The wooden Great Lakes bulk freighter, Alex Nimick, met a tragic fate on September 21, 1907, when it wrecked along the southern shore of Lake Superior, 13 miles west of Whitefish Point. Of the 17 crew members aboard, six lives were lost in the disaster.
Wrecked in Lake Superior
The steamer Alex Nimick, of Cleveland, was wrecked Saturday night on the bleak southern shore of Lake Superior, 13 miles west of Whitefish Point. No loving soul was within miles of the desolate place where the survivors laboriously managed to pilot their lifeboats through the raging surf; no help was at hand to minister to the exhausted and frozen sailors or to care for the bodies of the six or seven victims washed up on the rocks by the waves.
The dead:
- John Randall, of Algonac, Mich.
- Steward Thomas Parent, of Port Huron, Mich.
- First Mate James Hayes, of Ecorse, a suburb of Detroit, is supposed to be among the dead, though it is not definitely known that he was lost.
- Three or four sailors.
The scene of the wreck is half a day’s tramp from Grand Mariais village, the Vermillion Point life saving station or the Whitefish Point lighthouse and details of the wreck are difficult to obtain.
The steamer passed through the canal locks at Sault Ste. Marie Thursday, bound up the lakes with a cargo of 3,000 tons of coal from Cleveland, to be unloaded at the head of the lakes. A northwest gale was at its height when the Nimick plowed her way out of the Soo river into Whitefish Bay and Lake Superior looked too dangerous to be trusted. The shelter of Whitefish Point was accordingly taken advantage of until Saturday, when the storm seemed to have spent its force. Capt. Randall then pointed his vessel out into the lake. All would have gone well had not the steering gear or some part of the machinery gone wrong.
Only a few miles away from the river Nimick was left disabled and helpless under a deadly attack from the tail of the storm. There was enough left of the tempest to dash the vessel a hopeless wreck upon the dangerous rocks that line the southern shore and to wash overboard Steward Thomas Parent before the life boats could be sent away. Then driven overboard by the steamer’s breaking to pieces under their feet, the crew began to battle in the small boats with the surf. Eleven managed to pull themselves exhausted upon the uninhabited coast, but one boat containing Capt. Randall and five of his men capsized in the surf and all were lost.
Source: The Marion daily mirror. (Marion, Ohio), 23 Sept. 1907.
