Tragedy and Triumph on the Great Lakes

Richard Gebhart was director of the White River Light Station lighthouse museum from 1975 to 1980. He has authored numerous articles of historical interest and essays for journals and newsletters of Great Lakes historical societies, as well as the book Ships and Shipwrecks: Stories from the Great Lakes.

• Contents Preface Acknowledgments The Lady Elgin, 1859 Detroit to Constantinople Doppelgangers to the Bitter End The Ice-Bucking Steamship Aurania Boneyard on the Detroit River Harry Coulby’s Gruesome Gift Through the Wheelhouse Windows of the N. J. Nessen The Advent of Tankers on the Great Lakes Bibliography Index

There are numerous, very detailed stories in this well-researched book. Many chapters contain quotes meticulously obtained from microfilmed contemporary newspapers that add fascinating depth to these stories about ships, tragedies, and people. The reader will often feel transported in time to the events as they took place. —Carl Eisenberg, president of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society This is a detailed and fascinating look into the lives of some of the vessels that plied the Great Lakes in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It gives the reader a true idea of the dangers that these ships and those who sailed them had to face. It is a series of fascinating stories involving pianos, a severed ear, a shipwreck behind a barn on a farm with a tree growing through it, and John D. Rockefeller Sr. I know the reader will enjoy it. —James Heinz, acquisitions curator, Wisconsin Marine Historical Society