Failure magazine: Great Lakes Storm of 1913

Review of Michael Schumacher's new book NOVEMBER'S FURY.

schumacher_november's“If ever there were a ‘perfect storm’ on the Great Lakes, it would be the one that pounded the lakes from November 7 through November 10, 1913, leaving a wake of destruction unlike anything ever seen on fresh water at any point in recorded history.” So begins Michael Schumacher’s book, “November’s Fury”(University of Minnesota Press), a blow-by-blow account of the so-called white hurricane that sank a dozen ships and grounded thirty-one others, and even regurgitated a vessel (the tugboat Searchlight), which had been lost in 1906.

 

In the following Failure Interview, Schumacher—author of “Mighty Fitz: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald”—recounts the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, which claimed the lives of more than 250 sailors and buried the city of Cleveland in a record-setting blizzard. The storm followed on the heels of the Great Flood of 1913, which ravaged Ohio earlier that year.

Published in: Failure Magazine
By: Jason Zasky