Hiawatha's Highways

By Albert Fales

The Great Lakes and the surrounding waters such as rivers and bays have been a viable transportation medium for thousands of years. The native people were using these waters for their dugouts, rafts and canoes for uncharted centuries before the area was developed into a modern nations by those who came here from other lands.
The recorded history of shipwrecks is long and rife with drowning, sunken ships and lost cargos. From the first sailing ship that was launched and lost, to the huge freighters that have gone down in storms, the Great Lakes have shown no mercy to the souls who have gone out on their surface to get from one place to another or to move a cargo in an inexpensive and convenient way. Boats have played a major role in the development of the United States and Canada in the Great Lakes region and some of those boats have been skippered by friends of mine and the stories of those persons have given me the material to write this book. Ocean captains have said they fear the storms on the Lakes because of their furious nature and sudden appearance.
The geological formation of the Lakes is a story unto itself and in no way have I the knowledge or space to make a record of this epoch of history and after 10,000 years, new facts are, and historical information is, surfacing about the part of the earth that we call home.
I have been an inhabitant of the Great Lakes area for over 80 years and the lakes, rivers and streams have been my playground that has helped to shape my life and actually was a factor in my success in the Air Force during W.W. II where I used my knowledge and experience of hunting to become a marksman with several types of weapons.
I do not have the time, knowledge or space to write all I would like to about the Lakes, but this story will give you a glimpse into the past and we must remember, as we look to the future, a look into the past may help us to preserve this magnificent fluke of nature that gave us twenty percent of all the fresh water in the world. We should treasure it and treat it for what it is, a true gift of nature that is the envy of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 6, 2004
• ISBN: 9781465328496

Albert Fales

I, the author was born on a farm in 1922, about 175 miles north of Detroit, Michigan. My family moved to Standish Michigan at the start of the 1929 crash of the U.S. economy. I enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Force in 1942 and served as a radio operator on a B-24 bomber in the C.B.I. in both India and China. Came home in 1945 and was married for 62 years until my girl passed away.

Book preview

Hiawatha’s Highways

23174-FALE-layout.pdf

Albert Fales

Copyright © 2004 by Albert Fales.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage

and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the

copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

This is a story of Great Lakes adventures, history and disaster; a

series of true episodes on the Great Lakes or their tributaries from

interviews or related documents. Boats, whether used for pleasure

or commerce, have been a part of mankind for eons. Most of the

persons in this tale of big water as well as the rivers are, or have

been friends of mine or persons I have known in the past. The

Great Lakes and their tributaries and bays have been a source of

transportation for food and recreation long before history had

been recorded here. Geological and historical research has provided

us with a unique view into the past about this part of the United

States and Canada. With twenty percent of the available fresh water

in the world, we hold a valued resource in our hands.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

23174

Contents

Captain Bert Payea

Life on an Icebreaker

Louis Ploof

The Lighthouse

Let’s Go Fishing

The Soo Locks

Training Navy Pilots

Crossing on a Dream. The Big Mac

A Lady Called Hattie Hutt

Following Jennie Weaver

AGROUND with Donn Adams

Terror on Saginaw Bay Jousting With a November Storm

Michigan Log Drives

The Fate of The Miss Arlene

The Jupiter Fire

Persons to whom I wish to give credit:

Editing by Professor Linda Steward VanHorn, M.A.

Richard Payea,

Don and Ted Rashotte.

Fern Sauve.

Donn Adams.

Charles Hanley.

John and Donna Kavanaugh.

Saugatuck MI. library.

Dossin Ship Museum.

Chris Wiley, Director of technical services,

Canadian Coast Guard,

Computer research technician, Russell Besancon,

retired, U.S. Coast Guard.

Image2319.TIFImage2328.TIF

courtesy Jim Dunn, editor,

Oscoda County Press

The Great Lakes and the surrounding waters such as rivers and bays have been a viable transportation medium for thousands of years. The native people were using these waters for their dugouts, rafts and canoes for uncharted centuries before the area was developed into a modern nations by those who came here from other lands.

The recorded history of shipwrecks is long and rife with drowning, sunken ships and lost cargos. From the first sailing ship that was launched and lost, to the huge freighters that have gone down in storms, the Great Lakes have shown no mercy to the souls who have gone out on their surface to get from one place to another or to move a cargo in an inexpensive and convenient way. Boats have played a major role in the development of the United States and Canada in the Great Lakes region and some of those boats have been skippered by friends of mine and the stories of those persons have given me the material to write this book. Ocean captains have said they fear the storms on the Lakes because of their furious nature and sudden appearance.

The geological formation of the Lakes is a story unto itself and in no way have I the knowledge or space to make a record of this epoch of history and after 10,000 years, new facts are, and historical information is, surfacing about the part of the earth that we call home.

I have been an inhabitant of the Great Lakes area for over 80 years and the lakes, rivers and streams have been my playground that has helped to shape my life and actually was a factor in my success in the Air Force during W.W. II where I used my knowledge and experience of hunting to become a marksman with several types of weapons.

I do not have the time, knowledge or space to write all I would like to about the Lakes, but this story will give you a glimpse into the past and we must remember, as we look to the future, a look into the past may help us to preserve this magnificent fluke of nature that gave us twenty percent of all the fresh water in the world. We should treasure it and treat it for what it is, a true gift of nature that is the envy of the world.

Captain Bert Payea

I don’t wish to appear flippant when I refer to Mr. Payea as Cap’n Bert, but in all the years I have lived here, he was known as Cap’n Bert Payea. Mr. Payea was really a legend in the minds of those who knew his family. His connection with the boats that plied the Great Lakes gave him kind of a mystical aura in the fantasies of earth bound persons.

Captain Payea spent many years and thousands of miles on a boat called the Langell Boys. The trials and tribulations of this craft are well documented in other stories so I will deal primarily with the life of Captain Payea as he, being a home town man, had a career I find most interesting. It is also part of the ongoing tale of the history of Michigan.

Captain Payea was born November 17, 1874 in the village of Arenac, a small community three miles east and a couple miles north of Standish. It was located on the route of the stagecoach line that ran north from Bay City, following a sand ridge that was taken for granted to be the centuries old shore of Saginaw Bay. Thousands of years ago, the bay covered a much larger area than it does now. Later, a rail road went through this area, following the stage coach route, and connected Bay City with the north and eventually as far north as Mackinaw City. A depot for this line was established where this route intersects a road going east from Standish. It was called Pine River. This community soon became an active trade center with stores and a grain elevator. It provided an outlet for the products of the local area such as lumber, fish and grain. The Captain married Elsie Willman in Saginaw in 1909 and soon established a home and farm on Hickory Island Road, two miles north of Pine River. However, Elsie Payea passed away in 1922, leaving a terrible void in the family.

Image2338.TIF

Captain Bert Payea.

There was an unwritten rule, dating back centuries, followed by dock workers, called Dock Wallopers, an age old term to describe the work they did. It was that if the unloading didn’t start before closing time on Saturday, no work was done on Sunday.

This brought about an interesting facet in the life of Captain Payea. Due to the schedule, he could get home only two or three times in a summer and this was when his boat pulled into port too late to off-load on Saturday. On an occasion like this, the delay gave him time to visit his home.

He would take the train from Carrollton north to Pine River and get off there. He would then walk up State Road to Hickory Island Road and turn east toward home. Even though it may have been two months since the last visit. it didn’t seem to make any difference to the family dog.

They had a big old collie that worshiped the ground the Captain walked on, and regardless of the length of time between visits, the dog could sense the return of his master. This dog had canine E.S.P. or whatever dogs have, and as the Captain neared home, without advance notice, the dog would creep up the ditch and then bound out of his hiding place and greet the Captain with unbridled energy. There may have been an explanation for this; as in the summer the water of the bay would be warmer than the air in the evening and a slight updraft might cause a waft of breeze from the west. The dog may have picked this up and with a sense of smell hundreds of times more acute than a person, he knew his master was on his way home.

Captain Bert and Elsie had five children, James the eldest, Richard who lives here n Standish and is a friend of mine. Another son, William, drowned many years ago and a daughter Marion passed away at a rest home in Tawas, MI. The youngest, Dr. Norman Payea, took care of the Captain in his later years at his home in East Tawas where his practice was. Captain Payea passed away at his son’s home in 1963 but the doctor continued his practice for almost forty years before his own death at Tawas. The Captain developed his tenacity and ability to work as a lumber-jack in the woods of Michigan. This occupation had the ability to separate the boys from the men, and he, at an early age, learned the concept of a good job well done

The boat that the Captain is remembered for was named the Langell Boys, out of Carrollton, Michigan. This was a wooden hull, white oak, steam powered, using the propeller or screw drive instead of paddle wheels like so many of the day. It was called a lumber hooker, a name coined in the days when the boat would hook on to a raft of logs and tow them to a lumber mill. These rafts of logs were assembled at the mouth of a river where they had been floated down, chained into a huge raft and then towed to mills in Bay City, Saginaw or some other location. The bulk of the loads the Langell Boys carried were lumber, sawn in mills around the Blind River area of Ontario. Other mills he loaded from were scattered along the North Channel where he could reach them through what is now known as the Parry Sound. At Blind River he would pick up as much as 500,000 board feet of lumber. If he happened to be towing a schooner barge, it would carry an additional 600,000 feet of lumber on the barge and this was standard practice in the days of the lumber hooker. T.L. Elliot, superintendent of the M.E.P. Lumber Company for much of its existence, estimated that 600,000,000 board feet of lumber was hauled by the Langell Boys to him.

Now for a bit of history about the Langell Boys. This sturdy little steamer was built at a boat yard in Saint Clair, Michigan, by a man named Langell. It is rumored that he had more than one son, so to keep the family name and not slight any one, he simply called it the Langell Boys. The boat was built in 1890, of Michigan white oak, a dense, heavy and very durable wood. It doesn’t have the tendency to rot in fresh water like other woods and hence, is a good material for marine construction. It was steam powered using a propeller instead of paddle wheels like so many of the boats of her time. The boat began serving in her local area until 1893 when it was purchased and moved to the Saginaw River location and began serving in the Bradley fleet. Here it served its owners well until one fateful day in 1920, when by some fluke of fate she caught fire, burning off the top deck and wheel house until the flames were brought under control. The rest of the boat was still strong and serviceable so the hull was towed to a boat yard in Marine City, Michigan. This was not too far from its original building site Here a new top deck, enclosed wheel house, and cabin were constructed and within a year or so, sent back to Saginaw to continue the lumber trade.

Image2346.TIF

The Langell Boys, fully loaded.

An interesting note about the owners of the little steamer. They were aware of the time the Captain would be