Say Nothing About This

An Apostle Islands postcard

It was a calm August morning, 1925. The waters of Lake Superior were as quiet as a church mouse.

The freighter the John Dunn Jr. carrying 9,000 tons of ore was gliding seamlessly, or so it seemed, in the lullaby waters of the Apostle Islands between Devils Island and Outer Island, downbound from Duluth making about 11 miles an hour.

What happened next has never been explained.

Here’s the way it was reported in a Detroit News story from journalist Stella M. Champney:

“On a calm August morning in 1925, an upheaval from below tossed the 400-foot freighter and the 9,000 tons of ore she was carrying four inches out of the water and left the crew shaken and bewildered. The story was verified for me by H. Otis Smith, chief engineer on the ship that was lifted like a chip by that mysterious subterranean explosion. ‘There was a roar like a clap of THUNDER,’ Smith said, ‘and the ship rose upwards as if the back of some huge monster and then settled down again. The water boiled around the ship in a great white churning billows, then spread out in an ever-widening circle as waves will when a stone is thrown in calm water.

‘I ran down to the engine room, thinking something had let go. Everything was in order. An oiler came up from below, his face like chalk, ‘What blew up?’ he asked. ‘Did we hit something?’

Men swarmed about. Some of them had been thrown out of their beds by the shock. They ran here and there, trying to discover the cause.”

There was no answer. The sea was like glass a moment before it, not a breath of air stirring. It was like a bolt from a clear sky.

Captain N.B. Roach gathered his crew and warned, “We’ll just be laughed at if we report an earthquake out in Lake Superior. Say nothing about this.”

It was years before the story leaked out to the press. But no reasonable explanation was ever confirmed.

— Jeff Rennicke (all photographs by the author unless otherwise noted).

These Apostle Islands postcards every Sunday are an offshoot of the “Little Dipper” blog. Paid subscribers to the blog also receive an original, full-length illustrated essay delivered right to their inbox every Wednesday. Subscribe. Come along for the ride aboard the “Little Dipper.”

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