The City of Bangor was built in 1896 at Bay City, Michigan, converted to an automobile carrier in 1926, and the same year in November was wrecked on Lake Superior during a brutal winter storm. Library of Congress photo.
The rest of the story:
On November 30, 1926, the steel steamer City of Bangor, with a crew of 29, was heading for Duluth from Detroit loaded with over 248 new cars worth approximately $250,000 (2019 value about $3.6 million)—mostly Chryslers, some Whippets—when she was caught in a blizzard and heavy gale around Eagle River on Lake Superior.
In a desperate situation, Captain William J. Mackin decided to seek shelter on the lee side of Keweenaw Peninsula. According to newspaper reports, water was already sweeping across the decks when her steam steering gear failed, just before rounding the Keweenaw Point.
Then, at 6:10 p.m. about two miles west from the Point and six miles east of Copper Harbor, the City of Bangor was driven broadside on the rocky shore. The pounding waves breached the ship’s hull, and the freezing water rushed in, shutting down her engines. It didn’t take long for the City of Bangor to become a ship enveloped in ice.
In the freezing cold and pitch dark, the crew used a lifeboat to get ashore and wandered around in the woods (snow was four feet deep, with 14-foot drifts in places), looking for shelter. Finding none, they built a bonfire to keep warm. They had no food, no heavy clothing or boots, and no way to send out a call for help.
But luck was on their side. By chance, another ship—the 286-foot-long Timothy Maytham—that had been stranded by the same storm nearby on the rocks, set in motion Bangor crew’s rescue a few days later. As the story goes, Captain Anthony “Tony” Glaza and the cutter from the Eagle Harbor Coast Guard rescued the crew from the Maytham and were on their way to Copper Harbor when they spotted the abandoned ice-covered City of Bangor on the rocks; about an hour later, Bangor’s bedraggled crew was sighted walking on the beach. Captain Glaza shouted out he’d be back to pick them up that night. And he did, bringing them to the Eagle Harbor base. Nine men were suffering from frozen limbs, and the others from frostbite and exposure; they all survived. ( According to locals, some of the crew members, who’d ended up hospitalized after their ordeal, were so taken with their nurses that they never left the area.)
But it’s the load of 248 Chryslers and a half-dozen Toledo-made Willys-Overland Whippets on board for the trip to Duluth that took a rescue story and turned it into something else. Walter Chrysler, after all, wasn’t content to just leave that load of gleaming new Chryslers along the frozen shoreline.
The Chryslers were “entry-level” 1927 model 50s, which were being advertised for $750 for the coupe or $830 for the sedan (the Whippets would have sold for less, according to the book.
According to an article in the Green Bay Press Gazette on February 3, 1927, a Duluth firm was given the salvage contract for the cars, with operations to begin as soon as the ice had frozen solid around the ship. Until then, the Gazette reported, “The Duluth firm keeps a watchman in a shanty in the woods….He is at watch day and night to see that no further harm comes to the cargo of the City of Bangor.”
Eventually salvors returned to the Bangor, built an ice ramp to the ship’s hold for the cars to be driven off the ship from the lower deck. No easy job as the decks were reported to be covered with ice 10 feet thick and each car had to be chopped out of solid ice. Once hewn out, the cars, which were mostly in good condition, were carefully driven eight miles on the lake ice along the shore to Copper Harbor.
Not all the cars were saved. Approximately 18 were swept overboard from the upper deck during the wreck.
Photo of rescued cars from the City of Bangor lined up in Copper Harbor, Michigan courtesy of Keweenaw County Historical Society.
It would take another month for the road to Calumet to be cleared so the cars could be transported by train back to the Detroit area, refurbished, and sold again. Many locals, including some underaged and who skipped school to do so, were hired to drive the cars.
One of the ship’s 1926 Chryslers is now an exhibit at the Eagle Harbor Lighthouse and Museum.
The City of Bangor shipwreck was a total loss. In 1929, salvors cut her down to the waterline and in 1942, the remaining underwater portion was scrapped on site. Today, the City of Bangor shipwreck site is part of the Keweenaw Underwater Preserve and can be visited by scuba divers. The Thomas Maytham, built in 1892, was released from grounding by tug Favorite, went back in service and in 1942 was given to Great Britain; on June 18, 1942, as part of the Canadian Merchant Navy while enroute from Corpus Christi, Texas to Cristobal, she was torpedoed by German Sub U-172 and sank.
Larry Jorgenson has written a book about the event and aftermath called “Shipwrecked and Rescued: Cars and Crew”, 2022, $22).
Sources :
Elle Andra-Warner, “City of Bangor Shipwreck”, Northern Wilds, August 2, 2019.
Eric D. Lawrence, “Hundreds of Chryslers were saved from 1920s shipwreck in Michigan’s U.P.”, Detroit Free Press, December 21, 2022.