Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1894 — MICHIGAN’S MAD WAVES. [ARTICLE]

MICHIGAN’S MAD WAVES.

The Worst Storm for Many Years. Fen Uvea XxMt at Chicago la Sight of Thousand, of Spectator* The storm of Friday on Lake Michigan was the most fnrions and disastrous that has been known in recent years. Eight vessels were driven ashore within the city limits of Chicago. Out of their crews ten men are known to be drowned, and in every instance boat and cargo were utterly lost. One schooner, the Myrtle, was wrecked just outside the government pier within a half mile of Michigan boulevard, snd six men of her crew went down to death In plain view of hundreds of people who lined the boulevard walks to watch the awful ntorm or peered from the windows of the big hotels which overlook the harbor. The wrecks extended from Glencoe on the north, where the Lincoln Dall went to pieces, to South Chicago, a distance of forty miles. One of the most exciting features of the storm was the imprisonment of twentyseven men who were working in the water works crib off Lake View, one mile from shore. Their only shelter was a timber tower erected on the crib, and nntil that washed away the men were not believed to be in any danger. It was a close question for them, however, after that time, as the water went over the crib again and again in blinding sheets. Crowds of people lined the tho.’s anxiously watching the crib, from w.iich a distress signal fluttered at various times during the afternoon. The contractors made frantic efforts to get the men away, and offered the tug company any amount of money to make the rescue, but the tug men said it would be useless to make the effort and would result only in the loss of the tug without saving the men. As night fell the men on the crib hung up a rad lantern, which was burning steadily at midnight, and it is believed that all ot them will be rescued. At Milwaukee quite a number of vessels were wrecked and six persons lost their lives in Milwaukee Bay in the presence of 6,000 helpless people. Frantic but futile attempts were made to to rescue the sailors of the schooner M.J.Cummings, which went down in twenty feet of ‘water. The crew took to the rigging. The lifesaving crew at once went to the rescue, but five men and. a woman perished before the crew reached the wreck. The men who perished fell from their perches In the cross-trees to the water and sank out of sight like pieces of lead. The body of the yoman was still lashed to the rigging, Saturday morning, to which she escaped when the vessel began to sink. Reports from other points on the lakes are incomplete, but those received indi-, cate great loss of life and destruction of property.