
30:20
I mean, would it have been better to, you know what?
30:22
Let them go, let the people in Wisconsin have them.
30:25
I don't need them, I'll build more.
30:27
How much were each one of those cars worth?
30:29
They were about 850 a car.
30:31
And we saved 200 of them?
30:33
200 of them.
30:34
So I guess we have to do the math to figure out if it was worthwhile.
30:38
Apparently it was.
30:39
In today's dollars, each car was 13, 348.
30:44
Wow.
30:45
Pretty costly project, but I guess it must've worked out.
30:48
Okay.
30:48
And cars fortunately weren't damaged.
30:51
You know, the ones that they go off the ship, pretty good shape.
30:55
Yeah, I don't know.
30:56
This sounds like a crazy money losing scheme.
30:59
Maybe it was more pride than anything.
31:01
That's what I'm wondering.
31:02
Yeah.
31:02
You know, you can see one of the cars that stayed.
31:06
On the peninsula, a man bought it from the Chrysler dealer up there, and he
31:11
told them that he got it off the ship.
31:13
He was the same guy that got the damaged one, right?
31:17
And he sold it to this fam, to the man, and he had it for a couple
31:22
years, and then he died, and the car was passed on through the family.
31:26
For 69 years, the one guy that had the car, who was actually
31:32
the brother of the man who bought it, was so pleased with the car.
31:36
He would drive it as much as he could, parades and whatever.
31:40
He just, he practically lived in it.
31:42
He put 200, 000 miles on that car.
31:45
Ultimately, it went through the family.
31:48
It finally got sold to a person who thought he would go to restore it, make
31:53
a fortune, and after realizing what that would cost, he didn't, and he sold it to
31:59
the museum and it is in the Eagle Harbor.
32:03
Lighthouse museum on Lake Superior, probably about 30
32:08
miles away from Copper Harbor.
32:10
So it kind of went back home.
32:12
We know there's 13 cars still at the bottom of Lake Superior.
32:15
So we've got any divers out there that want to go check them out.
32:18
They can, but you know, what happened to the other cars?
32:20
We talked about some of the whip it, some of them are still lost.
32:23
Things like that.
32:24
Is there a registry?
32:26
Of remaining vehicles out there.
32:28
And I'm wondering, have you been able to get your hands on the ships manifest
32:33
to get an original list of VIN numbers?
32:36
In the book, we talk about the log book and the log book didn't surface, never
32:42
available, and then all of a sudden back in about sixties, somebody is
32:47
going through the woods close to where the wreck was, turns over a log a, a
32:54
big piece of timber, and there's just.
32:56
Book under there.
32:57
Like obviously Captain Mackin wanted to put the logbook there to be able
33:02
to come back and get it at some point.
33:04
This guy finds his book not knowing really what he's got until someone
33:10
advises him and it ends up at the museum.
33:13
But the back pages that would have had the serial numbers are gone.
33:18
Why?
33:19
We don't know, but they're gone.
33:21
The museum has had historian come up from Chrysler, look at the car, you know,
33:26
try to figure out information on it.
33:29
Yes, it must have been one of those, but there's no paperwork to track it.
33:33
So there's nothing even on the Chrysler factory side saying that these cars were
33:37
put on the ship destined for Minnesota or wherever they were headed to?
33:40
Well, I was told how much of it is true.
33:42
I don't know, but I was told by Chrysler.
33:45
That those records were part of a lot of records that were destroyed in a fire.
33:51
Now, maybe you guys know when the fire was, you know, within our
33:55
lifetime, there was a hundred years.
33:57
Yeah.
33:57
I mean, within the past few decades of this fire in Detroit destroyed
34:02
a Chrysler archives or whatever, and those records were in there.
34:06
I tried that.
34:07
I tried to find, could not find.
34:09
I've talked to people who are members of Chrysler car clubs, Chrysler enthusiasts,
34:15
you know, and have gotten nowhere.
34:18
I even advertised at one point for people who may think they
34:22
have a car that was on the banger.
34:24
And I got nowhere with that.
34:26
That was an effort that went nowhere.
34:29
Those types of ships.
34:30
To your point, this was converted from carrying ore and things like that.
34:34
So, you know, designed to carry an extremely heavy payload and obviously
34:37
cars are larger objects, so they take up a lot of space, but sometimes
34:40
those ships are carrying other things along with the major payload.
34:45
Was there anything else of significance being transported alongside the cars?
34:49
No, only the food to feed the crew.
34:52
It was strictly cars.
34:54
And you know, we mentioned in the book, one of the reporters from
34:58
Detroit said there must've been a jinx on ships who were carrying cars,
35:02
ironically, about two years after.
35:05
The Banger, one of the ships that was also owned by Nicholson, was carrying
35:10
nashes from Kenosha up Lake Michigan.
35:13
Bad storm off of Port Washington, etc.
35:17
An ore carrier coming down from Escanaba smashed into it.
35:22
It sank like within six minutes with all those nashes on it to this day on the
35:27
bottom of Lake Michigan, there is the remains of a ship and 200 and some nashes,
35:33
and it is sort of ingest been referred to as the world's largest Nash museum.
35:41
So there, there were other incidences where cars.
35:45
Went to the bottom where car haulers were involved in accidents.
35:50
Whether they disappeared or were still at the bottom of the ocean was, as we
35:54
discussed, pretty significant to Chrysler.
35:57
So I wonder, you know, without the manifest, without the records, Chrysler's
36:00
lost their documents on their end.
36:03
Do you have any idea, other than the whippets?
36:05
If it was the same model of Chrysler, were they only building one car?
36:08
Were there different types?
36:09
Were there like limousines or their convertibles?
36:11
It was the same model.
36:13
I've got a picture of an ad that one of the dealers in Duluth had run promoting.
36:19
I'm getting these wonderful Chryslers.
36:22
And, and as I, I guess the best way to describe it was sort of a mid range.
36:26
Priced vehicle, the kind of car that anybody can afford.
36:30
And that's what the ship was.
36:32
It was all of them.
36:33
Something to compete with the model a at that point, right?
36:36
Probably the ship, the city of banger, she gets laid up on a reef.
36:41
The Chrysler's get unloaded.
36:43
The Whippets get unloaded the ice eventually is going to fall and you're
36:47
going to have this ship sitting there.
36:48
What became of the actual ship initially in the early stages
36:53
of what do we do with the ship?
36:55
There was one salvage company that said, ah, we'll re float it and
36:59
patch the hole and it'll become sort of a barge type thing, they
37:03
would use it for hauling stuff.
37:05
They actually put a temporary patch on that big hole in the side of the ship
37:10
and put pumps in there and pumped it out figuring we're going to do that.
37:14
Well, guess what?
37:15
It was too high on the reef.
37:16
They couldn't get anywhere to it to get it off the reef.
37:21
So it sits there, you know, they brought their tug in and they
37:24
finally gave up on that idea.
37:25
So it sits, it sat on that reef for 18 years, people would go out on
37:31
the shore and they'd look at it.
37:33
You know, there's even a picture in the book of in the wintertime.
37:36
You could walk out to it.
37:38
There's a picture in the book of Mr.
37:40
Berg, the sheriff sitting by the gash in the boat.
37:44
Okay, 18 years.
37:46
It's sincere.
37:46
What happens?
37:48
World War II.
37:50
We need steel.
37:52
And finally, a salvage company says, We'll take care of this.
37:56
And they go out and they cut it down to the waterline.
37:58
They salvage as much as they can for the war.
38:01
But it doesn't stop there.
38:03
I got a picture of the boat when it's cut down to the waterline,
38:07
which is just like a floating barge.
38:09
There were two guys, they got their names even, that were logging in
38:14
the woods, cutting down trees.
38:16
And they saw all this going on and they said, you know, we can make more
38:20
money if we can go out and salvage some steel than we can cutting down trees.
38:24
So they come up with this crazy vehicle.
38:27
It was a old truck type vehicle with a big winch in the back.
38:32
And they go out there and they start salvaging the pieces
38:35
that are under the water.
38:36
A little dynamite, a little whatever to bust things loose.
38:40
And they make some pretty good extra money doing that sort of
38:44
the pirate division of salvage.
38:47
They weren't authorized.
38:48
They just did it, you know, and to this day, occasionally there'll be
38:53
something that will come up in the sand.
38:55
One of the divers might find under water, a piece of steel or something.
38:59
So even at the museum, there are pieces of the ship that were found in that manner.
39:05
Also in the museum, by the way, there is the captain's desk, the
39:09
captain's jacket, and what's left of that log book are all in the museum.
39:14
The desk was given by the captain to the Bergs.
39:19
He must've been able to get it off of the boat somehow.
39:22
And he gave it to the Burgs.
39:23
They in turn have loaned it on permanent loan to the museum.
39:28
So the captain's desk was also rescued.
39:31
At the actual wreck site.
39:33
Is there anything left of the city of Bangor or has it all been salvaged out?
39:36
And it's pretty well salvaged.
39:39
Or is found under the water, small pieces, you know, a foot, a foot and
39:43
a half of steel or things like that.
39:45
But to Don's point, is there maybe like one of those Memorial historic placards
39:49
or anything like that, where you could actually go visit the crash site today?
39:52
You know, we've talked about that.
39:54
It is so remote to get to that site.
39:57
It would take some funding to build a decent trail out there.
40:01
And one time I'm told there was sort of a handmade sign on the shore saying,
40:06
this is where, you know, but that's gone.
40:08
Copper Harbor now is a big tourist area in the summer, especially.
40:12
I think somebody would say, Hey, let's get a marker out here.
40:15
Let's plow a trail, encourage people to go see it.
40:18
Maybe my book will stir that up.
40:20
You know, at the end of the book.
40:22
I make reference to the fact that saying it, it takes a village.
40:26
Well, I'll tell you what, in this story, it took a peninsula.
40:31
It took hundreds of people in a peninsula to make it all happen.
40:35
From the sheriff to his wife, to the kids that drove the cars, to the captain
40:40
of the Coast Guard boat, to the people that just, what can we do to help?
40:44
Amazing story.
40:45
And talking to many authors, and I'm sure there's.
40:47
Folks out there right now listening to this that are, you know, maybe trying to
40:50
write their memoir or the Great American Novel or whatever it might be, there's,
40:54
as you go through the process of writing, you learn that not everything can fit in
40:59
the book and things get left to the side.
41:01
It's almost like television, except the blooper reel or the B reel, right?
41:05
So, in this case, what's on the B reel of the book?
41:08
What are some of the stories that you captured in your research process
41:11
that didn't make it into the book?
41:12
There is a rumor and I haven't been able to track it down.
41:16
But there is a rumor that train, when it went to Detroit, got into a wreck.
41:22
And, and there is a person who, and I can't, I found his son, but he's gone.
41:30
In this little thing that I read, he claims to have a picture of some of those
41:34
cars when they were thrown off the train.
41:37
Of all the things I've heard, that is the Holy grail.
41:40
That picture and his son lives in lower Michigan.
41:45
I was able to track him down.
41:47
He said, dad's been gone for 25 years.
41:50
He said, yes, he was a historian of sorts in the upper peninsula.
41:55
He was fascinated by it.
41:57
And I have never seen that picture and never heard of it.
42:00
So I've got people looking, there've been other stories about people have come to
42:04
me and said, and I've got their names, you know, well, my grandpa drove one of
42:08
those cars and boy, there's somewhere there's, but you know, the other.
42:13
Photo that's missing.
42:15
You think about, now there was a newspaper in Calumet at that time.
42:18
Now there isn't, it's long since gone.
42:21
I was able to find two articles in the archives that were in that newspaper.
42:26
It talked about wreck and then it talked about the cars are coming
42:30
to Detroit and they're sending a special guy up from Detroit who
42:34
knows how to load them on these flat cars and get them back and so forth.
42:39
Okay.
42:39
The newspaper.
42:40
Twice covered the story, at least twice that I could find.
42:43
Do you think anybody would have thought to go down and take a picture of
42:48
the cars being loaded on the train?
42:51
Doesn't exist.
42:52
I've gone to the archives, even ran an ad in the local newspaper, the daily
42:59
newspaper, figuring if somebody's grandfather or uncle or whatever.
43:04
Look, one of those cars here, he probably went to the train
43:07
when it was being loaded.
43:08
And maybe he took a picture and maybe there's one in somebody's album.
43:13
Do you know two pictures that are missing for the revised volume?
43:18
Okay.
43:18
Return to the bagger picture of was there a train wreck?
43:22
Did we lose some cars in the woods?
43:24
And why didn't anybody take a picture of them?
43:28
on the train.
43:28
Where are those two pictures?
43:30
I wonder if somebody did take that picture and there was no room for it in the paper.
43:35
Who was the photographer at that newspaper?
43:37
Maybe it'd be worth it to try and contact that person or that person's family.
43:42
I mean, I don't know.
43:43
It's a long shot of long shots, but think about newspapers.
43:46
Eric just said it.
43:47
Not everything can make it in.
43:49
There's not enough space for everything to go in.
43:51
So they sent a photographer, they sent a reporter, they do their
43:53
story on the train wreck, they take the pictures, they get back home.
43:57
They print it, they type it out.
43:59
And Oh, there's just not enough room guys.
44:02
I'm sorry.
44:02
We can run the story, but no picture could be.
44:05
And obviously the photographer is long gone, right?
44:08
What we need to look at is some of the photographers that I have
44:11
talked to photographers, modern day photographers up there about this,
44:16
but not about who would have been.
44:18
And that was a small weekly newspaper.
44:20
So chances are the guy that wrote the article, ran the press, etc.
44:25
may have also been the guy that would have taken the picture.
44:27
Right.
44:28
Who was the editor of that little weekly newspaper?
44:32
Who are his descendants?
44:34
That may be the answer.
44:35
Because to show you what a secret, I don't want to say a secret, but a
44:39
kind of an unknown story this was.
44:42
When I first got interested in this, first place I went, besides a
44:46
historical association, Michigan Tech University, big university up there
44:51
in Houghton, they have an archives.
44:54
And I went to the lady, one of the ladies in the archives, and
44:57
I told her what I was doing.
44:59
Now she's in the archives in the Keweenaw Peninsula.
45:03
When I told her what I was looking for, she said, I've never heard of that.
45:07
She actually had to go to somebody else in the archives who said, Yeah,
45:12
I think we have something about that.
45:14
And they didn't have much.
45:16
But the lady in the archives did not know the story, didn't even know it existed.
45:22
And the other thing that has hampered my research.
45:26
The Daily Newspaper in Houghton, which is still in existence,
45:30
the late 1930s destroyed all of their papers up until then.
45:34
There's just too much space to get rid of them.
45:37
And, you know, I went to the one, uh, historical society in Houghton and she
45:42
said, those papers don't exist anymore from that newspaper, they're gone.
45:47
They just.
45:48
Decided to get rid of them.
45:50
Didn't put them on microfiche.
45:51
Nothing.
45:52
They're gone.
45:53
Unreal.
45:53
It's been a challenge.
45:54
Well, and it's so funny.
45:55
You say that there was once a little marker, a little
45:58
handmade marker, whatever.
45:59
But then you met the lady at the archive who knew nothing about this thing.
46:03
It's funny how it's like a split community.
46:05
There's people who knew about the City of Bangor wreck.
46:07
And there's people who had no clue, no idea that this ever happened.
46:11
And I can't help but wonder why, you know, why, why is it that nobody knew about it?
46:16
Was it because nobody died?
46:17
You think about it.
46:18
If a shipwreck, a plane wreck, when somebody dies,
46:20
that's what it makes big news.
46:21
That's when people all of a sudden, everybody knows about it.
46:24
Nobody died at city of banger.
46:25
Yeah.
46:26
I think the people that knew about it thought, well, okay.
46:29
So the thing went on a reef.
46:31
So big deal.
46:32
They didn't realize.
46:33
The value of the story of the cars.
46:37
And I didn't realize the value of that.
46:39
I set out to do a shipwreck book.
46:42
Okay.
46:43
I thought it was fascinating.
46:44
You know what's happened?
46:45
I've got as many people that are interested in vintage
46:49
cars that have come to me.
46:52
The book is for sale in numerous vintage car museum gift shops.
46:58
Blew me away when I realized that I had created two markets, not just people
47:04
that like to read about the great lakes and shipwrecks, but all these people
47:08
that are crazy about vintage cars.
47:10
It's amazing.
47:11
Besides affecting an entire peninsula.
47:15
It affects so many people in different ways.
47:17
So what's next?
47:18
Are you continuing to research on this story?
47:20
Are you working on another shipwreck or a different book?
47:23
What are you up to?
47:24
I am building a file called what abouts file for this one.
47:29
I may do part two, whatever.
47:30
We'll see what comes up there, but I am writing another book.
47:34
I've written prior to this one, I think my most successful venture.
47:38
And I write, I write like a newsman, find the facts and put them down.
47:42
You know, I wrote a book.
47:43
Called the Coca Cola trail.
47:45
And that was so successful that I wrote a sequel called
47:49
return to the Coca Cola trail.
47:51
And that book is about people and places, not Atlanta in the history of Coca Cola.
47:58
For example, chapter one.
48:00
Do you know Coca Cola was first bottled in Vicksburg,
48:03
Mississippi, not Atlanta, Georgia.
48:06
Okay.
48:06
And what we've done with that book and the sequel is we've told the
48:11
reader where you can go see touch and feel that it's Coca Cola history.
48:15
What it is now and what it was then the book is loaded with historical
48:20
photos and I've had people tell me I'm planning my next trip to see some of
48:26
these things that are in your book.
48:28
Again, that was a mission that really turned out successful.
48:31
What am I writing now?
48:32
I'm going back to snow country in a way.
48:34
I'm writing a book called Make It Go in the Snow.
48:39
We talk about the vehicle that took the insurance guy to the ship,
48:43
basically like a Model T, they put tracks on the wheels and they put
48:48
skis up front in place of the wheel.
48:50
And there was a guy who invented this in 1917 and patented,
48:56
copyrighted the name snowmobile.
48:58
So what we're doing is we're going from what is the modern day snowmobile.
49:04
backwards.
49:05
All these people that came up with ideas.
49:08
This book will be called Make It Go In the Snow, People and Ideas
49:13
in the History of Snowmobiles.
49:15
The stage we went through were snow vehicles, had the tracks on them.
49:21
There was a heck of an effort.
49:23
To power snow vehicles with airplane propellers.
49:26
And that, that became really big in Canada and it was developed in the
49:31
United States for a while until they realized it was a pretty dangerous
49:36
idea and they quit doing that.
49:37
But we found other things like we found a guy from Chicago who took
49:42
a model, a Ford, and in just a few months in his basement in Chicago.
49:49
Made a snowmobile.
49:50
This was like in 1919.
49:52
It's unbelievable.
49:54
It's a big old boxy thing, but it worked and he took it up to Northern Wisconsin.
49:58
And so it's that kind of stuff that we're writing about things that
50:02
people probably never heard of in snow vehicle transportation or.
50:06
If they did, they didn't hear much about it.
50:08
So Larry, your current book, Shipwrecked and Rescued, tell our audience how they
50:13
can get a copy if they're interested in checking it out and learning more.
50:16
Well, the easiest way, and the way I appreciate it is go to my website,
50:20
shipwreckedandrescued, make sure you got past that, shipwreckedandrescued.
50:26
com.
50:26
If you go to the website, I'll even sign it to you if you want me to.
50:30
Yes, it's available on Amazon.
50:33
And fortunately.
50:34
It's available in a lot of places, Michigan bookstores, lighthouse
50:40
museums that have gift stores.
50:43
Like I said before, a lot of vintage auto museums have got
50:47
the book in the gift stores.
50:49
You never know where you may see it.
50:50
You know, I've heard this and you walk into a place and there it is.
50:54
You know, the cover on the book, when we decided this is too good a story to
50:58
not really put some real effort into it, the cover on the book I hired.
51:03
a artist in the Keweenaw to create that artwork that's on the cover.
51:08
I wanted something that would show both the state of the boat and
51:12
the cars, and he was able to meld that together into one painting.
51:16
It's a fantastic painting.
51:17
Any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you'd like to share
51:20
that we didn't cover thus far?
51:22
Yeah, I'll say this is People want to pursue this topic.
51:26
If they know something about the banger or they think they know something, or
51:31
maybe they've got that photo I'm looking for, or they just want to talk, email me.
51:36
I'll give you my phone number.
51:37
Call me up.
51:38
Let's talk.
51:39
You never know where that next little piece will be.
51:42
Maybe we'll find it together.
51:44
By the way, I have to boast a little bit too.
51:47
We found out about a week or two ago that the book was
51:50
named, they call them notable.
51:52
They don't call them best.
51:53
I know they call them notable books.
51:55
We're one of the 10 notable books of 2022 in upper Michigan, the upper Michigan
52:02
publishers and authors association.
52:05
That made me feel pretty good.
52:06
Congratulations.
52:07
Thank you.
52:07
Well, I guess I want to thank Eric and Don for giving me the opportunity to
52:12
talk about what has become one of the favorite stories that I've written.
52:16
Thank you very much, both of you.
52:18
And thanks to your audience for listening to this story.
52:22
Larry Jorgensen first became fascinated with Michigan's Upper Peninsula and its
52:27
unique history while writing and reporting for television news in Green Bay.
52:31
It was by learning of this little known event which resulted in his decision
52:35
to create a written account which he hopes would share the story of one of
52:40
Lake Superior's most unusual shipwrecks.
52:43
It's amazing to think that with all of our advanced technology, there
52:46
are still items hidden so well they still remain to be discovered.
52:51
NASA Whether it's ancient artifacts, well kept barn finds, closed door collections,
52:56
and even shipwrecks, there's a reason to continue hunting for treasure.
53:00
If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more about Larry and his
53:03
quests, be sure to log on to www.
53:05
Shipwrecked.
53:07
com.
53:08
And rescued.
53:09
com where you can purchase a copy of his books or follow him on LinkedIn.
53:14
That's right.
53:15
And I can't thank you enough, Larry, for coming on break fix and sharing
53:18
this really just unusual, but also fascinating story about a shipwreck
53:24
of Chrysler's from the 1920s.
53:27
And it's people like you that tied together these parts of automotive history
53:32
that we weren't even thinking about.
53:34
And this is truly amazing.
53:35
And I thank you.
53:36
for it and it just reinforces the idea that everyone has a story.
53:40
I think we've done it.
53:41
It's been a lot of fun and thank you.
53:45
What a great evening.
53:46
And Eric, Don, thank you guys.
53:48
Appreciate it.
53:49
Thank you.
53:49
Good to meet you, Larry.
53:50
You too.
53:51
Bye now.
53:56
If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
53:59
be sure to check us out on www.
54:02
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54:02
org.
54:03
You can also find us on Instagram at grandtorymotorsports.
54:07
Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can
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54:18
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54:19
We'd love to hear from you.
54:21
Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
54:23
We really hope you enjoyed this episode of BreakFix, and we wanted
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