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The SS ''Henry B. Smith'' was a steel-hulled, propeller-driven lake freighter built in 1906 by the American Ship Building Company at Lorain, Ohio USA. The steamship was owned by the Acme Transit Company of Lorain, Ohio, under the management of William A. Hawgood. The hull number was 343 and the registration number was US203143. The ''Henry B. Smith'' was 525 feet in length, 55 feet in width, and 31 feet in height. The gross tonnage for the vessel was 6,631, and the net tonnage was 5,229. The engine was a triple-expansion type. She was named for Henry B. Smith (1849-1918), a prominent lumberman who was managing owner of the Ludington Woodenware Company in Ludington, Michigan. The ship foundered and was lost in Lake Superior near Marquette, Michigan, on 9 or 10 November 1913 during the Great Lakes Storm of 1913. She was carrying a load of iron ore at the time of her sinking. All 25 crew members died in the sinking, and only two bodies were retrieved from the lake. The wreck was discovered in 2013, one hundred years after she disappeared. ==Last voyage== The ''Smith'' arrived at Marquette on November 6 to take on iron ore. Over the next two days a southwest gale swept over Lake Superior, dropping the temperature to 24 degrees Fahrenheit. The cold weather caused the ore to freeze inside the hopper cars, requiring men to knock them loose by hand. This resulted in a loading delay for the ''Smith''. Captain James Owen had been plagued by misfortunes all year that had resulted in the ''Smith'' being delayed or late for its destinations. Rumors abounded, then and now, that the owners of the boat made it clear to Owen that he better make this last trip on time, or else. Around 5 p.m. on November 9, the ''Smith'' loaded its last car of ore. Since the gale seemed to be in a brief lull, the big freighter immediately backed away from the dock and began to leave. As soon as the ''Smith'' left Marquette Harbor, the fierce wind returned and the storm's lull ended. Witnesses on shore noted that the deckhands were frantically trying to close the ''Smith''s hatches. The freighter had a total of 32 hatches; each hatch required individual attention with locking bars, clamps, and tackle. It was a couple hours' work for even the most skilled crew. And so it was that Captain James Owen was piloting the ''Henry B. Smith'' into one of the worst storms in memory with unsecured hatches. After about twenty minutes, the full force of the gale hit the ''Smith'' as huge waves crashed over her deck, drenching the hapless deckhands who were still struggling to close the hatches. Instead of turning to starboard on the usual course for the Soo Locks, the ''Smith'' hauled to port, rolling greatly as she did so. Witnesses on shore concluded that Owen had realized his error and was heading for shelter behind Keweenaw Point to the north. With the encroaching darkness and thick snow squalls, the ''Smith'' was then lost from view. Two days after the storm blew itself out, the beaches along Chocolay Bay, Shot Point, and Laughing Fish Point were littered with debris from the ''Smith''. The wreckage was found high up on the beach, indicating it came ashore at the height of the storm. The body of the second cook, H.R. Haskin, was found floating about fifty miles west of Whitefish Point some days later. Only one other body of the ''Smith''s crew was ever recovered; the skeleton of third engineer John Gallagher was found on Parisian Island in the spring of 1914. A note in a bottle, allegedly from the ''Smith'', was found in June 1914. In it, the author claimed the ship had broken in two 12 miles east of Marquette. After a long debate, the boat's owners decided the note was a phony; it was dated 12 November, when the ''Smith'' sank either on the 9th or the early morning hours of the 10th. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「SS Henry B. Smith」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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