University Place

The Wreck of the Steamer "Lakeland"

[Tom Zinnen, Outreach Specialist, Biotechnology Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Welcome, everyone, to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab. I’m Tom Zinnen. I work here at the UW Madison Biotechnology Center. I also work for UW-Extension Cooperative Extension. And on behalf of those folks and our other co-organizers, Wisconsin Public Television, the Wisconsin Alumni Association, and the UW-Madison Science Alliance, thanks again for coming to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab. We do this every Wednesday night, 50 times a year.

Tonight, it is my great pleasure to welcome Tamara Thomsen back to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab. She works at the Wisconsin Historical Society and is a maritime archeologist. She was born in Bethesda, Maryland, grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, and then came here to study horticulture as an undergrad, horticulture and agronomy. Got her master’s degree in the plant genetics, plant breeding program working on sweet corn. And then worked for geology, geophysics doing biogeochemistry research. And now, for the last 12 years or so, you’ve been working for the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Tonight, we get to hear another great story about the Great Lakes, and ships and shipwrecks, the things that are making – making Wisconsin waters, I think, a national destination for this kind of work. And we now have a national maritime preserve in the works, and a lot of that is due to the work that Tamara and her colleagues have done over the last many years.

Tonight, she’s going to talk to us about solving the mystery of the S.S. Lakeland. Please join me in welcoming Tamara Thomsen back to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab.

[applause]

[Tamara Thomsen, Maritime Archaeologist, Wisconsin Historical Society]

Hi. I’m going to start out with a confession.

[Tom Zinnen gasps]

I don’t know how to change the oil in my truck.

[laughter]

I know very little about cars. You know, I mean, it’s easy enough to hire a mechanic to get through things. So, I’m not really a car aficionado. I also have, another confession is that my passion really is wooden sailing ships. So, when my predecessor wrote a grant for a metal, a – a steel steamship that was filled with automobiles and then resigned, I really felt like I have a very, very steep learning curve going into this. So, I do feel like I’ve learned an awful lot, and I’m hoping to share. This was actually a very exciting story to sort of peel back the layers from, and I hope you’ll find it as interesting and fascinating as I – I do. I have to say now, I feel like I’m an expert in Nash, Kissel, and Rollin automobiles after this experience.

So, this is –

[slide of a black and white photo of the S.S. Lakeland]

– this is actually the early version of the Lakeland. She was built as the steamship Cambria in 1887 at the Globe Ironworks in Cleveland, Ohio. She was built for the Mutual Transportation Company, and she was designed to run in the iron ore and coal trade.

So, she served ports on Lake Michigan, like Escanaba and Superior, Ashland, and carried the iron ore back to ports on Lake Erie.

[Tamara Thomsen]

Through a number of company amalgamations, she ended up under the U.S. Steel flag. So, she was a Rockefeller ship. And she served until this capacity until 1910. At that point, she was sold to the Port Huron Duluth Steamship Company and converted to passenger and package service.

So, it – it was pretty interesting in –

[slide of a black and white photo of the retrofitted Lakeland with passenger cabins added]

– that they also acquired two other ships at the time. They acquired one called the Lakewood and one called the Lakemere, and they ran them from 1910 until 1916 in this service. And you can see that they added sort of an upper deck to them, of passenger cabins. And this was all wood from about where the – the white part is up, and then steel below. And they – they re-outfitted all of the ships, and really ran a – a very profitable passenger service until 1916.

In 1916, the company declared bankruptcy –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– and all three ships continued to change hands up until about 1920, when she was acquired by the Tri-State Transportation Company. And at – at that time, it was owned by a gentleman named Merwin S. Thompson. He was out of Mentor, Ohio, and he decided to get into the automobile transportation business. And about 1920 or so, she was outfitted to be able to carry cars.

So, what they did then is they put the side cargo doors in.

[return to the black and white photo of the retrofitted Lakeland]

You can see the ramp here, as they would drive the cars up right into the ship. And there was a car elevator that then could lower the cars only one deck. So, the lower deck of the vessel was empty, and they would – they would use that as sort of a ballast area. So, when they had a full cargo of cars, they would allow water to come in and fill up halfway, at least into the lower cargo hold, to be able to make the ship stable.

So, wouldn’t it be weird –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– to look down into your cargo hold and have it half-filled with water on purpose? How would you know if you were sinking, right? So, but that was the way that they sailed this vessel. And – and so, I – I didn’t really understand the full reasoning behind that until we started getting into looking at the ship in detail on the bottom.

So, when Merwin Thompson purchased into the ship as part of this Tri-State Steamship Company, he – he then eventually bought out his partners. It took him about four years to do that. And so, in 1924, he took sole ownership of the – of the vessel. He transferred the name of the business into Thompson Transit Company and took out a $165,000 mortgage on the vessel. So, and that was early in 1924.

He then took licenses to carry vessel – to carry cars from Cleveland to Chicago, and that was primarily his route.

So, now we can get into the – the sinking history of it.

She came into Chicago on the first of December 1924. And we know that at that port, she loaded Nash and Kissel automobiles. So, Nash is a company that was founded in 1916 in – in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Kissel was a Hartford and Milwaukee-based company. And so, the question is, we don’t really know how many cars were taken aboard. There’s some question as to how many were put on at that – at that point.

They also took aboard a new engineer. So, what’s interesting is that this ship had the same engineer since – since 1907. So, prior to Merwin Thompson taking ownership of this, she lived through all of these changes in owner – ownership, she lived with that engineer. The engineer came with the ship.

And then that morning in Chicago, the engineer was abruptly taken off and replaced with a new guy. And they left Chicago and they started for Detroit. Detroit was their destination with this cargo, and they didn’t make it all that – that – that far. They made it as far as Sturgeon Bay. And on the night of the second of December, they came into Sturgeon Bay to wait out a storm. They came in through the canal, they went into the turning basin, which is just beyond the canal, and they waited until the next morning.

Early the next morning, they got up steam. They left probably around 6:30 or so. They departed the canal, and they went five miles out into the lake.

[slide of a black and white photo of the Lakeland on Lake Michigan with the vessel Cygnus in the background]

There was another vessel that was following them, and one that was coming across the lake. And about eight o’clock in the morning, they sort of all converged in this area about five miles out of Sturgeon Bay. The Lakeland then made a circle, and then the other ships took this to be a distress signal. There was no distress signal that was sent to the Coast Guard. There’s a Coast Guard station right at Sturgeon Bay, there was in 1924 as well. And they made no effort to signal them.

They’re only five miles away, right? They’re directly out in front of this Coast Guard station.

[Tamara Thomsen]

And so, he makes a circle, and the other vessels think that he may be experiencing some sort of distress, may be trying to turn back. He then again faces the vessel out into the lake. And at 8:30 a. m., the Cygnus, which is the boat in the background, another steamer which had been coming across the lake, signaled to the captain –

[return to the slide of the Lakeland with Cygnus in the background]

– and radioed him and asked him if he was experiencing trouble and if he – and if he would want a tow. Now, one thing you need to understand about the bottom topography of the lake off of Sturgeon Bay, you can go about four-and-a-half, almost five miles out, and you’re in about 60 feet of water. But once you get to the edge, it drops off to 200 feet very, very quickly. And so –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– if he was experiencing engine difficulty or anything, any of these, either of these boats were – were capable of towing him half a mile or a mile back in toward shore, where he could sink in a reasonable depth and the boat could be recovered.

So, instead of – instead of receiving this service, which was offered to him, it was also offered, by the way, by the boat that was following him, which was the Ann Arbor Number Six. And aboard the Ann Arbor Number Six was a radio operator named Elliott Jacobson, and Elliot Jacobson had a new Brownie camera. And so, he was – he saw this going down, and he went out on the deck and he started taking pictures of this vessel –

[return to the slide of the photo of the Lakeland with the Cygnus in the background taken by Ann Arbor #6 radio operator, Elliott Jacobson]

– that was – seemed, appeared to be in distress. And there were other boats circling.

So, once this, again, once the – once the offer was made by the captain of the Cygnus, Captain McNeely of the Lakeland headed back out into the lake and dropped his anchor, and – and refused any sort of service from either of -of the vessels.

He then started lowering his lifeboats, and he put all of the crew onto the lifeboats. And four of them, however, remained back with the captain aboard the ship.

[Tamara Thomsen]

The crew then rowed over to the Ann Arbor Number Six, where they were received and taken aboard. One of – one of the crew that was left behind with Captain McNeely then went and packed all of the luggage that belonged to all of the crew members into a – a lifeboat.

[slide of a photo of two lifeboats in front of the sinking Lakeland – one in the foreground with the Coast Guard and one in the background with a crew member and the crews luggage]

And that’s him with the luggage, right nestled up next to the ship. And he rowed that over to the Ann Arbor Number Six. So, they didn’t lose any of their personal belongings, right? That’s – thats good. And still, the Coast Guard is not signaled. So, the Coast Guard, about 10 o’clock now, realizes there’s three boats that are sort of circ – you know, one is anchored and the rest of them are circling. There’s something going on. So, they launch their lifeboat, which is in the foreground. And about 10:55, they make it out on-site and they try to render assistance. And again, Captain McNeely –

[slide of a new photo of the Lakeland as it starts sinking]

– refuses help from the Coast Guard.

In fact, he gets into a boat himself, and the other people who are left aboard, it would be the – the engineer as well and two other helpers. And they get into the boat, and they remain attached to the Lakeland in this sinking condition by a painter. A painter is a line, like a loose line from the – from the ship. Now, based on maritime law, until he relinquishes control or command of the vessel, even holding onto it by the painter and remaining attached to it does not relieve him of command. So, no one can still come and help his ship.

So, he – he then lets go of the painter, and about –

[slide of a photo of the Lakeland as it sinks – half submerged]

– 15 minutes later his ship abruptly sinks at 11:30 a.m.

She is 280 feet long, and the bottom in this area is 210 feet. So, she sank by the stern, her stern hit the bottom first. She did what’s called telescoping, so she broke in two, and then sank down to the bottom. So, no crew – no life lost. However, the boat is lost. No one knows why the captain acted this way. He’s not talking. They take everybody aboard. They take them back to the – to the – the station.

[Tamara Thomsen]

They – the newspaper men come in, and they’re asking questions. And there’s, of course, statements that are made by some of the crew, like, “Well, it was lost in 210 feet of water. There’s no getting it back. “It’s full of automobiles, but it’s insured.”

So, [laughs] there – there – there happened to be a consortium of 13 insurance underwriters that felt that was a little strange. And so, they sent a lawyer from New York to come and investigate. So, about a month later, he showed up in Sturgeon Bay, he started asking questions, he started doing interviews with – with people. And he – he made – he made a statement to the newspapers saying, you know, I’m here to investigate, but I don’t believe there’ll be any problems. It’s lost in 210 feet of water, you know. It – it will not be able to be recovered.”

But he returned back to New York. He was based out of a law firm called Bigham, Englar, and Jones. And at – at that point, they then set up the formal investigation to charge Merwin S. Thompson and Thompson Transportation Company with barratry. It’s misconduct of the crew and coercion of the crew by the owners to sink the ship.

But how do they do this? It’s in 210 feet of water. So, in 1924, people weren’t diving to 224 feet of water every weekend. It – it – it – it – it was very, very rare. And the people who had the expertise on being able to do this diving, were, of course, the U.S. Navy. Okay, so now I’m going to step aside and tell kind of a little side story here.

So –

[slide of a U.S. Navy Helium passenger balloon launch with a small crowd underneath]

– nowadays when divers go to 210 feet of water and deeper, really, and much shallower too, we use helium, okay? We use a mixture of air, and they’ll have some helium with it, maybe enhanced with a little oxygen as well. So, it’s called a tri-mix, so it’s oxygen, nitrogen, and helium. And helium we get from, mostly from as –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– mining byproduct. And so, in 19 – 1924, which is post-World War I, helium was held in strategic reserve for things like spotting balloons and for dirigibles and weather balloons, that type of thing.

[return to the slide of the U.S. Navy passenger balloon]

So, it was – it was very much a strategic gas. So, you couldn’t just go to your local gas supplier and buy it. So, in order to do experiments and to figure out how to use helium – in fact, it was first sort of conceived in – around 1919 that maybe helium should be thought of as a use for deep diving, but not in deep diving as we know it today.

[Tamara Thomsen]

Today we use it as our bottom gas, something that we would use on the bottom. It takes a little bit of nitrogen out of the mixture, so it clears your head. You can actually think when you’re down there. It doesn’t have that narcotic effect that – that nitrogen does.

In – in 1924, they believed that they should use helium as a wash-out gas, that if you gave it to the diver as they were decompressing in these stages coming up, that it would help them wash the – the nitrogen bubbles out of their system, and they could avoid having the bends. So, the top Navy divers, there were five of them. They were sent to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the heart of diving.

[laughter]

And they were sent to an experiment station which was there that was run by the Bureau of Mines. And they were assigned gas chemists to work with them. And so, this is –

[slide with a photo of a chemist working on gas containers]

– actually, one of the chemists which is – is working in a chamber. And they started working on creating timetables for divers, how long you could stay down and then how long it would take you to come back up. And they started working with guinea pigs, and they started working in dogs. And by early 1925, they had moved into a stage where they were ready to do testing on humans.

And – and so, these Navy divers were there, and they were working with these gas chemists to try to lead them into what they believed was the right thing to do in creating these tables. So, I do have –

[slide with a photo of a letter sent to the Pittsburgh experiment station sent by one of the divers, Capt. Clarence Tibbals]

– I found a letter when we were doing our research at the – at National Archives. And I know this is very texty, so I’m going to read it to you. This is actually a letter from Captain Clarence Tibbals. He’s the top diver of the group that was sent to the Pittsburgh experiment station. And he’s sending this to the chief surgeon of the Navy, which is R. R. – Dr. R. R. Sayers.

And what happened was when these insurance – these insurance underwriters decided they were going to pursue investigation of the sinking of the Lakeland –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– they went to look for a salvage company that could help them, that had ex-Navy divers, people that understood what the pique of technology was. And there was a group, it was called Overseas Salvors out of New York. But they didn’t have everything because it hadn’t been invented yet.

So, they then had friends, though, that were still shipmates, that were still in the – in the Navy. And they got a hold of them and they asked them, “Well, maybe you’d want to come and, you know, take this leave that was granted to you anyway, and come on vacation to Wisconsin, to Sturgeon Bay, so that you can go look at this commercial vessel that sank on the bottom of Lake Michigan, that’s being investigated by this – this consortium of underwriters.” And so, they contacted Tibbals to see if maybe he would be interested in bringing this project, he was working on in Pittsburgh with him, and testing it here in Wisconsin. And here is our letter.

It says,

[return to the slide of the letter of Capt. Clarence Tibbals]

“My dear Doctor,
The Underwriters Association have a little inspection work up in Lake Michigan. 210 feet of water on an insured vessel. They have asked our cooperation and in turn have offered theirs. They ask that we try out any new data that we see fit on their divers. But theyve also – they are also hiring our five men at commercial rates, although the divers will get considerably more. I have accepted the – the [invitation] insofar as I am able without the Department’s sanction. This will be a very good chance to try out some of the decompression data, also helium for treatment of the bends. There will be no expense either to the Navy or the Bureau of Mines. All expenses of the men are to be paid by the company.
I talked this over with Mr. Yant -”

[Tamara Thomsen]

Now, Mr. Yant is the – the gas chemist, okay, from the Bureau of Mines.

“- before my going to New York. This work is quite agreeable to him. They want him to go along also, or at least I have made it plain to them that I want Bill on the job. This will give him some of the practical experience that will come in handy a little later.

They’re willing to pay his expenses and his wages at the same rate he is getting at present. This is at a rate of $5,000 per year. [Since beginning] – Since being back from New York, Bill has been away, so I don’t know –

[return to the photo of the letter]

– how he stands on going at this price. I should think that it would be necessary for him to obtain leave. This appears to me as a case of duty, as our experiments are going to be carried on under service conditions.”

So, they’re going to actually field test this.

“Now, if you will help us all the way around [and] -and call the department, Captain Rock and Mr. Hobson and also Lieutenant Commander J. A. Saunders in navigation and tell them about it. Also, what advantages we will gain through giving our data a service trial.

So, that’s his chain of command.

“In other words, we must get some of our data where it is correct for men -

[Tamara Thomsen]

– and this is a good way to do it. Besides this, I don’t mind telling you that I would like to earn some of the cold dollars on this job. I have written to [Captain] – Captain Rock and Saunders regarding the job, also paved the way in your Bureau for Mr. Yant to go in case the company does not change its mind and not want him to go along.

Thank you for whatever assistance you can give us on this job. [With] – And with the best wishes, I remain
Respectfully, C. L. Tibbals.”

So, if – Tibbals actually went on in 1926 to start the Navy Diving School. So, this is actually pre-diving school, and pre-experimental diving unit, and all of that with the Navy. So, this is very, very early. It’s just to give you kind of a perspective on – on how early it is. So, this is him asking. And – and Sayers came back, and he said, “Oh yes, of course I’m going to help you.” And he had a medic assigned to go with them. And not only that, but he also got the Navy to agree that they could – they could have a salvage barge assigned to them with a re-compression chamber, in case the experiment should go awry, and then – and – as well as medical masks for oxygen. So, Go on vacation to Wisconsin and take the salvage barge here –

[slide with a photo of the salvage barge, Chittendon]

– the Chittendon. And – and so, they had this outfitted at – at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for them. They had the diving stage, which is the little platform on the side, added to it. And – and they left for Wisconsin.

Additionally, they had the Westinghouse Corporation build these 1,000-watt lights for them, electric lights. And they took those down. There’s – theres a really cool quote that says that It’s as bright as an average city living room. The men could read the figures on the small gauges.” So, I thought that was kind of interesting. So, all of these things are coming together for their wonderful vacation in Wisconsin.

[slide with a photo of the divers and crew of the Chittendon]

So, this is the crew that – that came out to the Lakeland. You can see they’re – theyre under the Overseas Salvors flag. And this is them on the – on the Chittendon, presumably anchored over – over the Lakeland. Amongst the divers were the undersea salvor divers, Big Harry Reinhardson. He went by Big Harry, I think that’s fun. And then H. A. Grove, S. J. Drellishak, all of those are ex-Navy divers. And then two current Naval personnel, which is G. F. Smith and Joseph Eiven.

[Tamara Thomsen]

And I sure wish that this picture were clearer, and that I could figure out who’s who amongst this. But this is the only known picture of the group of divers during their – their time here in Wisconsin.

So, what they were asked to do by the – by the underwriters was go and look at some ball valves. So, there’s a series of these valves that are throughout the ship –

[slide with a photo of blueprints of ball valves]

– and their – they operate the sea cocks. So, these are the ways that they could allow water in to be able to ballast the tank or be able to, while it was underway, open it up to be able to drain water out through a Venturi effect.

[slide with a photo of an outdoor water faucet with a ball valve attached to the side of a home]

And you’re pretty familiar with these same ball valves because you probably have one on the outside of your house. So, it looks very, very similar.

[slide with a photo of blueprints of the various valves on a ship like the Lakeland]

So, but these things were everywhere in the ship. So, this is actually a blueprint, again from National Archives, that shows all of the different valves that they needed to check, which are all around the engine, and – and showing that they had checked them, and how far out the stem had been rotated so that you could tell how open or closed the valves were. And it wasn’t an easy thing. It wasn’t just that you open the valves, or you opened all 16 valves or whatever it was. You –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– you had to open them in sequence, and you had to open a certain number of them in order to control – control the water.

There were also some that were in the bow.

[slide with a photo of a blueprint of the bow of the ship and the associated valves]

So – so, these men needed to go and penetrate deep in the hull of this – of this shipwreck. And you’ll see by some of the video that I’ll show you in a couple minutes that they’re pretty brave.

[slide of a photo of a stick from the Lakeland that was entered into evidence in the trial]

One of the things that we ran into when we were at National Archives was – was evidence from the trial. So, I thought this was kind of fun. It’s a stick and it’s entered into – into evidence. This was actually the measuring stick that they would use to test the valves. So, you know, like, when you – you know, you turn the water on in your house the valve – or on the outside of your house to water your garden or whatever, you turn the – the hand wheel out and it comes out like, you know, a couple inches or whatever. And so, they would actually take the stick down, put it up against the valve, and then cut the stick. And you see the little notch that’s above the filed name? That’s – thats actually how far out it was spun. So, that’s pretty interesting.

And then the other claim that was made by the company was that the steel had failed, and that’s why the ship had sunk. And so –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– the – the divers went down, and they cut a piece, they removed a piece of the hull, the steel from the hull, in order to test it for fatigue.

So, it did go to trial. You probably already understand that by me showing you evidence. It actually went to trial three times. So, the first – the first trial was in January and February of 1926, and it ended in a deadlocked jury. It was eventually declared a mistrial. They had a retrial. And the second was – was ruled in favor of the Lakeland’s owners, but the insurance company was then allowed to appeal. And it went to the U.S. District Court, Sixth District. And then it was appealed. It actually was moved up to an appellate court, and they – we don’t know what happened. So, the third trial, first and second trial were heavily publicized in the papers. So, it was the thing to read about, what was going on, just because of the unusual nature of the – of the trial. Kind of this novel use of – of evidence collected by deep sea divers. And it was, I mean, it made international news.

And so, the first trial was heavily publicized, the second trial was heavily publicized. The third trial, we believe was settled out of court. This is where I feel like I failed the state of Wisconsin in that it – I tracked down – When – when law offices close, they have partners and they move the documents to another building, and then they’ve got another. They change partners and they move to another building. And so, the papers were shredded three years before I went looking for them. Three. So, we could’ve known what happened, but – but we don’t.

However, what I can tell you is that the Coast Guard found the chief engineer and Captain McNeely at -at fault. And the Coast Guard did, and they removed their licenses. However, Thompson Transportation Company continued to pay their salary at the full rate for the rest of their career.

[laughter]

So, you can make the judgment for yourself, right? So, okay, so that’s what happened with the – with the insurance underwriters. Well, what happened with the – with the – the divers’ testing? So, this is another very cryptic letter.

[slide with a photo of a letter from Mr. Yant, the chemist to the surgeon, Dr. Sayers]

I know, I’m going to read it to you. So, this is actually, William Yant is writing to – to Dr. Sayers. So, William Yant is the chemist, Dr. Sayers is the – the surgeon. It says, “Just a short note to give you the progress of the work. Everything has been going really well. Now and then a few cases of itch occur, but from which I can learn, these go with the business. They respond nicely to low pressure (25-pound) treatment in the chamber. Also, we have had one slight case of cramps in the elbow, which was successfully treated.”

So, that’s decompression sickness. For everyone who’s not a diver –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– that’s – thats – thats showing that it’s not working. And in fact, the, you know, I mean this is one of those things, I guess, in science, that a negative result is – is a result. So, this is, they – they found out it didn’t work. And all of the divers experienced some symptoms by the end of the project with – with decompression sickness, and it was considered a failure.

In fact, when other divisions of the Navy went to request these tables, they refused them later on because they said, “Oh, you know, this doesn’t really work. We haven’t gone back to testing these again.” And so, basically, they tabled the experiment after this.

So, [laughs] what does the Lakeland look like today?

[slide of a mosaic photo of the Lakeland shipwreck taken from above]

So, we started playing around on the Lakeland, really looking at it as far as an archeological standpoint, back in 2010. We had a group from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute come out, and they were testing equipment that they were going to be taking to Titanic. So, they wanted to test the methodology in collecting data, to be able to do full-scale mosaic of Titanic. And so, they came here with everything, and so we have this beautiful mosaic. And can you see? I’m – Im actually in this for scale. So, I’m the little diver that’s right off the starboard side, up by the bow. [laughs] Me for scale, right?

And – and so, you can see that it really did telescope. It broke in two, and that is pretty close to even. It’s 140 feet on either end of that break. And it’s a 280-foot ship, so pretty close to right in the center there.

You can also see the – the car elevator at the top of that standing up right – right at the bow section of the break. That’s where the cars were able to be lowered. And the other bright spot on there is going to be the – the top of the – the boiler, boiler room and the smokestack, which is off the stern.

[slide of a multi-beam sonar image of the Lakeland taken to show how it sits on the bottom]

I have a really, kind of, interesting multi-beam sonar image that I got from one of our D.N.R. conservation wardens, to kind of give you an idea of how it sits upright in the bottom.

So, I’m going to, I have to escape out of this program –

[slide of the desktop of her computer]

– to get –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– a little bit of video to play for you. So, I want to – I want to recognize John Janzen in the audience. Hi, John. So, John and his partner, John Scoles, shot this video.

There you go, so that’s John rolling off the boat. He’s going to hand over some of the very fancy gear to us to go down. So, we had the fortune of being able to spend a week photographing the ship. One of the problems with – with trying to do an archeological survey in 200 feet of water is that you have very little time that you’re able to spend down there. So, we wanted to gather as much video as possible in order to, when we came back another week to be able to do the archeological survey, we were doing the measurements and the description to be able to target certain areas. So, you can see the deck is sort of held up by one of the stanchions that we had under the deck here.

The many cars, some of them remain lashed down, some of them have come loose from their hold inside the deck here.

He’s going to head over towards this – this hatchway. There’s a little cargo hatch here, and you see one of the cars is sort of askew with its back tire resting into the hatch.

You see the rusticles, kind of like Titanic, that are hanging from all of the beams. And this is the – the lower cargo hold. And you can see there’s really a whole lot of nothing in there. So, this would’ve been where the ballast water was brought up, at least halfway up here. I see one of the wheelbarrows and some of the cars have fallen down through the hatch.

This is the dashboard of one of the Nash vehicles. And a fire extinguisher, which still remains attached to one of the beams. A lot of lighting with light bulbs. And this is John. He’s going to head up into – this is up in the bow. He’s heading into the windless room, but he’s going to first look right and left where there’s a couple little rooms. This is the head, and this is a storage closet. And you can see in here this is one of the – the brass lantern, accessory lantern. And he’s in the windless room now. So, this would’ve been used to raise and lower the anchors, the steam windless. This is his partner, John Scoles, coming in through the door with a bilge pump.

The bow is a pretty interesting area, in that there’s some scouring that has occurred just below the bow. And you can swim up about 100 feet under the keel of the ship, which is kind of a spooky thing. You don’t get to do that very often. Here they come up over the bow, and you can see the bits on the port and starboard side, but you can also see the capstan.

And he’s come back to the break now, and he’s looking at the double bottom bilge. So, this would’ve tried to protect it from – from water entry. Some of the cars that are sitting back by the boiler room. And you can see how the deck has really collapsed, and they’ve just sunk in from where they were positioned. And you see all the wire, the wire from fishing. It said some of the upper structure had blown off. This is all that remains, really, of the – of the wooden structure that would’ve made the cabins. That whole – that whole deck has blown away in the sinking. It was pretty fragile. But you can see the sash windows are still in place, which is pretty interesting.

And John Scole’s swimming out of the smokestack. You can enter from the boiler room below and come out the smokestack. It’s kind of a cool shot. The rudder and the propeller were salvaged, but you can tell how it hit stern first. It looks very crushed. And one of the deck winches. And if you look very carefully, you can see an auxiliary propeller blade. This is the very first triple expansion engine on the Great Lakes, so it’s a very cool thing to – to look at. It has steps forged in so that someone could climb up, and oil, put oil in – oil in the little greasers. And this is, this is, I’m going to make the screeching noise for John because this is, they’re trying to sneak down this hallway and they get caught up here and scratch their lens, just to get the shot where it says drinking water only.

[laughter]

So, this is the – the officers mess, and there’s just beautiful stained-glass work. And you can see the portholes are still in place, and they’re open, which is something that’s very interesting. A lot of pokey things, like John says, in this area. So, it’s hard to maneuver in there, especially with big cameras. And so, our dives were about 45 minutes on the video shoots, and then we would spend about an hour-and-a-half coming up.

[Tamara Thomsen]

This is –

– looking down into where some of the valves are for the, for the – for the sea cocks. And I had John come in here and – and try to stick his camera into this room. And you can see, I’m going to pause this right here for a second. You can see that this is below the windless, and it would’ve had the chain locker in this area. But they have the chain sort of precariously wound around this stanchion here. And so, when you take out the full extent of the anchor, that could really be precarious for – for the ship. So, there are the sea cocks, right there and there. That – that would have gotten turned on or off, that are in the bow area.

[Tamara Thomsen]

So, where John was looking is actually right here.

[slide of a blueprint of the bow of the Lakeland]

So, this is in the bow, and you can see that he would’ve dropped down one deck, gone up into the windless room, gone through a hole in the floor to be able to check those valves.

[slide of a photo taken from the dive of the hole in the windless room]

And it would’ve been this little hole that the divers would’ve climbed down, which is probably about three-by-three. And I have no idea how they did that because, well, we certainly couldn’t have done it with our large rebreathers and bottles on. But – but they obviously had to, in full diving dress dragging a hose, because they were surface supported so – to go down into there.

So, that is where I was going to show that video.

[Tamara Thomsen]

The other place that we wanted to look was – was back by the engine room. And the first time that we – that we got into this area actually was the first time ever.

So, this is, John Scoles actually shot this video. He’s dropping down underneath a catwalk next to the engine. And so, he is going to now, you can see one of the – one of the gauges, and he’s going to spin the camera around. And you can see there’s still yellow paint, which has been painted on the engine itself. And there’s the pressure in one of the – one of the cylinders there. And then he’ll come around, and you’ll see the revolution counter for the engine right above him. And you can actually read the numbers on this, which is amazing. And he’ll eventually turn the camera the other direction, and you’ll be able to see the pipes with the other set of sea cocks that needed to be, the valves that needed to be checked.

So again, the divers would have come – there’s the – theres the valve right above there, one of them anyway. And so, the divers would’ve had to have come down through that portal that removed grating from the – from the catwalk, to be able to go down into this very area to – to check those valves. And it’s tiny. So, John Scoles is kind of a smaller guy, too, and we took all of his gear off of him and tried to modify it a little bit so that he could get in there. And – and he could not make it in. We could just get the camera in and that was it. So, he’ll come up from this, and then he’ll go next to the – next to the cylinders, all the way down to the – the high-pressure cylinder. And then you’ll see John – the light from John Janzen, who’s back at the far end, and he’s looking at the back of the cylinders from the boiler room. So, kind of interesting.

[Tamara Thomsen]

So, that’s what we saw when we went into the room underneath this triple expansion engine.

[slide of a video still of the bilge pump on the submerged Lakeland]

So, other things that we discovered when we were spending a lot of time looking through the shipwreck, that made us wonder, giving us evidence, more evidence as to whether they did intentionally sink this ship is the – is the bilge pump. Here, this is a – a still from the video.

But if you look at the bilge pump, this is a double acting bilge pump. So, the handles, which are – that are set in place, they’re still in the carrier, would’ve been pulled out. And those would’ve been the arms that would rock her up and down. So, if your ship was sinking –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– you would have a guy, if not two guys, on this bilge pump, working the manual bilge pump to try to keep the water out. And they still have the arms for it in the holder, so they obviously weren’t concerned with that.

I’ve got kind of an interesting little side story for this. When I was writing the National Register nomination for this, we have to do a full site description. You have to explain what – what equipment is in every single room. And so, I wrote up, you know, you come in through the door, and to the – to the right side there’s a bilge pump, and the handles are still there. On the seam, there is a mousetrap. And – and then I go around, and I explain all the other things in the room. Well, they send it back and they have – they have all of these corrections that you need to make. They always come back with a few corrections, and they’re like, “Stop using maritime jargon. We don’t know what a mousetrap is.”

[laughter]

So, I said, “A mousetrap, comma, for catching rodents.” And so, they thought that was the funniest thing because they thought that it was something, you know, nautical. [laughs]

[slide of a video still of the open portals on the submerged Lakeland]

The other thing that I pointed out a little bit in the video is that – is that all the windows are open, like all the – all the portals are open. So again, if you’re in a sinking ship, one thing that you want to do is go around, have somebody go around and close all the portals and dog them down. And – and that was, of course, not done either. So that’s another red flag.

[slide of an illustration of the wreck of the Lakeland viewed from above showing the location of the cars aboard as small rectangles]

So, the thing that – that I was questioning is in all the testimony, so in all of the cases there – no one could say how many cars were aboard. So, some people were saying there were 40 cars aboard, some people would like, give these, sort of, indiscriminate numbers, like some – some – some cars were taken off, some were put on.

[Tamara Thomsen]

Maybe we had 200. Our capacity was 240. You know, this – this type of thing they were telling us. No one could say how many cars were aboard. And so, we went through, and we watched this video, which was very, very thorough, and we came up with 21. There were 21 cars aboard. So -so, where did all the other cars go if there were cars that had been on it? You know, I mean I imagine some could’ve been lost in the sinking. I doubt it, because they were at anchor. They would certainly be somewhere very close to the ship. Were they – did they stop on their way to Sturgeon Bay and let some off? There was no evidence of that. But there were 21 aboard. And we were told that –

[return to the slide of the illustration of the Lakeland showing the location of the cars]

– they were Nash and Kissel automobiles.

[slide of a video still of one of the cars outside the wreck of the Lakeland]

And again, I know absolutely nothing about cars, especially classic cars. And so, when you descend down on this ship, the first thing you see is the jalopy sitting off in the sand. And – and I really imagine that – that I would have a difficult time trying to identify these cars. But my – my boss, state archeologist, told me, There’s always a guy. There’s some guy that knows everything there is to know about a certain nuance of history, or a certain car type or something.

So – so, National Automobile Club actually was started here in Wisconsin. In fact, the guy that holds card number one’s name is – is Jim Dworshak, and he lives in Soldiers Grove. So, I thought –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– Well, I’ll call him. And so, I looked up his phone number and I gave him a call, and I thought, This guy’s going to think I’m nuts. Well, he didn’t answer so I left a message on his voicemail, and I’m like, He’ll never call me back. And a few hours later, he called me, and he had actually been over in Milwaukee in a junkyard, grabbing some pieces off some – some car that was there. And he was on his way back to Soldiers Grove, and he would be through Madison. He says, “Oh, I can meet with you for about an hour.” I’m like, Alright. So, I reserved a room in the library, and I had all this video, and so, I pulled out the clips that – that went with the – with the cars. And he went through, and he was like, “Oh, yeah, this one, this is – this is a – a two-door –

[return to the video still of the car outside of the submerged Lakeland]

– Nash sedan.” And I’m like, This thing, well, it’s been in a shipwreck, but it’s a car wreck in a shipwreck, you know? So, I don’t know how he knew this, but he was able to tell me that, you know, its got, “Oh, it’s got special six wheels,” because he knew by the hub it has an overhead valve engine. And so, he – he – and – and by looking at this –

[slide of a video still of a close-up shot of a car inside the wreck of the Lakeland]

– and covered with zebra mussels. And then – then we went through, and we did this one. And this is the one that you, you know, when you go through sort of that – that peaked-up area in the – in the deck, you come down and see this one. And you’re like, Oh yeah, you look at the lug nuts and you count those. And he knew what all the valves were, and he was able to identify this make and model.

[slide of a video still of another car inside the wreck of the Lakeland]

And these are two, there’s two there that have fallen off at the break. And he – he said, “Oh, this is very typical of the construction of Nash doors.” And this one had – you know, it was a – a wooden frame, and so it – it was very hard top. But Nash was an everyman’s car. So, he had – it – it was designed so that the average Joe could afford it. And in fact, they would come, and they wouldn’t have bumpers on them –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– and they wouldn’t have a spare rubber. They came with a piece of paper that told you how to get a hold of your Goodrich dealer to buy rubber if you wanted to have it on the spare carrier. And – and so, you know, he knew. He was the guy; he knew everything about them. And he was able to tell me which ones were Nashes, but he was also able to tell me which ones were not.

So, there were – let’s go to the next one. There were a number of other cars. So, we – we determined there were about nine, maybe 10 Nashes aboard, of the 21 cars aboard. Then he said, “This one’s definitely not a Nash.”

[slide of a video still of another car inside the wreck of the Lakeland]

He said, “It’s probably a Kissel because, well, they told me, the newspaper said they had loaded Nash and Kissel. So, here you go, here’s the Kissels.” Right? So, he said, “I know – I know a woman at the Wisconsin Automobile Museum, which is in Hartford. Her name is Dawn Bondhus, and I’m going to set you up with her. They’ve got a couple of my cars there, so I know her real well.” And so, he did, and she – she scheduled an appointment with me. She had the Kissel guy there. She actually had Doug Kissel, who’s the great-grandson of the – of the founder of Kissel Car Company. And I sat down with them and I showed, I spent several hours with them, also showing them images of cars that –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– Jim Dworshak had not told me – that told me were -were not Nashes.

And so, we figured out that there were, I think, six Kissel cars that were aboard. And what was interesting is when we went through the Kissels, and you can see it’s got a bumper.

[return of the slide of the Kissel car inside the wreck of the Lakeland]

But what’s very interesting is if you follow the running board back, the fender and then the running board, you can see it’s a got a toolbox on this one. And if you actually slide back under that crushed deck, you’ll find out that it actually had a carrier on it for your golf clubs. So, if you were anybody, if you were a Hollywood star or a person that wanted to be wealthy or the rich and famous, you had a Kissel car in this day.

And each one of them was different. They had every model of Kissel that was made and outfitted with all of the accessories. This ship was headed for Detroit, and they believe that this was the full stock of Kissel that was being sent for the Detroit Auto Show, which would’ve run in January.

[Tamara Thomsen]

So, here’s the – the, you can see the spoked wheels. Kissel, okay?

[slide of a video still showing two Kissel cars in the wreck of the Lakeland]

So, you don’t have the disk wheel that would’ve been the everyman’s no – not – only special people got the spoked wheels. So, you can say Kissel, Nash, and that was a very easy way of doing it.

[slide of a hand-drawn illustration of the wreck of the Lakeland from the top pointing out the makes and models of the cars aboard and their locations]

But as you can tell by my drawing here, there’s – theres several that are not Nash, not Kissel, and they said, “We don’t know what those are.” And so, these are my notes from – from what I – what I was taking, and we numbered all of the cars based on where they fell within the video footage.

[slide of a video still of unidentified cars in the wreck of the Lakeland]

And I came down to this set of cars that I had no idea what they belonged to. And I had nowhere to go. And so, I started thinking around, Well, you know, they picked up cars in Chicago. So, it might be like a – a -a northern Illinois, Wisconsin car company which was producing cars in 1924. What do you have? And the only thing left for me, really, that made sense would be Case; Case known for – for farm machinery. They made cars up until 1926.

[slide with a photo of the Case guys]

So, of course, I found the Case guys –

[laughter]

– they met with me at a coffee shop down in, down in New Glarus. And they brought all of their stuff. And they told me, Absolutely not, these are not Case cars. And so, he pulled out a little handbook there, which showed the underbody and the structure and where all of the suspension and the parts went. And he said, “Every car underbody is a fingerprint.

[Tamara Thomsen]

It – you can tell the car by where they put the stuff, where they have the – the battery box, where the suspension goes in. So, you just need to find, you know, Cinderella, the one that fits the slipper.” So – and – and so, they sent me on my way, I had a nice afternoon with them.

And but, so, I thought, Well, I’m going to take a shot in the dark, right? So, this –

[slide of a video still of the undercarriage of one of the unidentified cars in the wreck of the Lakeland]

– it originated in Cleveland. And I ran into a newspaper article from Sturgeon Bay that said that there were some – some divers in the – in the ’70s that had removed a car from the Lakeland. It – it – it was a botched recovery. So, when they brought it up, they forgot that the edge of the escarpment came up from 200 feet to – to 60 feet. And they lost some air in the lifting bags, and they ended up dragging it up over the lift of the escarpment. And by the time they got it back to Sturgeon Bay, it had lost all of the sheet metal.

And so, when they pulled it up with the wrecker –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– it was basically just a frame. And the newspaper said that it was a Rollin. Now, I thought, What is a Rollin? Who here has heard of Rollin car?

So, I – I looked it up, and it came up that Rollin automobiles existed in Cleveland, Ohio. They were – they were made from 1923, late 1923 until early 1925. So, they were made for a little over a year-and-a-half by a – by a guy named Rollin White. So, I thought I’d take a shot in the dark and I sent – I sent an email. This was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving at like, five o’clock, and I wrote an email to the guy. There’s – theres a curator of Ohio-built cars, and he’s at the Western Reserve Historical Society within the Cleveland History Center. And I sent him this picture –

[return to the slide of the video still of the undercarriage of the unidentified car in the wreck of the Lakeland]

– and a cut of video that John made for me, and I hit go and I went – I went away for Thanksgiving.

And I came back on Friday morning to work –

[slide of the video still of the Rollin car in the thesis of the Ohio curator showing the indicators that this is indeed a Rollin car]

– and I had a – a 17-page thesis on why he believes these are Rollin cars.

[laughter]

And so, he’s got the play-by-play lines drawn on here, and what all the parts are identified. And he was very excited.

[slide of a photo of the undercarriage of a Rollin car taken by the curator]

And he went in on – on Thursday of Thanksgiving and turned on the lights in the museum and climbed under the car and took pictures, because they have one Rollin car that’s in their museum. By the way, there are three Rollin cars that are known to exist, okay? There are – their museum has two of them. One is like their parts car. They don’t have all the parts to it –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– but they have the car. They have the one that’s in their museum, which is whole, and then there’s a collector that’s in Oregon that has the other one, right? So, it is the Rollin car.

I asked the divers that had done the recovery how they knew it was a Rollin. None of them could remember why they thought it was a Rollin. So, I – I was amazed that the newspaper had gotten it right and it actually was. And here is –

[slide of a photo of the undercarriage of a Rollin car taken from the top]

– the schematic of what the underbody is supposed to look like, and that for sure is what we have.

So, we solved the mystery of how many cars were there. So, there were 21 that were on the ship, they recovered one. So, there were 22 aboard.

[Tamara Thomsen]

Not 40, not 200, so, unless you misplace a decimal, right? But – but yeah, there – there were not very many. So, it’s still a mystery as to why they decided to sink it. Everyone I’ve sent – Ive sent the court cases, because those are actually cataloged with the National Archives as well. And I made – I made copies of those and I sent them to mariners, guys that were – that are out sailing on the Great Lakes. And they’re, yeah, they – theyre reading through these lawsuits, and I’ll get messages at like two in the morning, “Oh my gosh, they sunk the ship! Why is this such a difficult case? They sunk it, they sunk it!” But to prove that they, you know, there was this coercion that happened to make them intentionally sink it is – was a little bit of a reach for the law.

So, one of my greatest thrills, though, was to – this last year I got to go to Cleveland, Ohio. And I had a speaking engagement in Toledo, I took an extra day, and I drove over, and I met Derek Moore –

[slide of a photo of Derek Moore, the curator of the Ohio-built auto museum, in the museum with an inset of the hood ornament of a Rollin car]

– the curator of Ohio-built automobiles. And he showed me the Rollin car. And he let me sit in it and he let me climb underneath it, and I took all kinds of pictures. And then they have like a lunch-and-learn session for their staff that they do once a month. So, I presented this at their staff meeting, and they thought he was great for being able to help me solve this mystery. And it was such a piece of Ohio history –

[Tamara Thomsen]

– that they didn’t know.

It was an Ohio-built ship, owned by an Ohio company, carrying Ohio cars that no one’s heard of. And – and so – so, they thought this was great. But then, you know, I – I kind of, I reminded them that well, we have – we have six of these Rollin cars. We, the state of Wisconsin have them, so we actually have the largest collection –

[laughter]

– of undriven, unrestored Rollin cars. So, we win, right?

[laughter]

So, but do you have any questions? I hope you – I hope you learned a lot about the mystery and – and learned as much as I did about – about these cars and this ship.

Thank you.

[applause]