Some might argue that treasure hunting is a thing of the past. That, we’ve discovered, plotted, surveyed, and satellite mapped all there is to discover on this planet. But in reality, treasure hunting comes in all sorts of different forms, consider American Pickers on History Channel, aren’t they searching for treasure? And with the rise in popularity of shows like The Curse of Oak Island, Skinwalker Ranch and Lost Gold of World War II it would seem that treasure hunting is still alive and well.Â
But there is another facet of searching that’s especially intriguing (to me) and has been brought to the surface as recently as last year. Take for instance, the discovery of Ernest Shackleton’s lost vessel The Endurance.Â
You’re probably wondering what all this has to do with cars? As we reported on Drive Thru Episode #20 (in March of 2022); there was a shipwreck containing millions of dollars of high end vehicles like Porsches, Lamborghinis, Bugattis and more. But this isn’t the first time vehicles have been lost at sea. Author and explorer Larry Jorgensen joins us tonight to talk about a little known shipwreck that cost Detroit hundreds of vehicles! Â
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Spotlight
Larry Jorgensen - Author for Shipwrecked & Rescued
The Story of a Lake Superior shipwreck and two unbelievable but true successful rescues
Contact: Larry Jorgensen at glmanagement40@gmail.com | 337-591-1937 | Visit Online!
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Notes
- Tell us more about how all this came about? How did you discover the shipwreck of ‘The City of Bangor’?
- According to experts, there’s been over 6000 shipwrecks in the great lakes region? Why so many? Is there some common thread (or time period)?Â
- How (and when) did the ‘The City of Bangor’ go down?
- What’s the significance of this loss (esp. to Chrysler)
- Ships aren’t always just carrying a payload of one thing; were there other items of significance being transported alongside the vehicles?
- How many vehicles were lost? Where were these vehicles headed to? Who was supposed to receive them? What types/models?
- Is there a registry of current owners/locations of the vehicles from the ship? How many still exist today?
and much, much more!
Transcript
Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?
The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
Crew Chief Eric: Some might argue that treasure hunting is a thing of the past, that we’ve discovered, plotted, surveyed, and satellite mapped all there is to discover on this planet. But in reality, treasure hunting comes in all sorts of different forms. Consider for a moment American Pickers on History Channel. Aren’t they searching for treasure?
And with the rise in popularity of shows like The Curse of Oak Island, Skinwalker Ranch, and Lost Gold of World War II, it would seem that treasure hunting is still alive and well.
Don Weberg: There is another facet of searching [00:01:00] that’s especially intriguing to me, and has been brought to the surface as recently as last year.
Take, for instance, the discovery of Ernest Shackleton’s lost vessel, The endurance.
Crew Chief Eric: You’re right, Don. And our audience is probably wondering what this actually has to do with cars. As we reported on drive through episode number 20, March of 2022, there was a shipwreck containing millions of dollars of high end vehicles like Porsches, Lamborghinis, Bugattis, and more.
And this isn’t the first time vehicles have been lost at sea. And with us tonight is author and explorer, Larry Jorgensen, who joins us to talk about a little known shipwreck that cost Detroit hundreds of vehicles. So welcome to Break Fix, Larry.
Larry Jorgensen: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here and talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is shipwrecks in Upper Michigan.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, normally we would ask folks about their motorsports or vehicle enthusiast origin story, but in this case, I think we need to dive [00:02:00] right in, pun intended, into the beginning of this story. So from what we understand, this all came about because a single photograph set it into motion?
Larry Jorgensen: Right. I was visiting up in Copper Harbor, Michigan.
That’s way on the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Lake Superior. And when I was up there, I picked up a little tourist brochure. It had a picture and about a paragraph and a half about a shipwreck. The more I looked at it, the more I thought, this is an amazing story. And I started doing research on it.
Crew Chief Eric: You have a personal tie to this particular area of Michigan as well. So what drew you, again, to that photograph, to that pamphlet? What were you doing in the area that drew you back into this whole story?
Larry Jorgensen: Way back when I was, as they say, a news dog for a television station in green Bay, that was my first introduction to the upper peninsula.
So much history up there. I went up because at that time there was a strike of copper miners going on that [00:03:00] ultimately led to the closure of all the copper mines in that area. So I was covering that as a news dog, I was interviewing people and became fascinated with the peninsula of upper Michigan.
After that, I would go up for other stories. After the strike issue was resolved, I just made it a point that if there was something going on, In upper Michigan, I wanted to be the guy up there to cover it. Fortunately, at some point in my career at the station in Green Bay, I got to be the news director.
So it was easy to say, I’m going to take care of this one. I’m going to upper Michigan. We covered a lot of stories up there. We covered the last run of the passenger train that went from Milwaukee to the upper peninsula. We were on that train, covered lots and lots of important stories. Really fell in love with the area and after I got out of television, radio news, because I’m originally from northern Wisconsin, it was easy for me to get access back up there for just [00:04:00] for fun, for snowmobiling.
Back in the late 60s, early 70s, when what is that? That’s a snowmobile. You know, so I’ve got a lot of history with the Upper Peninsula.
Don Weberg: Moving into that regional situation that you’ve got there. You’ve got a personal touch. You’ve got a personal connection to the region. Captain William Mackin, he was the one in charge of the city of Bangor ship.
Does he have any family still around to tell the stories that he told?
Larry Jorgensen: No, he doesn’t. Long since gone. He stayed with Nicholson after the accident. And then finally, as Nicholson changed hands, new owners came in, he was moved on, you know, and he became. The captain of the ship that carries cars to the Mackinac Island hired by the state of Michigan.
And that was his last job. And he did that for many years. I have been able to talk with the granddaughter of the family that actually saved. The crew, after they were finally rescued from the boat and [00:05:00] almost froze to death before they were finally brought into civilization, a lot of them were badly, badly frostbitten.
It’s a wonder they didn’t lose limbs. Those are the kind of people I could find to talk to. Some of the pictures came from the daughter of the captain of the Coast Guard rescue boat. He was, besides being the captain of the rescue boat, he was an amateur photographer. What a man to have on the spot, right?
And there are some fantastic photos, thanks to Captain Glazer and his daughter, who passed the photos on down, and we got access to them. It made the whole book to have access to those photos.
Don Weberg: So there was no loss of life with the city of Bangor accident. Is that right? No loss of life. And how many men were on board or how many people were on board that ship?
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Larry Jorgensen: after they hit the wreath, the way they got to shore is they were able to chop a lifeboat free from the ice that had already accumulated and they would take the [00:06:00] lifeboat and, you know, back and forth until they got everybody from the ship on shore. Then the problem is. Now what do we do? Some of these guys, you know, were dressed like they just come from Detroit.
We’re going to a party or something. I mean, he had loafers on and you know, they were not prepared for the challenge. They were about to get into a four feet of snow and near zero temperatures to make matters worse. There’s no communications. No one knows. The ship was crashed. Basically what makes it an amazing story is the ship was carrying 240 brand new, brand new as in 1927, Chryslers from Detroit when it hit a reef and the ship was towed.
When you look at the maps of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, it’s not on there, nowhere. And there’s been 6, 000 shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. This one, for whatever reason, is, I don’t want to say it’s a secret, but it just sort of tucked away. Few [00:07:00] people knew about it, but nobody really got excited about it.
Here it is, a shipwreck where the cars were actually rescued. You know, in those days, it was not uncommon for those big steamers to carry autos. You didn’t have good roads and big trucks hauling autos around. So a good way to transport new autos from Detroit. To wherever, as long as you could reach it on the great lakes was on boats, big steamers.
Crew Chief Eric: So was that a more effective than by rail as well, or did they kind of go back and forth depending?
Larry Jorgensen: They had rail, but they found out that you could get a lot of cars on a big steamer. And water rates are always less than land rates. If you could get there with a ship. You were gonna save money in the process of delivering that car.
And so they used it wherever they could.
Crew Chief Eric: So you mentioned something really interesting, 6,000 shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. Why so many? Is there a common thread here, even with [00:08:00] the ship that we’re gonna be talking about in more detail? The City of Banger, it’s called. What’s the Deal? Why so many shipwrecks?
Larry Jorgensen: You take the history of the Great Lakes, that goes back quite a while and you had a a lot of in the early years. poorly constructed ships, bad weather, no communications, no weather warnings that, hey, you know, such as a storm is coming. So there was a lot of them in the very early years. And the people that study this say, yeah, there’s 6, 000 that have been recorded.
And there’s been people that have said, and there’s probably a lot more that were never even recorded. Now Lake Superior is nasty. It is probably the one that gets the most in the way of shipwrecks because the lake is so big and so deep. I mean, look at the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a good example.
That hasn’t been that long in history. Basically it got into such a storm that the Edmund Fitzgerald was carrying taconite, iron ore. [00:09:00] And it was heavy. The waves were so big on Lake Superior, one wave lifted up the front of the boat, another wave lifted up the rear of the boat, and the center, where the cargo is, was suspended with no support, and the boat basically broke in half.
I’ve talked to a diver who has gone down to it, and he said, absolutely, that’s what happened. The ship was broken in half, and it is on the bottom of Lake Superior. Like most shipwrecks on the bottom of lakes like Lake Superior, it’s preserved and The water will preserve it forever.
Crew Chief Eric: How many ships are still at the bottom of Lake Superior?
Larry Jorgensen: Lots of them. I don’t know if anybody’s ever recorded that, but you talk to the divers, the great lakes are one of their favorite places to dive because they can go down to and see these ships that are well preserved. It’s cold, fresh water. that preserves them. Every once in a while, you know, you’ll see a story where they have found another wreck and were able to [00:10:00] document it, what it was and so forth.
And occasionally even one will sort of, I don’t want to say surface, but the water will change as such that part of it will actually be seen on shore. Those are not big ships, by the way. Those are smaller yachts, you might call them, that went down in the very early years of traveling on the Great Lakes.
There’s a lot out there.
Crew Chief Eric: Lake Superior is pretty rough. Is it a geological phenomena? A weather phenomena? I mean, lakes generally, they have their waves and their moments, but they’re not usually rough like the ocean.
Larry Jorgensen: I’ve been in Lake Superior when it’s been just absolutely, almost like a mirror. But you get a good weather system come in and that lake gets vicious.
It’s so big and so deep. The weather systems can just really whip up a big lake storm. And that’s what happened to the banger. Keep in mind that the ship was not originally intended to be a auto carrier. It was originally intended to haul. Iron ore, it was [00:11:00] intended to haul grain. It was a basic carrier on the Great Lakes.
Well, the Nicholson Transport Company in Detroit got into hauling automobiles. At one point, they had like 12 ships that their task was to haul automobiles. It took remodeling, if you want to call it that, of the ship. They would put in a good solid lower deck, put in an elevator, On the upper deck, they would completely level it.
Openings where cargo would normally be brought in were gone, completely redesigned to accommodate automobiles. And Nicholson was one of the biggest. At the time of the banger, they had 12 ships. They had converted. into auto carriers. One of them, in fact, was built in the same shipyard, like a half a year after the, uh, bagger.
The two ships were actually owned by the same person, the same group of people that financed building them. And they had them built to be regular cargo haulers [00:12:00] on the Great Lakes. They sold them to Nicholson and that’s how they became auto haulers.
Crew Chief Eric: And to put this in perspective for our listeners, you have to remember that At the time, we’re talking the mid to late 1920s, an auto carrying ship is a relatively new thing.
Larry Jorgensen: It’s a new thing, and if it had been previously used for iron ore or other things, the problem that they ran into with the Banger, and I presume others, they would ride higher in the water than the boat was designed for when it was designed to be an ore carrier. Consequently, when it got into a storm, like the Banger did, it would really get tossed around, and that’s what happened.
It got tossed so bad, the captain lost the rudder, they lost complete control of it, and that’s how it ended up crashing on this reef off of the Copper Harbor. To add to the problem, Captain Mackin, bless his heart, He thought that they had sailed past Copper Harbor, that they were west of [00:13:00] Copper Harbor. He made that determination because he thought he saw a well known mountain that is at Copper Harbor called Broccoli Mountain.
Well, the fact of the matter is they were still east of Copper Harbor in Lake Superior. So the guys finally get off the boat, they get to shore, they say, okay, If we can get to Copper Harbor, there’s hope. At that time, it’s a little town, what, two, three dozen people that are brave enough to live there year round.
So they think, okay, what we need to do is we need to walk east. That’s what we need to do because the captain says we’re west of Copper Harbor. They weren’t. They were east. They wandered aimlessly until somebody realized they were going in the wrong direction. They had to turn around, work their way back.
The one night they got back, they sort of camped out, if you want to call it that, not too far from the abandoned ship, but they were on shore, obviously. They continued along, and it was to the point where they were beginning to think, we’re not going to make it. [00:14:00] Some of them were really badly, badly frostbitten.
As it happened. There was another shipwreck that same time.
Crew Chief Eric: I mean, there were 5, 999 other ones, right?
Larry Jorgensen: Well, this one occurred the same time, and it was east of where the banger was, and a little bit further down on the peninsula, kind of went ashore. In fact, later it was floated and used again. But two of the mates from that ship were able to get on shore, and they walked quite a distance before they were able to get a telephone, whatever a telephone was in those days, and they called the Coast Guard rescue station at Eagle Harbor, and the Coast Guard was out to rescue them, not knowing that here’s this crew from the banger that’s wandering around lost in the Upper Peninsula.
They actually, the Coast Guard crew went by the abandoned banger. not knowing it when they went to rescue the crew. They got the second crew, I think that was about 19 [00:15:00] guys, onto the rescue boat. They’re coming back and all of a sudden the captain of the rescue boat sees the abandoned banger. So he pulls in, no sign of life, obviously.
So they continue on towards Copper Harbor. Well, they get a little further on and there’s a little bay. And they spot these guys struggling through the snow, so the captain pulls in and he yells at them, build a fire, build a big fire, stay where you are so I know where you are. When I get the first crew to safety at Copper Harbor, I’ll come back and get you guys.
Don Weberg: We’re talking about a shipwreck and basically there’s two shipwrecks I’ve always been involved in, which was Titanic. And then there was Andrea Doria, which of course was also carrying a Chrysler, which leads me to believe if you’re going to ship your Chrysler, don’t put it on a boat. Just forget it.
Chryslers and boats don’t get along. But during the whole rescue mission for the men aboard the city of Bangor, there was a sheriff and his wife’s name was Ida. And Ida was one terrific cook.
Larry Jorgensen: Yeah. [00:16:00] Well, the crew from the Bangor finally. Got the Copper Harbor, you know, we got a little town and then we got 50 some rescued ship crew men.
Where are we going to put them? Well, the ones from the other ship, most of them were convinced they could go to Eagle Harbor where the Coast Guard had a facility there for them. Where were the rest of them going to go? Well, there was the Berg home. Mr. and Mrs. Berg said, we’ll take them in. And it was a chore just getting them to the home because some of them were so badly frostbitten.
Covered with snow, just exhausted that it was a chore just to get them the half mile to the house. Mr. Berg had slaughtered two hogs in the fall. So they had pork and they had a cow that was described as the best producing cow in the town and they had some chickens. So they had provisions and they said, we’ll take them in.
Not knowing how long they were going to have them or if when they fed them, if would be [00:17:00] replenished before spring. First of all, the guys came in and they just crashed around the old stove and started to thaw out. One of the children, and this was told to me by the granddaughter, his job was to mop up the water as they Little by little, they, there are fed, the ones that are most seriously injured, cross bit, whatever, they are able to get them to the hospital in Laurium because the same auto dealer in Calumet had been experimenting with this, you know, tracks on, um, like the old Model T snowmobile thing.
In fact, he’s the one that took the insurance agent out to look at the wreck with a snow vehicle. He would take the ones that were seriously injured in his little snowmobile into Loriam to the hospital. The rest of them, little by little, were taken by sleigh into the hospital. This was not an overnight project.
This took a while. They finally got them. All to the hospital, [00:18:00] some of them ended up staying there a couple months before they were able to be released. And I was told that some of them sort of formed a relationship with nurses and decided they didn’t want to go back home. There may be some families in the Keweenaw Peninsula that are directly related to crewmen who were on the, uh, banger.
We haven’t been able to track that down, but it’s a good story that we’ve been told. Anyhow, After this is all done, he runs for sheriff and he’s elected. Well, the county seat is not Copper Harbor. It’s Eagle River, Michigan. So they move there and he’s the sheriff. She’s sort of the undersheriff assistant or whatever.
The story that was told to me by her granddaughter was that when. Someone would commit a crime and would be found guilty, have the choice of paying his fine or going to jail. He would usually select jail because it was known that [00:19:00] Ida was a good cook, just like you said. So anyhow, he’s sheriff. For a full term, he runs for reelection and he is reelected.
His term is to start in January. In December, he has a second term. He’s helping someone who’s stuck in the snow with his vehicle. He gets pneumonia. He dies like several weeks into his term. Who becomes sheriff? Ida becomes sheriff. Not only does she become sheriff, she runs and successfully reelected two more times.
She is written in Michigan history as one of those notable women in history. You know, she was quite a lady. In the book, there is a copy of a Christmas card that they received when they were in Copper Harbor from the first mate of the banger who. His home was in Ohio and he had gotten back to Ohio and he had sent them a lengthy, not just Merry [00:20:00] Christmas, but thanking them for saving the crew, the hospitality, everything they did.
The granddaughter who has told me so much about them, they have a little summer home. She’s from Indiana, but they go up in the summer to Copper Harbor and I met with her twice and the second time she comes up and she says, I’ve been digging through grandma’s boxes and look what I found. And it’s that Christmas card.
She allowed me to take it, to copy it, to put it in the book.
Crew Chief Eric: So at this point, you got two shipwrecks at the same time. One is run aground, and then you’ve got this banger with a big hole in the hole. Taking on water, but it’s not sinking.
Larry Jorgensen: No, it couldn’t sink. It’s high on this reef, you know.
Crew Chief Eric: But the cars are Submerged somewhat or relatively safe.
Larry Jorgensen: Well the cars in the lower deck some water now We need to also add to this. We said there were 240 Chrysler’s there were 240 [00:21:00] cars Six of them were whippets. They were made in Toledo how they ended up in Detroit on that ship I haven’t been able to find out what six whippets were on that ship. And the
Crew Chief Eric: irony in that is that the Willys Overland whippet, for those unfamiliar with the car, eventually would merge into the Chrysler corporation many, many years later, one big happy family.
Larry Jorgensen: We’ve got 200 and some Chryslers, six whippets. Now, when the ship got into this tossing and turning in the storm. There was a string of 13 cars, all chained together under one chain on deck. That chain broke and those 13 cars are on the bottom of Lake Superior.
Crew Chief Eric: To this day,
Larry Jorgensen: to this day, they didn’t make it.
There was another car when the ship hit the reef, it threw the car, this one particular car off. It was so badly damaged. It ended up going ashore, not. And it was [00:22:00] so badly damaged that when they finally got the cars out of there, that one had to be taken out by slay. And ultimately it was sold to an auto dealer in Calumet, Michigan for 25 for parts.
Yeah. So we, we did have some vehicle casualties in this, but basically over 200 of them. We’re able to be rescued if you want to use that term salvage, whatever, and brought to the little town, the Copper Harbor, there’s a couple of pictures in the book of 200 and some Chrysler’s lined up in the town of the town.
There’s a little village of Copper Harbor, probably population. What? 24, 30. I don’t know. You
Crew Chief Eric: know, there’s more cars than there are people there. Yeah.
Larry Jorgensen: A long shot. So now we’ve got them there. The other thing in trying to get the cars there, it’s winter, it’s cold. First of all, they waited for two months until the ice froze around the reef.
Okay. So now we can get the cars [00:23:00] off the boat onto the reef. First, they thought, well, we’ll build a road through the woods to Copper Harbor, which was about six, seven miles. And they got about a mile with that project, and they said, no, that’s not going to work. Somebody said, wait a minute. The ice along the shore is solid.
Let’s drive the cars along the shore. And there was enough ice frozen that you could actually get them, drive them to shore on the ice. Some of the batteries didn’t work. Some of them didn’t even have batteries. So the ones that had batteries that were working, they would drive those to Copper Harbor.
Somebody would take the batteries back, you know, this was the way it went until we got all the cars into Copper Harbor.
Don Weberg: Larry, was there somebody paying for these cars to get off the ship? I’m assuming the insurance would have just reimbursed Chrysler.
Larry Jorgensen: Once the, uh, ship was declared a total loss and that came pretty quick.
The insurance guy was there like very soon after the wreck and declared it. A loss. Walter himself went [00:24:00] up and looked at it and agreed it was a loss. Walter Chrysler decides, Got a ship with a bunch of my cars on it. I want my cars back. In which, in those days, you know, you could get them back and spruce them up a little bit and put them back in the market.
So he hired a salvage company from Duluth. And it was in fact the salvage company. I don’t think Walter paid for it, probably his insurance company did. The salvage company from Duluth came up with this plan. They said, wait till the ice freezes, we can get them off the ship, off the reef, and we’ll get them to Copper Harbor.
So they posted a guard shack out there for two months to watch cars, make sure, you know, and finally, the way I described it, they got the cars off. There’s a great picture in the book. They build a ramp from the reef up to the top deck. So the cars on the top deck would come down and then the cars on the lower deck would be raised to the top deck and they would come down the ramp.
So they finally got them all off. The ones on the top, and again, [00:25:00] photos that we were able to get, show that some of them were so badly covered by ice and snow, you didn’t even know there was a car there. There’s pictures of these guys packing away on ice and snow to uncover these cars on top. So we get them to Copper Harbor.
Now the salvage company, they agreed on a fee of like 140, some 150 a car for every car that is returned to Detroit. So how do you do that? Well, they’re in Copper Harbor. The distance from Copper Harbor to the closest railroad. Goes back to your question. Can they all on rail is about 40 miles sounds simple, except it’s wintertime and that road hasn’t been plowed for a long time.
And you’ve got places on that road where snow is 10, 12 feet deep. Now what that whole peninsula, there’s two counties that make up the peninsula. So there’s two County highway crews that are pressed into action, trying to plow the road open, which they never [00:26:00] plow in the winter. If you live in Copper Harbor in the winter, you better make sure you have provisions till spring.
They work for two weeks. They actually bring in a new type of plow. It’s one of these turbine powered plows. It was just being developed over in Minnesota. And they bring that in to finish up the last 10 miles of the journey. They finally get the road. Oh, in the meantime, they’ve been hauling gas by tanks on slay to copper Harbor, because eventually we want to drive the cars to Calumet to get them on a train, right?
Okay. So we got a road open. We got fuel. We only got two dozen people that live in this town. The salvage company says, tell you what, I’ll pay anybody five dollars to drive one of those cars from Copper Harbor to Calumet. Boy, there were a lot of kids at ditch school that day. And whoever, people just, in doing the book, you talk about talking to Relatives of, you know, descendants of, I’d talk to people [00:27:00] who said, Oh, yeah, my grandfather drove one of those cars, you know, or my uncle, you know, so anyhow, this is where it really gets interesting because think about it, you’re going to be paid 5.
To drive a new Chrysler down this 40 mile road. But you got a Chrysler. We know for sure one of them didn’t make it. Of course, as you do, as you start researching the story, you have people that come up to you and say, I know so and so. When you get closer to Calumet, there’s some side roads, and some of those sort of disappeared, you know.
You got your choice, 5 or a new Chrysler. It doesn’t take anybody real smart to figure that out. And we’ve got photographic proof of this. Well, I’m proof of one of the Chryslers too, but we know the Whippets didn’t go back to Detroit. If the insurance company or Walter himself was paying for this rescue, he’s not about to bring a bunch of Whippets back to Detroit.
That wasn’t part of the deal. He wants his Chryslers back. In the book, there’s a picture of one of [00:28:00] the Whippets that in fact ended up at one of the places in Copper Harbor where the, the crewmen were taken in. Ended up with one of those whippets. Ultimately, it went to somebody else. The picture in the book, the shed it was in is about to fall down.
And here’s this whippet. It ultimately got sold to somebody else for 500. So there’s one whip. Talk to a lady who’s with the historical society, who back when she was very young, bought a whippet at an estate auction. There’s two, the hotel in Calumet has a display on a wall back there, and it has two wooden wheels from a Whippet.
That’s three. So we’re missing three. The best guess is whoever had them when they became immobile, just to the trash yard with them. We’re convinced no Whippets went back to Detroit.
Don Weberg: And the other funny thing too, you know, City of Bangor. She was converted, what, in 1926. That’s when the wreck took place and [00:29:00] Chrysler had only been in business just a little over a year.
It’s a brand new company.
Larry Jorgensen: At that time, you know, 26, 27, 28, those were key years for Chrysler. It kicked them up to the point where they were what, like number four in the industry. They were innovators, so to speak, in those days, they were on to something that people were buying Chrysler’s, that’s for sure.
Crew Chief Eric: To Don’s point, they were brand new Walter Chrysler obviously was known in the community, but the company itself was still basically newborn. And then to shell out all this money between the drivers, the return fees to get him on the trains, you know, obviously there’s money coming back from the insurance company, but he was paying for the insurance.
There was a lot of expense. Because of the shipwreck. And then you kind of wonder yourself, how did Chrysler afford it? Yeah, it
Larry Jorgensen: wasn’t worthwhile. They figured the salvage company cost, and it was over 30, 000. And then they figured another four to five thou to get the cars back to Detroit.
Crew Chief Eric: In today’s dollars, in today’s economy, in 2023, 30, [00:30:00] 000 in 1926, 27 is equal to nearly half a million dollars in payload on that ship.
So that’s not chunk change by any stretch of the imagination. That is a significant amount of money in the 1920s.
Don Weberg: And it makes you wonder, did Chrysler just lose money hand over fist on these cars? I mean, would it have been better to, you know what? Let them go, let the people in Wisconsin have them. I don’t need them, I’ll build more.
How much were each one of those cars worth? They were about
Larry Jorgensen: 850 a car.
Don Weberg: And we saved 200 of them?
Larry Jorgensen: 200 of them. So I guess we have to do the math to figure out if it was worthwhile. Apparently it was.
Crew Chief Eric: In today’s dollars, each car was 13, 348.
Larry Jorgensen: Wow. Pretty costly project, but I guess it must’ve worked out. Okay.
And cars fortunately weren’t damaged. You know, the ones that they go off the ship, pretty good shape.
Don Weberg: Yeah, I don’t know. This sounds like a crazy money losing scheme.
Larry Jorgensen: Maybe it was [00:31:00] more pride than anything. That’s what I’m wondering. Yeah. You know, you can see one of the cars that stayed. On the peninsula, a man bought it from the Chrysler dealer up there, and he told them that he got it off the ship.
He was the same guy that got the damaged one, right? And he sold it to this fam, to the man, and he had it for a couple years, and then he died, and the car was passed on through the family. For 69 years, the one guy that had the car, who was actually the brother of the man who bought it, was so pleased with the car.
He would drive it as much as he could, parades and whatever. He just, he practically lived in it. He put 200, 000 miles on that car. Ultimately, it went through the family. It finally got sold to a person who thought he would go to restore it, make a fortune, and after realizing what that would cost, he didn’t, and he sold it to the [00:32:00] museum and it is in the Eagle Harbor.
Lighthouse museum on Lake Superior, probably about 30 miles away from Copper Harbor. So it kind of went back home.
Crew Chief Eric: We know there’s 13 cars still at the bottom of Lake Superior. So we’ve got any divers out there that want to go check them out. They can, but you know, what happened to the other cars? We talked about some of the whip it, some of them are still lost.
Things like that. Is there a registry? Of remaining vehicles out there. And I’m wondering, have you been able to get your hands on the ships manifest to get an original list of VIN numbers?
Larry Jorgensen: In the book, we talk about the log book and the log book didn’t surface, never available, and then all of a sudden back in about sixties, somebody is going through the woods close to where the wreck was, turns over a log a, a big piece of timber, and there’s just.
Book under there. Like obviously Captain Mackin [00:33:00] wanted to put the logbook there to be able to come back and get it at some point. This guy finds his book not knowing really what he’s got until someone advises him and it ends up at the museum. But the back pages that would have had the serial numbers are gone.
Why? We don’t know, but they’re gone. The museum has had historian come up from Chrysler, look at the car, you know, try to figure out information on it. Yes, it must have been one of those, but there’s no paperwork to track it.
Crew Chief Eric: So there’s nothing even on the Chrysler factory side saying that these cars were put on the ship destined for Minnesota or wherever they were headed to?
Well, I was told how
Larry Jorgensen: much of it is true. I don’t know, but I was told by Chrysler. That those records were part of a lot of records that were destroyed in a fire. Now, maybe you guys know when the fire was, you know, within our lifetime, there was a hundred years. Yeah. I mean, within the past few [00:34:00] decades of this fire in Detroit destroyed a Chrysler archives or whatever, and those records were in there.
I tried that. I tried to find, could not find. I’ve talked to people who are members of Chrysler car clubs, Chrysler enthusiasts, you know, and have gotten nowhere. I even advertised at one point for people who may think they have a car that was on the banger. And I got nowhere with that. That was an effort that went nowhere.
Crew Chief Eric: Those types of ships. To your point, this was converted from carrying ore and things like that. So, you know, designed to carry an extremely heavy payload and obviously cars are larger objects, so they take up a lot of space, but sometimes those ships are carrying other things along with the major payload.
Was there anything else of significance being transported alongside the cars?
Larry Jorgensen: No, only the food to feed the crew. It was strictly cars. And you know, we mentioned in the book, one of the reporters from Detroit said there must’ve been a jinx [00:35:00] on ships who were carrying cars, ironically, about two years after.
The Banger, one of the ships that was also owned by Nicholson, was carrying nashes from Kenosha up Lake Michigan. Bad storm off of Port Washington, etc. An ore carrier coming down from Escanaba smashed into it. It sank like within six minutes with all those nashes on it to this day on the bottom of Lake Michigan, there is the remains of a ship and 200 and some nashes, and it is sort of ingest been referred to as the world’s largest Nash museum.
So there, there were other incidences where cars. Went to the bottom where car haulers were involved in accidents.
Crew Chief Eric: Whether they disappeared or were still at the bottom of the ocean was, as we discussed, pretty significant to Chrysler. So I wonder, you know, without the manifest, without the [00:36:00] records, Chrysler’s lost their documents on their end.
Do you have any idea, other than the whippets? If it was the same model of Chrysler, were they only building one car? Were there different types? Were there like limousines or their convertibles?
Larry Jorgensen: It was the same model. I’ve got a picture of an ad that one of the dealers in Duluth had run promoting. I’m getting these wonderful Chryslers.
And, and as I, I guess the best way to describe it was sort of a mid range. Priced vehicle, the kind of car that anybody can afford. And that’s what the ship was. It was all of them. Something to
Crew Chief Eric: compete with the model a at that point, right?
Don Weberg: Probably the ship, the city of banger, she gets laid up on a reef.
The Chrysler’s get unloaded. The Whippets get unloaded the ice eventually is going to fall and you’re going to have this ship sitting there. What became of the actual
Larry Jorgensen: ship initially in the early stages of what do we do with the ship? There was one salvage company that said, ah, we’ll re float it and [00:37:00] patch the hole and it’ll become sort of a barge type thing, they would use it for hauling stuff.
They actually put a temporary patch on that big hole in the side of the ship and put pumps in there and pumped it out figuring we’re going to do that. Well, guess what? It was too high on the reef. They couldn’t get anywhere to it to get it off the reef. So it sits there, you know, they brought their tug in and they finally gave up on that idea.
So it sits, it sat on that reef for 18 years, people would go out on the shore and they’d look at it. You know, there’s even a picture in the book of in the wintertime. You could walk out to it. There’s a picture in the book of Mr. Berg, the sheriff sitting by the gash in the boat. Okay, 18 years. It’s sincere.
What happens? World War II. We need steel. And finally, a salvage company says, We’ll take care of this. And they go out and they cut it down to the waterline. They salvage as [00:38:00] much as they can for the war. But it doesn’t stop there. I got a picture of the boat when it’s cut down to the waterline, which is just like a floating barge.
There were two guys, they got their names even, that were logging in the woods, cutting down trees. And they saw all this going on and they said, you know, we can make more money if we can go out and salvage some steel than we can cutting down trees. So they come up with this crazy vehicle. It was a old truck type vehicle with a big winch in the back.
And they go out there and they start salvaging the pieces that are under the water. A little dynamite, a little whatever to bust things loose. And they make some pretty good extra money doing that sort of the pirate division of salvage. They weren’t authorized. They just did it, you know, and to this day, occasionally there’ll be something that will come up in the sand.
One of the divers might find under water, a piece of steel or something. [00:39:00] So even at the museum, there are pieces of the ship that were found in that manner. Also in the museum, by the way, there is the captain’s desk, the captain’s jacket, and what’s left of that log book are all in the museum. The desk was given by the captain to the Bergs.
He must’ve been able to get it off of the boat somehow. And he gave it to the Burgs. They in turn have loaned it on permanent loan to the museum. So the captain’s desk was also
Don Weberg: rescued. At the actual wreck site. Is there anything left of the city of Bangor or has it all been salvaged out? And
Larry Jorgensen: it’s pretty well salvaged.
Or is found under the water, small pieces, you know, a foot, a foot and a half of steel or things like that.
Crew Chief Eric: But to Don’s point, is there maybe like one of those Memorial historic placards or anything like that, where you could actually go visit the crash site today?
Larry Jorgensen: You know, we’ve talked about that. It is so remote to get to that site.
It would take some funding to build a [00:40:00] decent trail out there. And one time I’m told there was sort of a handmade sign on the shore saying, this is where, you know, but that’s gone. Copper Harbor now is a big tourist area in the summer, especially. I think somebody would say, Hey, let’s get a marker out here.
Let’s plow a trail, encourage people to go see it. Maybe my book will stir that up. You know, at the end of the book. I make reference to the fact that saying it, it takes a village. Well, I’ll tell you what, in this story, it took a peninsula. It took hundreds of people in a peninsula to make it all happen.
From the sheriff to his wife, to the kids that drove the cars, to the captain of the Coast Guard boat, to the people that just, what can we do to help? Amazing story.
Crew Chief Eric: And talking to many authors, and I’m sure there’s. Folks out there right now listening to this that are, you know, maybe trying to write their memoir or the Great American Novel or whatever it might be, there’s, as you go through the process of writing, you learn that not everything can fit in the [00:41:00] book and things get left to the side.
It’s almost like television, except the blooper reel or the B reel, right? So, in this case, what’s on the B reel of the book? What are some of the stories that you captured in your research process that didn’t make it into the book?
Larry Jorgensen: There is a rumor and I haven’t been able to track it down. But there is a rumor that train, when it went to Detroit, got into a wreck.
And, and there is a person who, and I can’t, I found his son, but he’s gone. In this little thing that I read, he claims to have a picture of some of those cars when they were thrown off the train. Of all the things I’ve heard, that is the Holy grail. That picture and his son lives in lower Michigan. I was able to track him down.
He said, dad’s been gone for 25 years. He said, yes, he was a historian of sorts in the upper peninsula. He was fascinated by it. And I have never seen that picture and never heard [00:42:00] of it. So I’ve got people looking, there’ve been other stories about people have come to me and said, and I’ve got their names, you know, well, my grandpa drove one of those cars and boy, there’s somewhere there’s, but you know, the other.
Photo that’s missing. You think about, now there was a newspaper in Calumet at that time. Now there isn’t, it’s long since gone. I was able to find two articles in the archives that were in that newspaper. It talked about wreck and then it talked about the cars are coming to Detroit and they’re sending a special guy up from Detroit who knows how to load them on these flat cars and get them back and so forth.
Okay. The newspaper. Twice covered the story, at least twice that I could find. Do you think anybody would have thought to go down and take a picture of the cars being loaded on the train? Doesn’t exist. I’ve gone to the archives, even ran an ad in the local newspaper, the daily [00:43:00] newspaper, figuring if somebody’s grandfather or uncle or whatever.
Look, one of those cars here, he probably went to the train when it was being loaded. And maybe he took a picture and maybe there’s one in somebody’s album. Do you know two pictures that are missing for the revised volume? Okay. Return to the bagger picture of was there a train wreck? Did we lose some cars in the woods?
And why didn’t anybody take a picture of them? on the train. Where are those two pictures?
Don Weberg: I wonder if somebody did take that picture and there was no room for it in the paper. Who was the photographer at that newspaper? Maybe it’d be worth it to try and contact that person or that person’s family. I mean, I don’t know.
It’s a long shot of long shots, but think about newspapers. Eric just said it. Not everything can make it in. There’s not enough space for everything to go in. So they sent a photographer, they sent a reporter, they do their story on the train wreck, they take the pictures, they get back home. They print it, they type it out.
[00:44:00] And Oh, there’s just not enough room guys. I’m sorry. We can run the story, but no picture
Larry Jorgensen: could be. And obviously the photographer is long gone, right? What we need to look at is some of the photographers that I have talked to photographers, modern day photographers up there about this, but not about who would have been.
And that was a small weekly newspaper. So chances are the guy that wrote the article, ran the press, etc. may have also been the guy that would have taken the picture. Right. Who was the editor of that little weekly newspaper? Who are his descendants? That may be the answer. Because to show you what a secret, I don’t want to say a secret, but a kind of an unknown story this was.
When I first got interested in this, first place I went, besides a historical association, Michigan Tech University, big university up there in Houghton, they have an archives. And I went to the lady, one of the ladies in the archives, and I told her what I was doing. Now [00:45:00] she’s in the archives in the Keweenaw Peninsula.
When I told her what I was looking for, she said, I’ve never heard of that. She actually had to go to somebody else in the archives who said, Yeah, I think we have something about that. And they didn’t have much. But the lady in the archives did not know the story, didn’t even know it existed. And the other thing that has hampered my research.
The Daily Newspaper in Houghton, which is still in existence, the late 1930s destroyed all of their papers up until then. There’s just too much space to get rid of them. And, you know, I went to the one, uh, historical society in Houghton and she said, those papers don’t exist anymore from that newspaper, they’re gone.
They just. Decided to get rid of them. Didn’t put them on microfiche. Nothing. They’re gone.
Don Weberg: Unreal.
Larry Jorgensen: It’s been a challenge.
Don Weberg: Well, and it’s so funny. You say that there was once a little marker, a little handmade marker, whatever. But then [00:46:00] you met the lady at the archive who knew nothing about this thing. It’s funny how it’s like a split community.
There’s people who knew about the City of Bangor wreck. And there’s people who had no clue, no idea that this ever happened. And I can’t help but wonder why, you know, why, why is it that nobody knew about it? Was it because nobody died? You think about it. If a shipwreck, a plane wreck, when somebody dies, that’s what it makes big news.
That’s when people all of a sudden, everybody knows about it. Nobody died at city of banger.
Larry Jorgensen: Yeah. I think the people that knew about it thought, well, okay. So the thing went on a reef. So big deal. They didn’t realize. The value of the story of the cars. And I didn’t realize the value of that. I set out to do a shipwreck book.
Okay. I thought it was fascinating. You know what’s happened? I’ve got as many people that are interested in vintage cars that have come to me. The book is for sale in numerous vintage car museum gift shops. Blew me away when [00:47:00] I realized that I had created two markets, not just people that like to read about the great lakes and shipwrecks, but all these people that are crazy about vintage cars.
It’s amazing. Besides affecting an entire peninsula. It affects so many people in different ways.
Crew Chief Eric: So what’s next? Are you continuing to research on this story? Are you working on another shipwreck or a different book? What are you up to?
Larry Jorgensen: I am building a file called what abouts file for this one. I may do part two, whatever.
We’ll see what comes up there, but I am writing another book. I’ve written prior to this one, I think my most successful venture. And I write, I write like a newsman, find the facts and put them down. You know, I wrote a book. Called the Coca Cola trail. And that was so successful that I wrote a sequel called return to the Coca Cola trail.
And that book is about people and places, not Atlanta in the history of Coca Cola. For example, chapter [00:48:00] one. Do you know Coca Cola was first bottled in Vicksburg, Mississippi, not Atlanta, Georgia. Okay. And what we’ve done with that book and the sequel is we’ve told the reader where you can go see touch and feel that it’s Coca Cola history.
What it is now and what it was then the book is loaded with historical photos and I’ve had people tell me I’m planning my next trip to see some of these things that are in your book. Again, that was a mission that really turned out successful. What am I writing now? I’m going back to snow country in a way.
I’m writing a book called Make It Go in the Snow. We talk about the vehicle that took the insurance guy to the ship, basically like a Model T, they put tracks on the wheels and they put skis up front in place of the wheel. And there was a guy who invented this in 1917 and patented, copyrighted the name snowmobile.
So what we’re [00:49:00] doing is we’re going from what is the modern day snowmobile. backwards. All these people that came up with ideas. This book will be called Make It Go In the Snow, People and Ideas in the History of Snowmobiles. The stage we went through were snow vehicles, had the tracks on them. There was a heck of an effort.
To power snow vehicles with airplane propellers. And that, that became really big in Canada and it was developed in the United States for a while until they realized it was a pretty dangerous idea and they quit doing that. But we found other things like we found a guy from Chicago who took a model, a Ford, and in just a few months in his basement in Chicago.
Made a snowmobile. This was like in 1919. It’s unbelievable. It’s a big old boxy thing, but it worked and he took it up to Northern Wisconsin. And so it’s that [00:50:00] kind of stuff that we’re writing about things that people probably never heard of in snow vehicle transportation or. If they did, they didn’t hear much about it.
Crew Chief Eric: So Larry, your current book, Shipwrecked and Rescued, tell our audience how they can get a copy if they’re interested in checking it out and learning more.
Larry Jorgensen: Well, the easiest way, and the way I appreciate it is go to my website, shipwreckedandrescued, make sure you got past that, shipwreckedandrescued. com. If you go to the website, I’ll even sign it to you if you want me to.
Yes, it’s available on Amazon. And fortunately. It’s available in a lot of places, Michigan bookstores, lighthouse museums that have gift stores. Like I said before, a lot of vintage auto museums have got the book in the gift stores. You never know where you may see it. You know, I’ve heard this and you walk into a place and there it is.
You know, the cover on the book, when we decided this is too good a story to not really put [00:51:00] some real effort into it, the cover on the book I hired. a artist in the Keweenaw to create that artwork that’s on the cover. I wanted something that would show both the state of the boat and the cars, and he was able to meld that together into one painting.
It’s a fantastic painting.
Crew Chief Eric: Any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover thus far?
Larry Jorgensen: Yeah, I’ll say this is People want to pursue this topic. If they know something about the banger or they think they know something, or maybe they’ve got that photo I’m looking for, or they just want to talk, email me.
I’ll give you my phone number. Call me up. Let’s talk. You never know where that next little piece will be. Maybe we’ll find it together. By the way, I have to boast a little bit too. We found out about a week or two ago that the book was named, they call them notable. They don’t call them best. I know they call them notable books.
We’re one of the 10 notable books of 2022 [00:52:00] in upper Michigan, the upper Michigan publishers and authors association. That made me feel pretty good.
Crew Chief Eric: Congratulations.
Larry Jorgensen: Thank you. Well, I guess I want to thank Eric and Don for giving me the opportunity to talk about what has become one of the favorite stories that I’ve written.
Thank you very much, both of you. And thanks to your audience for listening to this story.
Don Weberg: Larry Jorgensen first became fascinated with Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and its unique history while writing and reporting for television news in Green Bay. It was by learning of this little known event which resulted in his decision to create a written account which he hopes would share the story of one of Lake Superior’s most unusual shipwrecks.
It’s amazing to think that with all of our advanced technology, there are still items hidden so well they still remain to be discovered. NASA Whether it’s ancient artifacts, well kept barn finds, closed door collections, and even shipwrecks, there’s a reason to continue hunting for [00:53:00] treasure. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more about Larry and his quests, be sure to log on to www.
Shipwrecked. com. And rescued. com where you can purchase a copy of his books or follow him on LinkedIn.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. And I can’t thank you enough, Larry, for coming on break fix and sharing this really just unusual, but also fascinating story about a shipwreck of Chrysler’s from the 1920s. And it’s people like you that tied together these parts of automotive history that we weren’t even thinking about.
And this is truly amazing. And I thank you. for it and it just reinforces the idea that everyone has a story.
Larry Jorgensen: I think we’ve done it. It’s been a lot of fun and thank you. What a great evening. And Eric, Don, thank you guys. Appreciate it.
Don Weberg: Thank you. Good to meet you, Larry. You
Larry Jorgensen: too.
Don Weberg: Bye
Crew Chief Brad: now.
If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us [00:54:00] out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at grandtorymotorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
org. We’d love to hear from you.
Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of BreakFix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.
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Highlights
Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.
- 00:00Â Introduction to BreakFix Podcast
- 00:27Â The Modern-Day Treasure Hunt
- 01:06Â Shipwrecks and Lost Vehicles
- 01:34Â Interview with Larry Jorgensen
- 02:32Â Larry’s Connection to Upper Michigan
- 04:16Â The City of Bangor Shipwreck
- 05:41Â Rescue and Aftermath
- 06:28Â Salvaging the Vehicles
- 07:51Â Challenges of the Great Lakes
- 14:04Â The Rescue Mission
- 15:48Â The Aftermath and Legacy
- 29:43Â The Cost of Salvaging Cars
- 30:15Â Chrysler’s Financial Dilemma
- 31:02Â The Fate of the Rescued Cars
- 32:28Â The Missing Logbook Mystery
- 34:54Â Other Shipwrecks and Lost Cars
- 36:36Â Salvaging the City of Bangor
- 41:12Â The Hunt for Historical Evidence
- 47:34Â Larry Jorgensen’s Writing Journey
- 50:08Â Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Learn More
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Larry Jorgensen first became fascinated with Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and its unique history while writing and reporting for television news in Green Bay. It was by learning of this little known event which resulted in his decision to create a written account which he hopes would share the story of one of Lake Superior’s most unusual shipwrecks.Â
Get a copy of Larry’s book Today!
It’s amazing to think that with all of our advanced technology, there are still items hidden so well they still remain to be discovered. Whether its ancient artifacts, well-kept barn finds, closed door collections, and even shipwrecks, there’s a reason to continue hunting for treasure. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more about Larry and his quests, be sure to logon to www.shipwreckedandrescued.com where you can purchase a copy of his books or follow him on LinkedIn.Â