PHOTOS: 132-year-old wreck of ‘one of the safest ships afloat' discovered in Lake Superior
The 300-foot steel steamer was first found late last summer about 60 miles northwest of Whitefish Point in Lake Superior. The GLSHS' research vessel, the David Boyd, found the ship using side-scan sonar.
Underwater preserves protect thousands of miles of Great Lakes, shipwrecks
Subsequent dives with a remotely operated vehicle confirmed the finding, showing that the ship broke in two. The bow rests on top of the stern approximately 600 feet below the surface of the water.
The Western Reserve was considered a nautical marvel in its time. It was one of the Great Lakes' first all-steel vessels.
'(She was) built to break cargo shipping records and was deemed one of the safest ships afloat,' the GLSHS said in its announcement.
The ship was owned by shipping magnate Peter G. Minch. He and several members of his family were on board for the ship's final, fateful journey.
According to historians, the Minch family hitched a ride on the ship while it sailed to Two Harbors, Minnesota, with a load of iron ore.
The Western Reserve started to sink at approximately 9 p.m. on Aug. 30, 1892. It sank within about 10 minutes, but it was enough time for the crew to launch its two lifeboats. One of them, however, flipped almost immediately. The other one, carrying Minch's family and a handful of crewmen, sailed on.
The Nelson: 125 years later, one of Lake Superior's darkest tales retold
At one point in the middle of the night, a steamship sailed past the lifeboat, but with no flares, they were not spotted.
Roughly 10 hours later, the lifeboat made it to within a mile of the Deer Park Life-Saving Station when it overturned. Of the 28 crew and passengers, only one person, wheelsman Harry Stewart, survived.
'Every shipwreck has its own story, but some are just that much more tragic,' GLSHS Executive Director Bruce Lynn said. 'It is hard to imagine that Captain Peter G. Minch would have foreseen any trouble when he invited his wife, two young children and sister-in-law with her daughter aboard the Western Reserve for a summer cruise up the lakes. It just reinforces how dangerous the Great Lakes can be … any time of year.'
Great Lakes' deadliest wreck: What brought down the Eastland
What was thought to be the Western Reserve's strength turned out to be a massive weakness. The ship's steel was contaminated with phosphorus and sulfur, causing the metal to weaken and the hull to fail. The sinking of the Western Reserve eventually led to new laws for testing steel used in shipbuilding.
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Los Angeles Times
25-07-2025
- Los Angeles Times
Huntington Beach nonprofit Robyne's Nest, which helps at-risk teenagers, readies for new chapter
The late Fred Rogers, of 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' television fame, was given some advice by his mother for tough or scary times. 'Look for the helpers,' Rogers once recalled. 'You will always find people who are helping.' Robyne Wood of Huntington Beach is a helper. That will remain true regardless of Wood's status at Robyne's Nest, the nonprofit she started in 2015 to help at-risk and homeless high school students who are drug- and alcohol-free. But after a decade in charge, she's stepping away. Wood announced last month that she will be resigning as Robyne's Nest executive director in January. She said she feels the timing is right for her. Her husband, Kirby, turns 65 next year and will also be retiring. Her daughter Savana is getting married next year, while her son Parker just graduated from high school. So Wood is stepping away for a new chapter and some well deserved time off. 'I never saw myself being here more than 10 years, I don't know why.' she said. 'Robyne's Nest is doing really well financially. In our schools and in our programs, it's really sound. What better time to hand something off to somebody else to continue it than when it's doing great?' It can be considered a full-circle moment, as Robyne's Nest was born out of Wood's volunteer help when Savana was a student at Dwyer Middle School. Morgan Smith, the director of certified human resources for the Huntington Beach Union High School District, was principal at Dwyer back then. 'In an area of Huntington Beach where there's so much affluence, there's also extreme poverty,' Smith said. 'A lot of families were stacked in apartments three or four families deep. We had kids that went to Dwyer that were sleeping in vans at night. There wasn't a system in place for schools to really have the kind of consistent outreach.' Wood created a food pantry, but as the need became greater, more resources were needed. Smith suggested that she start a nonprofit, so she dove in. 'I had heard about a student who got kicked out of his house when he turned 18, and I was beside myself,' she said. 'There were a couple of other nonprofits that supported that age group, 18-24, but most of them, their idea was to put him in a sober living home, give him a motel voucher for a couple of days, an EBT card and a minimum wage job. I was just like, 'What kind of start in life is that?' It wasn't good enough for me.' Robyne's Nest has worked over the years with the Huntington Beach Union High School District and Newport-Mesa Unified School District. Newport-Mesa trustee Carol Crane has seen Wood become a familiar face at Back Bay High, an alternative school. 'She doesn't do it to be seen, she does it because she wants to,' Crane said. 'It's more to be there and support. Some people do things for their different purposes. For her, it's just very real.' Robyne's Nest held a 10-year anniversary celebration in April. The office on Talbert Avenue, which Robyne's Nest moved into in 2018, has expanded over the years. In the back is a food pantry, and upstairs is space for an in-house mental health and wellness program, as well as a therapy room. Next door is a thrift shop opened in 2022 that's open to the public and helps support the cause. Another key step was opening Robyne's Landing, a shared transitional living house in Huntington Beach for abandoned and severely neglected students. Wood said she lived there herself for three months after a house manager had a family emergency, which should surprise no one who knows her well. 'She is a dynamo,' said Tom Williamson, a past president of the Robyne's Nest Board of Trustees who owns Marina Auto Body. 'I've never met anybody like Robyne. I know that probably sounds like it's buttered up, but let me tell you. If you spend some time with her, 'no' is not in her vocabulary, she gets it done. I wish I had a whole bunch of employees like her. I've got a few, but my God.' Linda Temple, who just retired as a psychologist at Edison High School, said that she started working with Wood when she was providing snacks for high school students. Now Wood has a team of about 50 core volunteers, plus many more who help at the holiday season. 'It's such a transitional time, and it's so critical for students to have support and know they're not alone,' Temple said. 'Even on a good day, they're struggling. You have so many who have issues with parents at home, or they live with grandparents. The mental health issue is huge.' Wood said she herself would have been a Robyne's Nest kid. Growing up on the East Coast, she left home when she was 17 and moved to Maryland. 'I finished my senior year on my own, I worked, I rode the bus,' she said. 'I learned a lot of lessons. I know what these kids go through and try to share that with them.' Wood and her family moved to Huntington Beach in 2008. She has two noticeable tattoos on her left wrist. One is a cross and the other is her favorite Bible passage, Jeremiah 29:11. 'Everything I've done has come so easily,' she said. 'I put something out that I need this, I need that, and it comes. Good karma in the world, God's will, whatever you want to call it. But I think too, people just have trust in us. We're here, we're helping take care of the kids, we're pretty transparent about everything. We're not trying to Band-Aid everything, we're really trying to make lives better with all of the tools that we have.' The person who takes over as executive director at Robyne's Nest will undoubtedly have big shoes to fill. Smith, who has also been principal at Fountain Valley and Marina high schools, knows the nonprofit will continue doing important work, providing a support structure for hundreds of teenagers and young adults over the years. 'The place that they're at now, I don't know if she ever dreamed it would be there, but Robyne is just nonstop,' he said. 'You can't tell her no; she will find a way. We are all just in her gravitational field. She's like a shooting star passing through, and we all just kind of slowly get pulled in with her gravity and become part of it. It's exciting, and it's a lot of fun, but she is that center of the universe and it is all-consuming.'
Chicago Tribune
24-07-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Eastland disaster and its aftermath
On this day 110 years ago, a ship in the Chicago River between LaSalle Drive and Clark Street was loaded with more than 2,500 passengers — many of them Western Electric Co. employees and their families — ready to embark on a day trip to Michigan City, Indiana. The SS Eastland had been known as the 'Greyhound of the Great Lakes.' The vessel, however, was built to serve as a freighter — not an excursion vessel. 'It was owned by a couple of rich guys who had no business being in the boat business,' Tribune columnist Rick Kogan wrote in 2019. 'It was a disaster waiting to happen.' Here's a look back at what's become known as the Eastland Disaster and its aftermath. When the Eastland swayed then suddenly rolled onto its side, hundreds of passengers became trapped inside the vessel — just feet from the dock — as water poured in. George Halas was supposed to be on the SS Eastland the day it capsized in the Chicago River, killing 844 peopleA total of 844 people died, making it one of the worst maritime events in United States history and the deadliest single day event in the city's history (about 300 died in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and 602 were died in a fire at the Iroquois Theatre in 1903). Bodies of the dead were taken to the 2nd Regiment Armory, which later became the site of Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios. Bodies were laid out in rows of 85, and after seven days, all had been identified. Photographers with the city's eight daily newspapers raced to the scene on that summer Saturday morning as word of the Eastland quickly spread to newsrooms. Lyman Atwell of the Herald, Robert Hollihan Sr. of the American and Godfrey Lundberg and Fred C. Eckhardt of the Tribune also took photos that day. Another photographer was Jun Fujita, a 25-year-old Japanese immigrant who had been taking pictures in Chicago for about a year. Fujita ended up capturing one of the iconic photos of the day, a picture of a firefighter with an anguished look on his face holding a dead boy. Fujita also took photos of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and the city's 1919 race riots, before he took to writing poetry. The Tribune printed five pages of obituaries about the Eastland's known victims. Campaigns were started to reimburse victims' families. The Red Cross distributed a total of $170,000 (or roughly $5.4 million in today's dollars) to families in the form of 540 checks. After settling into several feet of mud, the ship was lifted to an angle of 70 degrees, and finally righted by the Favorite, a tug boat. William 'Frenchy' Deneau had been considered a hero for recovering hundreds of victims' bodies following the disaster. The experienced diver was back in the river months later laying cable when he hit metal. Deneau believed he had found a submarine owned by Peter Nissen, an adventurer who garnered front-page headlines for his successful navigation of Niagara River rapids along the U.S.-Canada border. He worked with the federal government to secure ownership of the vessel and raise it. Starting in February 1916, visitors to the Rector Building on State Street could tour the 'tragic and historic relic.' Deneau, now calling himself a captain, placed a full-page advertisement in the Tribune for 'the most intensely interesting exhibit ever shown in Chicago.' The Tribune had no further mention of Deneau's prized artifact. The boat's connection to Nissen is confounding and its whereabouts today are unknown. Six men had been indicted for operating an unsafe ship and for criminal negligence. They were: A trial was held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that featured famed attorney Clarence Darrow, who represented Erickson. A judge ruled the prosecution failed to make a case against the men. The Eastland was salvaged and sold to the U.S. Navy. Many Chicagoans gathered to boo the vessel as it left the Chicago River to undergo restorations and some modifications, that would convert it into a gunboat. Its name changed to the USS Wilmette, and it functioned mostly as a training ship on the Great Lakes. The Wilmette riddled a German submarine with cannon fire in 1921, sending it to the bottom of Lake Michigan about 20 miles east of Highland Park. After World War II, the Wilmette was sold for scrap. Students at Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora had researched the tragedy and were shocked to find no details about it in school textbooks. That's why they worked to erect a plaque at Clark Street and Wacker Drive. Eastland survivor Libby Hruby told those assembled for the dedication of the marker that she was plucked from the water by her sister. After it disappeared in 2000, the plaque was replaced and rededicated in 2003. A collection of nearly 100 black-and-white glass-plate negatives — many of them never published — were discovered in the basement of Tribune Tower. The images from the Tribune archives were found inside two cardboard boxes in the newspaper's dimly lit, temperature-controlled basement archives five floors below Michigan Avenue. Marianne Mather, a photo editor at the Tribune, discovered the Eastland images as she searched for other images. Vintage Chicago Tribune: Our Top 4 most unexpected finds in the Chicago Tribune's archivesThe photographs capture the aftermath of one of Chicago's worst disasters: rows of sheet-covered bodies inside a temporary morgue, two women crying while clutching a baby in a blanket, a Coast Guard crew hauling a woman out of the river, the Eastland flopped over in the water like a plastic toy in a bathtub, dozens of people atop its side, awaiting rescue. Several hundred people gathered on the Chicago Riverwalk — many of them descendants of the Eastland's victims and survivors — to mark a century after the tragic event. Others visited Bohemian National Cemetery at Pulaski Road and Foster Avenue on the Northwest Side, which has 143 Eastland victims buried in its plots — the most of any cemetery in the Chicago area. Of the 22 families wiped out by the disaster, four are buried at Bohemian. Some, including those of Czech ancestry, include a short line — 'obet Eastlandu,' or 'victim of the Eastland.' Flashback: Touring the Bohemian National Cemetery grounds with 'Cemetery Lady' Helen SclairA memorial was unveiled just prior to the major anniversary. It features a black plaque that describes the disaster on one side and gives details of the Eastland gravesites on the other. A granite slab with a steamship's steering wheel juts out of a granite slab with carved ripples that represent the sinking of the ship and its raising following the incident. Thanks for reading! Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
Chicago Tribune
17-07-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Elgin News Digest: Elgin to start using safety barriers on Riverside, South Grove; donations, volunteers sought for back-to-school event
New safety wedge barriers have been installed along Riverside Drive and South Grove Avenue for use during crowded events, restricting vehicle access but not impeding pedestrian traffic. When not in use controlling traffic during Festival Park events between Friday and Oct. 12, the barriers will lie flat, sitting about an inch above the road's surface, according to a city news release. Drivers should slow down before driving over them. Every Friday starting this week, the barriers at each end of Riverside Drive will go up at 3 p.m. and be taken down at 6 a.m. Monday so that the street can become 'a pedestrian-only promenade for the Downtown Elgin Market, concerts and other weekend events,' the release said. On South Grove Avenue, the barriers between Prairie and Lake streets, next to Festival Park, will be in use only during large events. Detour signs will be posted when the barriers are being used, but will not block pedestrians and cyclists, officials said. Public lots at the northwest corner of South Grove Avenue and Prairie Street will remain open to vehicles. Additional parking options can be viewed at The D300 Food Pantry is seeking supply donations and volunteers to work at a back-to-school giveaway event being held Saturday, Aug. 2, at Carpentersville Middle School, 100 Cleveland Ave. More than 420 children are signed up to participate in the event, a social media post said. The nonprofit organization is in need of 90 people to cover three shifts: 9 a.m. to noon to set up before the giveaway starts; 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. to work during the event; and 2:30 to 4 p.m. to do cleanup work. For a list of supplies sought and other information, go to To volunteer, email mjohnstone@ A presentation marking the 110th anniversary of Eastland Disaster in Chicago will be held from 7 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, July 22, at the Gail Borden Public Library, 270 N. Grove Ave. in downtown Elgin. The Eastland Disaster Historical Society is conducting the program, which will feature two granddaughters of Bobbie Aanstad, who survived the ship accident, according to the library's website. On July 24, 1915, the Eastland was embarking on an excursion cruise when it became unbalanced and rolled over into the Chicago River. Of the more than 2,500 passengers and crew members on board, 844 people died, including 22 entire families. Many of the victims were employees of Western Electric attending a company outing. To register to attend the event and for more information, go to The Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Foundation have awarded a $1,500 grant to the Maroon Buzz Weekly News Team at Elgin High School. Team members plan to use its grant to buy a memory card and batteries, memory card holder and USB holders, charger for lavalier mics, rolling tripod, charging block, large storage cabinet, handheld mics, a camera rig and cage and a handheld recording in progress sign, a news release said. The Illinois High School Journalism Grants Program awarded more than $35,000 in funding to 26 high schools, the release said.
