Through Keeweenaw

Captain Trinder certainly did not look queer as he came aboard that day in Superior while we were taking on the last few bags of flour. He was a typical Great Lakes skipper, tall and straight in spite of his sixty years. He looked like an old dog who had held the bones of all Great Lakes waters in his teeth many times, and who knew what the St. Mary’s was like in a blizzard.

We had arrived in Duluth the day before on our usual schedule, had dumped ashore the passengers, some of whom were on their way to the Yellowstone Park. Others were on a round trip on the “greatest inland water voyage of the world,” as it was put in the advertisements sent to the big eastern magazines. As soon as we got rid of the passengers we crossed to Superior to take on our cargo for the trip down. Three hours before sailing, the skipper had been carried back across into a hospital in Duluth.

We had to have a new master. Fortunately Trinder’s carrier was in port. No one else was within a day’s steam of us, and so Trinder brought himself aboard.

By the time the last passenger had come on and the black gang had hoisted their allotment of ice up the after decks and into the galley ice boxes for iced water and tea and other stuff the fancy passengers might need, the wind had chased the last of the high, white cumulus clouds away and had brought up black ones in their place. The wind came off the lake at such an angle that the narrow entrance to the harbor was a most difficult opening to hit, and the waves broke on the long spit that connects Duluth and Superior with vicious snaps that seemed to punctuate the more sustained and higher notes of the wind. The sun went down in a black and angry west, the whistle blew its departure blast, the none-too-good orchestra struck up a brave air, and we backed out into the harbor waters.

It was a mean night, and I knew that the steward’s boys would be busy answering bells from the passengers before an hour was over. I stood below the bridge deck, glorying in the coolness of the day after roasting in our smelly Superior slip, and did not get the full thrust of the wind until the captain had backed out into the harbor and turned the Chippewa’s nose toward the tiny traveling bridge that carries pedestrians across the cut. Then I knew in an idle manner--wireless operators don’t take much responsibility for such things--that the old man might have trouble in poking the ship’s nose out into the black night beyond.

Just as we were about to make the opening, a blunt-nosed ore carrier, far down in the water, hove in sight, coming up swiftly with the wind on her back. She headed for the opening to get out of the dusk into quieter waters, just in time to prevent Trinder from making it.

He rang down the engines and then called for reverse so that we would be out of the way of the “tin stack.” When she got through in her lubberly manner, the Chippewa was again aimed at the opening, but this time the wind carried her so far off we threatened to pile up on the breakwater.

The skipper again rang for reverse, and we backed out and tried again. I remember him facing the wind and trying, I suppose, to get the feel of his ship. He was used to heavier vessels, and his first trip out with a boatload of passengers was not starting auspiciously. He heaved over the anchor, reversed the engines slowly, pulling against the hook until the nose of the Chippewa was pointed straight at the center of the cut. At the proper moment he called for half speed ahead, the deck gang turned steam into the anchor winch, and as the chain came slowly aboard, the Chippewa eased out into the open Superior waters which the wind had by this time lashed into fury.

It was a neat maneuver, but there was nothing queer about it. It was straight seamanship, and a nasty problem had been solved as another skipper in the same position might have solved it. The passengers laughed and marveled, thinking this a part of every trip out. The pitching of the ship in the long Superior rollers soon drove most of them below, and after a whirl or two around the boat deck, I went to the radio cabin to fill out what remained of the six-to-twelve watch.

When we got away from the shallower waters near the western end of the lake the surface rollers quieted down into those long swells that mark deep water. The ship steadied herself and assumed a comfortable heave and fall that was pleasant rather than otherwise.

I sent the second operator to bed to wait his twelve-to-six watch, and settled myself into the chair with the earphones on my head. There was the usual amount of July static rolling in, and the usual lack of radio traffic to bother my ears. I heard the Duluth station ask some one what the weather was like near the Apostles. Two Canadians on their way to Port Arthur passed the time of day, and that was about all.

It was around ten o’clock that there was a tap on the door. Expecting some curious passenger I answered without much enthusiasm.

“Do you mind if I come in?” It was Captain Trinder.

“Not at all, sir, please do,” and I scrambled to my feet.

It was unusual, I thought, for a captain to be so polite.

He sat down in the dilapidated chair that had once had arms and looked curiously about. I realized that he had never seen a radio before. The package freighters were not compelled to carry wireless equipment--the few dollars a month the operator got plus the rental of the apparatus was enough to prevent the company from furnishing their skippers with them.

The old man did not seem comfortable. I guessed that the clothes he wore now were not those in which he commanded the package boats. He wasn’t quite at home. But he was a kind old man, I thought, and I could talk to him without any feeling of self-consciousness because I was in the presence of a superior officer.

“Well, sir, it’s a bad night out, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said slowly, steadying himself against the heave of the ship. “But it will quiet down before morning. Have you any weather reports?”

The junior had hauled something out of the ether, and I gave it to him. It was the usual “moderate to strong southeast winds, overcast,” which, of course, was confirmed by the weather we were going through. There was nothing exciting or disturbing about it.

I explained that if the static wasn’t too bad I would get further reports on the Upper Lakes from Arlington before I went off watch.

“Static?” he asked. He was very much interested in the radio, and the thought occurred to me that he was leading up to something he wanted to know about it.

When I let him listen to the intermittent crashes and rasps of summer static, he was greatly impressed, and wanted to know if we ever heard any one talk.

“You mean the human voice?” I asked.

“Yes,” he nodded. “I--I have heard that voices sometimes come in. Voices of dead people.”

There it was. Out like a bolt from the blue! I froze to my chair, and could think of nothing to say. This was what he wanted to know. He looked very strange. The men had been right. He was queer.

I tried to laugh it off with a remark that I didn’t see how dead people could talk, but more and more it seemed to him that the radio might be the place where old friends could get together.

“Well, sir,” and I laughed out of nervousness, “if you have any one in particular you would like to talk to, say, Napoleon or Julius Cæsar, I’ll give them a buzz.”

This was too much for the old gentleman.

“Young man,” he said as he rose to leave me, “I don’t think you have the proper respect for ship’s officers. When you are as old as I am you may think differently.”

I was honestly sorry I had made light of his remark, and said so.

“It was somewhat startling to have such a question put to you right off the bat, sir.”