WHITEFISH POINT, MI - Many shipwrecks sitting on the bottom of the Great Lakes have tragic stories to go with their sinking.

But there aren't many tales as strange as the SS Myron, a wooden steamship that was swamped in a Lake Superior storm near Whitefish Point this week in 1919.

Hours before she sank, rescuers from a lifesaving station saw she was struggling and rowed to save her crew, but to no avail.

All 17 of the Myron's crew were killed. All were found wearing lifejackets. Some were found frozen in a small lifeboat days after the ship went down. Others weren't found by local residents until next spring, their bodies encased in ice along Whitefish Bay.

Oddest of all might be the captain's rescue. When the ship sank, Capt. Walter Neal was in the ship's pilothouse, which broke off and floated away. He was found the next day, still alive. In a hearing later about the circumstances of the wreck, he claimed another ship's captain saw him but would not come to his aid.

"I have never seen him since, nor do I ever want to see him by the great hokey pokey," Neal said, according to authors who have researched the wreck and its aftermath.

A Lumber Hooker with a past

The SS Myron was a 186-foot lumber-hooker, which means she was built to carry her own load of wood on her deck, and pull at least one barge loaded with timber. When she sank, the steamship was carrying 700,000 board feet of lumber.

The SS Myron wasn't the ship's first incarnation. She was built in Grand Haven in 1888 and named the Mark Hopkins. Less than a decade later, she was sunk near Sault Ste. Marie. She was raised and rebuilt, according to the Great Lakes Maritime Database, with her name eventually changing to the SS Myron in 1902.

Her Last Voyage

When the SS Myron set out for the last time, she left Munising on Nov. 22, 1919 and was headed to Buffalo, N.Y. to deliver 1.7 million board feet of lumber. The bulk of it was piled on her tow barge, the Miztec, according to an article from Janice Gerred that appeared in The Great Lakes Shipwreck Quarterly.

Just two hours into the trip, a November gale hit Lake Superior. Conditions deteriorated into heavy snow pushed by 60 mph winds. The Myron slowed to a crawl.

At some point, researchers say Capt. Neal decided his only chance was to leave the heavy ship he was towing near Vermilion Point, about 10 miles west of Whitefish Point, and try to reach the safety of Whitefish Bay on his own.

He was about a mile from Whitefish Point when his ship's boilers were swamped by water below deck. Those who've studied her story say she sank within minutes, giving her crew time to launch two lifeboats.

Capt. Neal later described how he survived for another day on Lake Superior by clinging to the pilothouse that had sheared away from the Myron as it sank. His crew was not so lucky.

A TRAGIC END

Some of the Myron's first victims were found frozen in a boat in Whitefish Bay, days after the shipwreck.

"Some crewmen were frozen into grotesque shapes that had to be thawed out next to a roaring fire at a Sault Ste. Marie funeral home," according to an account by Great Lakes author Fred Stonehouse.

Five other crewman were found encased in ice near Whitefish Point six days after the wreck. The local newspaper published detailed descriptions of those who could not be identified, right down to their tattoos and a cigar cutter found in a pocket.

It was spring 1920 before local residents found eight more sailors' bodies near Salt Point on Whitefish Bay, according to Gerred's article. They had to be chopped from the ice. They were buried in Mission Hill Cemetery in Bay Mills Township, where a simple sign reading "Sailors of the Steamer Myron" quietly identifies their final resting place near Lake Superior.

Federal officials later investigated the circumstances surrounding the wreck, and claims from the Myron's captain that two nearby ships - the Adriatic and the H.P. McIntosh - didn't do enough to help.

They were controversial claims. The Adriatic had initially tried to shield the smaller Myron from the gale. And research by Stonehouse and author Julius Wolf show the McIntosh's captain had steered into the Myron's debris field to try to rescue the crew, but could not.

In a hearing called by the Steamboat Inspection Service, the Myron's Capt. Neal delivered a parting shot to the McIntosh captain, according to Stonehouse's book.

"I was clinging to the roof of the pilothouse when the McIntosh hailed me shortly after the Myron went down from under me. The McIntosh drew alongside me, not more than 16 feet away. Although it was dusk, the ship was so close that I had no difficulty in making out her name. I talked to the captain and expected that he would put out a yawl and pick me up. He did not do so, nor attempt in any way to help me. 'I will have a boat sent for you,' the captain of the McIntosh called. And he drew away. I have never seen him since, nor do I ever want to see him by the great hokey, pokey."

Some of the Myron's artifacts can be seen at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Paradise.

The Myron's wreck site is part of the Whitefish Point Underwater Preserve, a protected area that can be accessed by scuba divers. Also part of the preserve are the remains of the wrecked Miztec, the Myron's schooner barge that survived the 1919 storm, but wrecked during another in 1921 with all seven crew members aboard.

To find out more about the Myron, check out a couple of Fred Stonehouse's Great Lakes books, including "Lake Superior's Shipwreck Coast" and "The Great Wrecks of the the Great Lakes."