1909 shipwreck in spotlight

Maritime group, descendant of 2 sailors plan honors

Steve Pardo / The Detroit News

Ann Arbor -- The voyage should have taken five hours. A century later, descendants are still trying to learn how the Marquette & Bessemer No. 2 became one of the Great Lakes' greatest mysteries.

"I would love to know what went wrong, what happened," said Patrick McLeod, 40, of Ann Arbor. His great-grandfather was the first mate on the ship's last journey. His great-great uncle was the captain. "Three hundred and fifty feet of solid steel should stick out. But for 100 years, no one has been able to find it."

The spotlight will shine on the ghost ship at 6 tonight , when the Detroit Historical Society's Dossin Maritime Group honors the 32 sailors from the Marquette & Bessemer at its annual remembrance.

Today also is the 34th anniversary of the most well-known Great Lakes shipwreck, the Edmund Fitzgerald, which plunged 530 feet to the bottom of Lake Superior during a storm with a crew of 29.

But the Marquette & Bessemer has haunted McLeod and others for years. The steamship cast off on Dec. 7, 1909, from Conneaut, Ohio, loaded with 30 railroad cars of coal bound for Port Stanley, Ontario.

A storm hit Lake Erie, and temperatures plummeted from 40 degrees to 10. Five days later, the frozen bodies of nine crew members were found in one lifeboat. Neither the ship nor any survivors were found.

McLeod has started a Web site, www.marquetteandbessemer2.com, and piggybacked information collected from Donna McLeod Rodebaugh, who was born in 1917 and was the niece of the captain and the first mate. She died in 2003.

"I want to keep the thought of it alive and keep people's interest it in," McLeod said. "And maybe even provide a clue to help someone find it."

Christopher Gillcrist, executive director of the Great Lakes Historical Society in Vermilion, Ohio, said: "It's a mystery of why it hasn't been found in 100 years in the second smallest and the shallowest of the Great Lakes. "On so many levels, it's a fascinating marine loss."