KEWEENAW POINT, MI - With debris from thousands of shipwrecks littering the bottom of Lake Superior, the November 1926 stranding of the City of Bangor might have been chalked up to just another freighter that foundered in a blinding snowstorm along the shore of the Upper Peninsula.

But what cements the Bangor in Great Lakes lore isn't the wreck itself - it's the epic, months-long effort to recover about 230 brand new Chrysler cars that were on the ship's deck and parked below when it grounded near Keweenaw Point. The rows of shiny sedans were bound from Detroit to Duluth, Minn. when the cargo carrier went up on the rocks, its battered hull making it a total loss.

It was a Herculean task. The recovery effort was undertaken during the worst months of winter, on the state's northernmost peninsula. Snow was hip-high in spots, and access was a big obstacle.

Workers had to wait for the lake to freeze around the ship so they could reach the vehicles. Cars still fastened to the deck had to be hacked out of 4 to 10 feet of ice that encased the ship. There were no plowed roads on that end of the peninsula. So once freed, the cars were driven along the shore and around the peninsula to Copper Harbor.

All this so the line of Chryslers eventually could be driven to the train station in Calumet and loaded into boxcars for the long trip back to Detroit.

"They needed to get them back, get them refurbished, get them back to the dealers," said Mark Rowe, trustee and maritime chairman of the Keweenaw County Historical Society. Rowe, a scuba diver, does presentations on the area's shipwrecks, including the Bangor.

This spring marks 91 years since the Chrysler recovery effort wrapped up. It's a story that continues to be shared among ship lovers, wreck divers and locals. And at least one of the cars driven off that ship still can be seen on the peninsula - the imprint of an axe head visible on a rear door frame from where it may have been hewn from the ice.

Photographs from the collections of the Michigan History Center's Archives of Michigan, Michigan Tech University Archives and the Keweenaw National Historical Park are being brought together to help tell the story.

Cars aboard the deck of the wrecked City of Bangor

A NOVEMBER SNOWSTORM, QUESTIONS ARISE ABOUT WRECK

Built in 1896, the 445-foot City of Bangor was repurposed at least once during her 30-year career on the Great Lakes.

Initially a bulk cargo carrier, she hauled heavy loads. She was later converted into a car carrier. Workers installed an inner deck level, a deck elevator, and she had space for plenty of cars on her upper deck, Rowe said.

But it turns out hauling cars made her less able to handle heavy seas in a storm.

"Cars were much lighter than cargoes like iron ore and coal," Rowe said. Thus, a ship carrying cars rode higher on the water. "Even with the load of cars on, with a northwest storm, it could not make headway."

Accounts of the wreck talk about how Capt. William Mackin left the safety of Whitefish Point to travel toward Duluth in November, 1926. Finding the storm too fierce after he rounded the north side of the Keweenaw Peninsula, he turned the Bangor back toward the protection of the south side. But the Bangor lost its steering gear and drifted until she ran aground. A gaping hole in her stern flooded the engine room.

The details match the official account from the U.S. Lifesaving Service post at Eagle Harbor, Rowe said. For decades, no one had a reason to doubt it. Until a phone call made Rowe wonder what actually led the ship to run up on the rocks.

Emory Massman Jr. called, saying he was writing a book that included the Bangor's story, and he'd heard the Keweenaw County Historical Society's museum at Eagle Harbor had a copy of the ship's log.

In his book, he wrote about what he thinks really happened the night the Bangor ran aground, based on a story Mackin had told Massman's father, also a laker captain, in a St. Ignace bar about a decade after the wreck.

Mackin told the elder Massman the ship had been sailing for 12 hours since leaving Whitefish Point and because of the blinding snowstorm, he'd misjudged the Bangor's position.

"He was actually far beyond Manitou Island and even beyond Copper Harbor," according to Massman Jr.'s book, "The Nicholson Lines and Their Captains."

"In the snow, he had missed both locations. The course change he made took him back to Keweenaw Point, where he ran aground near the end of the point."

The Bangor ended up 200 feet offshore at 6 p.m. on Nov. 30. She would never sail again.

The City of Bangor came to rest on a rocky reef about 200 feet from shore at Keweenaw Point.

A CHANCE RESCUE, SEVERE FROSTBITE

Mackin's 29 crew members waited until the next day to leave the ship. Using a lifeboat to reach the shore, they set out to find help. Instead they got lost in deep snow, brush and swampy areas. They backtracked to the shore. The sailors weren't dressed for U.P. weather. Some had cut strips of clothing and wrapped them around their legs for extra protection, but ice still formed on their skin, local accounts said.

"A fire was built and the crew spent a miserable night on the beach," according to Massman.

Meanwhile, the Lifesaving Service at Eagle Harbor was nearby rescuing the crew from the steamer Thomas Maytham, which had also foundered in the storm. This group passed Keweenaw Point and saw the stranded Bangor, then saw its crew gathered on the beach.

The rescuers made a return trip for the Bangor crew. They got them to Copper Harbor. Crew members suffering from severe frostbite were taken to a local hospital, while others were put up with area families and in boarding houses until they could be moved to Calumet.

Rowe talked to a woman who had been a nurse at the hospital where the Bangor's sailors were being treated. It was her first job.

"Those guys that they brought to the hospital had the worst cases of severe frostbite," she told Rowe, adding that they ate a lot during their convalescence: A big glass of milk and a loaf of bread a day, toasted.

SALVAGE: A PRICEY CARGO

After the wreck, the ship's owners and insurance adjusters came to size up the Chrysler cargo. Eighteen of the cars had been sent overboard when a deck cable snapped in the storm, loosening an entire row, Massman said.

The remaining 230 would need to be driven off and loaded on rail cars back to Detroit. But it would be an enormous job considering many of the $800 sedans were coated in ice, and there were no plowed roads for most of the route between the Point and Calumet.

So the Duluth salvage company hired for the job had to get creative. And they had to remove them carefully if they wanted to get their agreed-upon $117 per car, Massman said.

Once the water around the ship froze solid, a ramp was built and the cars inside were driven off the Bangor. Axes and other tools were used to break several feet of ice encasing the cars on deck.

"They had to chop them all out," Rowe said.

Horse teams created a "snow road" along the shoreline, and the cars were carefully driven over the ice from Keweenaw Point to Copper Harbor.

Once in Copper Harbor, photos show the Chryslers were lined up in long, neat rows to await the plows needed to open the 20 miles between Copper Harbor and the town of Phoenix.

The State Road Commission hired 30 men to open a road, with plows creating banks of snow 10 feet high along some stretches. It took plow operators two weeks of working around the clock to finish the corridor, Massman's book said.

About four dozen men and boys were hired to drive the cars from Phoenix into Calumet, where they were loaded onto rail cars for the return trip to Detroit. Locals later described most of the area's boys missing school to help drive the sedan caravan. They pocketed $5 for the adventure.

And, of course, a few tall tales persist decades later. Cars that were being driven to Calumet taking a turn and "disappearing" down an old forest road. Locals driving away in cars that later washed up on the beach.

But salvage workers likely had to account for each car, ensuring those driven off the ship did arrive in Calumet.

"By the first of April, all but two cars had been loaded in flat cars and shipped back to Detroit," according to a local account.

BANGOR REDUCED TO BITS OF METAL

The Chryslers were the priority, and the Bangor's owners didn't seem to be in any hurry to haul away the wreck. Some of her parts were salvaged in 1927. After that, she was left as a hulking presence on the Point for roughly 18 years.

"The ship just sat on that reef. It was one of the most photographed shipwrecks on the Keweenaw," Rowe said.

It the mid-40s, salvagers returned to take her metal for the war effort. Her wreck site is now part of the Keweenaw Underwater Preserve. But divers today don't find much to mark her spot.

"All you do is find bits and pieces," he said.