Still Missing: Rethinking the D.B. Cooper Case and Other Mysterious Unsolved Disappearances (20 page)

Of these vessels, the first to founder, and the only one whose wreck site is currently undiscovered, is the
Andaste
. The
Andaste
wasn’t what one would call a pretty ship. She wasn’t sleek, nor was she graceful looking. In fact, some would consider her downright ugly. But at the time of her launch, in 1892, she was considered a technologically advanced machine, utilitarian and practical.

The freighter
Andaste
at port.

On March 24, 1892, the following article appeared in Cleveland area papers describing the construction of the
Andaste
and her sister, the Choctaw, and the unusual naming practices of the company who was having the vessels built:

THE MARINE REVIEW

Andaste
and
CHOCTAW
are the names to be given to the steamers of monitor type now under construction at the yard of the Cleveland Ship Building Company for the Lake Superior Iron Company. It is remarkable that the names of all the Lake Superior Company’s steamers except the
JOLIET
contain just seven letters and an additional “1” will be added to the
JOLIET
this year to make the names of this fleet uniform.

Launched in 1892, a
Buffalo Enquirer
article dated April 1 of that year gave a thorough description of the homely vessel’s accoutrements:

THE “ANDASTE“ LAUNCHED.

The first of the Monitor steamers, of which three are building for the Lake Superior Iron Company, was launched yesterday afternoon at Cleveland from the yard of the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company.

The steamer
Andaste
is 280 feet in length over all, with a 260 foot keel, 33 feet beam, and 23 feet depth of hold. She has considerable “tumble home,” but the top of the deck is almost flat. There are seven hatches, with no deck house intervening. The stem rises straight up to a height of ten feet above the deck and at the extreme forward end is a narrow deck house, the front end of which comes sharply to a point at the stem. This deck house is not more than 15 or 20 feet in length, and is narrow. The boat has no bulwarks, but a set of movable posts with three or four strands of wire strung through them, being in this respect, precisely similar to the whalebacks. There is a roomy deck house aft of the hatches, partitioned into apartments like the whalebacks, with the pilot house in relatively the same position as on the whalebacks. The
Andaste
’s pilot house is not built on turrets. In beauty the monitors do not far outstrip the whalebacks, but they are much cheaper than the ordinary type of lake steamer, and without a particle less strength, the
Andaste
has one hundred tons less weight, and will show a much smaller surface to the wind. The hold is in one compartment, there being nothing between the collision bulkhead and that built forward of the engine. Web frames four feet wide are placed 16 feet apart, and serve to give the hull as much stiffening as would the bulkheads. The motive power of the
Andaste
will consist of a triple expansion engine with cylinders respectively 17, 29 and 47 inches in diameter, with 36 inch stroke of piston. Steam will be furnished by two Scotch type boilers each eleven feet in diameter and eleven feet long. The boat will be fitted with the usual auxiliary power, steam capstans, windlass and steering gear, etc. She will be ready for sea in six weeks, and about the same time her sister boat, the
CHOCTAW
, building for the same company, will be ready for launching.

A view of the unusual stern of the freighter
Andaste
.

Sure enough, as predicted, six weeks later, the
Andaste
made her maiden voyage. Unlike the maiden voyage of the
Titanic
, two decades later, the
Andaste
’s first trip was nearly flawless, and reported in following
Detroit Free Press
, dated May 16, 1892:

The
Andaste
, the first steamer of the “Straightback” type passed up last evening on her maiden voyage. In appearance she represents a decided departure from the usual style of steamers; she has no sheer whatever; her deck from the boiler house forward is clear of all obstructions except a small forecastle deck; she has no bulwarks and no spars, except a small pole forward on which to carry her white light. Great structural strength and large carrying capacity are the chief points of excellence claimed for boats of this class. No attempt at fast time was made coming over—her time from Cleveland being about nine hours. She is bound to Escanaba for ore, and will continue in that trade during the season. The boat’s performance will be watched with a great deal of interest by vessel owners. The
Andaste
is commanded by Capt. George Miner, of Detroit.

For the next 37 years, the
Andaste
would prove to be one of the most reliable ships afloat on the Great Lakes, hauling iron ore from Lake Superior ports to steel mills located on the lower lakes. Her twin, the
Choctaw
, did not fare as well, sinking in Lake Huron after colliding with the steamer
Wahcondah
on July 12, 1915. The
Choctaw
sank quickly in deep water near Presque Isle, Michigan, and her wreck site, like the
Andaste
’s, has yet to be discovered.

In 1929, the
Andaste
was leased from her owners by the Construction Materials Company to make regular runs between Grand Haven and Chicago. The
Andaste
’s job was to bring gravel, dredged from a quarry a few miles upstream in the Grand River, to Chicago, where it would be used in various construction projects around the rapidly growing city. The
Andaste
replaced the barge
Hennepin
, which foundered with no loss of life on August 18, 1927, running the same route. Ironically, many of the crew members of the
Hennepin
, including Captain Anderson, survived that shipwreck, only to die a couple years later when the
Andaste
foundered.

Grand Haven, a small town on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, was considered the home port of the
Andaste
, and was no stranger to maritime tragedy. The passenger steamer
Ironsides
foundered a few miles offshore from that port in 1873. Thirty five passengers and crewmembers escaped the sinking vessel safely, but huge waves along the shoreline rolled the lifeboats in the surf and killed 18 of the survivors, just feet from shore and safety.

The
Andaste
loading cargo in Ferrysburg, MI.

In 1880, the sidewheel steamer
Alpena
disappeared in an autumn gale with nearly 100 souls aboard. There were no survivors and the wreck site of the
Alpena
has not been located. Just 3 short years later, the
H.C. Akeley
foundered 15 miles due west of Saugatuck, Michigan. The
Akeley
was the largest ship built and launched on the Grand River. In 1885, the beautiful passenger steamer
S.S. Michigan
became trapped in ice, was crushed and sank, 15 miles west of Holland, Michigan, almost within sight of her homeport, Grand Haven. Over the decades, dozens of vessels have wrecked near the shores of Grand Haven. The bones of some of these shipwrecks are still there, hidden beneath the shifting sands of the Grand Haven State Park’s beach.

The 1929 shipping season was fairly uneventful, with the
Andaste
making its regular runs to Calumet harbor, just south of Chicago, unloading her gravel cargo, and then returning to Grand Haven for another load. This continued throughout the summer, until early September.

On September 9, the
Andaste
took on a load of pea gravel at the Construction Materials Company terminal, which sits on the Grand River, just a short distance upstream from downtown Grand Haven. The load was one of the lightest loads of the year for ship and crew. Around 9:00 pm, the
Andaste
emerged from the pier heads, and eventually turned to the southwest, towards Chicago. A few hours later, a fierce autumn gale ripped through Lake Michigan, and the
Andaste
disappeared. Newspapers of the era captured the drama which unfolded when people began to realize that something horrible might have happened to the freighter filled with the young men of Grand Haven.

A
Chicago Tribune
article appeared September 12, noting the vessel had not yet appeared in the Calumet harbor:

LAKE STEAMER, 28 ON BOARD,
LONG OVERDUE

The gravel carrying ship
Andaste
was reported more than 46 hours overdue in Chicago at 7 o’clock this morning. Fears for the safety of the 28 men aboard the vessel were growing hourly as no word was received of the missing boat. Late in the day hopes were raised for the
Andaste
’s safety when an airplane sighted a craft of its description far out in the lake.

The steamer left Grand Haven, Mich., at 9:30 a.m. Monday with a cargo consigned to the Construction Materials Company, 228 North La Salle Street. It was due in Chicago at 9 a.m. Tuesday. But weather records showed that after leaving Grand Haven it must have encountered a serious storm only a few hours out and that it may have been compelled to change its course.

IN TOUCH WITH OWNERS.

Ray C. Yeoman, assistant to the president of the Construction Materials Company, said he had been in constant touch with the owners, the Andaste Steamship Company of Cleveland, and that they have not yet become actually concerned about the ship.

When no word had been received from the
Andaste
last night, lieut. Hoskins of the Great Lakes Naval Training station flew out over Lake Michigan in search of it and on his return reported to Mr. Yeoman that he had sighted a boat which he believed to be the
Andaste
, although he could not distinguish the name on it.

The boat at that time was about 35 miles out and expected to reach Chicago early this morning.

SHIP CARRIES NO RADIO.

A.L. Anderson of Sturgeon Bay, Wis., is captain of the missing boat. Its crew of twenty-seven men had been recruited from various lake ports. The ship carries no radio equipment, but officials of the Materials company area certain that it has not touched at any port since it left Grand Haven, as they have been in communication with every harbor along the southern half of Lake Michigan in an effort to trace it.

In Grand Haven, anxieties were higher, as demonstrated in the following
Grand Haven Tribune
article, dated the same day as the article above:

PLANES, TUGS IN SEARCH FOR
GRAVEL VESSEL

NO WORD FROM
ANDASTE
WHICH LEFT GRAND HAVEN MONDAY NIGHT