A Great Lakes Sailor
Tim O’Neil
By Janis Stein

The Great Lakes offered opportunities to many young men with a willingness to work. In 1948, Tim O’Neil went to work aboard the Robert Hobson and, while Tim sailed just one season, his sailing days left a lasting impression.

When Tim O’Neil graduated from high school in 1947, he left the family farm and went to work in Saginaw. In 1948, just after his 18th birthday, Tim decided he’d earn his living on the Great Lakes instead, and so it was he gained employment aboard the Robert Hobson.

Tim’s sister drove him to Toledo, Ohio, where the Hobson was docked. With the Hobson looming high above, Tim began to climb the ladder, all the while marveling at how big the freighter truly was. Back in Huron County, Michigan, Tim had grown up within a few miles of Lake Huron, and he had watched the lake freighters traveling up and down the lake many times, but from a distance, the boats hadn’t seemed quite this big.

Once aboard, Tim’s gaze wandered over the length of the deck. Tim had many relatives that sailed, including his brother-in-law, Marcus Beeth, who was also working on the Hobson at the time. All of the sailors in Tim’s extended family had told him how, in a storm, the lakes’ waves could make a freighter roll. As Tim stood there, looking over the boat that he would call home for the rest of the season, Tim knew there was no way a freighter this size could ever possibly roll in the water as he’d been told.

Before the season ended, Tim learned he couldn’t have been more wrong.
Tim worked as a coal passer aboard the Hobson, the freighter traveling up to the ore docks for a load of iron ore and then hauling her cargo to ports in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Buffalo, New York. Sometimes in the fall of the year when farmers in Minnesota harvested their wheat crop, the Hobson would bring a load of wheat down the lakes. For the most part, the Hobson hauled iron ore, but on the rare occasion, the boat transported calcium to Gary, Indiana.

On her final trip of the season, the Hobson was slated to make the trip up the lakes to get her load of iron ore. After bringing her cargo back down, plans were made to lay up the Hobson in Loraine, Ohio. There, the Hobson would sit in dry dock over winter for some much needed maintenance.

As the Hobson made her last trek, she locked through the Soo, working her way through the St. Mary’s River, onward to Lake Superior. It was the month of November – a week before Thanksgiving – and Lake Superior planned to live up to her reputation. Tim watched with interest: Great Lakes freighters were tied up all along the river.

The Hobson’s captain had a different idea, allegedly saying he wanted to see what his sailors were made of, and the Hobson pushed onward, despite the severe storm warnings. No matter how severe the storm, some sailors remarked the captain always said, “It looks like a lily pond out there.”
To Tim’s way of thinking, a lily pond and Lake Superior had little in common.

As the storm worsened, the Hobson rose and fell, with each wave higher than the last. Seventy mile per hour winds made things all the more interesting. The boat rose so high that the propeller would come out of the water. The engineer worked diligently in the engine room, putting the engines in and out of gear in an effort to keep everything intact.

For the sailors, it took an awful long time for the Hobson to make her way across the lake. Tim had never seen Lake Superior so rough, and he no longer doubted his relatives’ claims that a boat could roll. The Hobson was doing little else.

Nervous thoughts led to plans of trying to get into Fort William on the Canadian side, or other ports along the foreign border, but Superior proved too rough for even that.

Finally, the Hobson made it to Superior, Wisconsin, while the winds and the waves and the storm continued to rage. The crew hoped and prayed they would soon make it within the safety and the calmer waters of the interior of the breakwalls and, while it was in sight, the Hobson would still have a long way to go to reach safety.

While the Hobson was only a half mile from shore, Lake Superior was still not finished. The waves were so great, they smashed over the top of the outer breakwall. Sailors dropped the anchor in an attempt to swing the Hobson into the opening gap between the breakwalls. The Hobson missed. The Hobson, now sitting crossways, made a perfect target for the wicked wind. Humungous waves, one following the next, smashed into the side of the boat, jamming the Hobson’s starboard side into the side of the other breakwall, puncturing the freighter’s hull.

Tim, working on the 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. watch, was awake for all the action - not that any sailors could have slept through this anyway. Down in the engine room, big boards held the various large tools needed to maintain the engines. Every time the Hobson rammed into the side of the breakwall, some of these engine tools flew across the room, with the sailors scrambling to safety.

The Hobson, still running at full speed ahead, endured a terrible beating. The aft end of the ship was still in the deep water of the channel. There was every possibility that the Hobson could go down if Superior’s waves pounded the boat on the breakwall so much so that the freighter would, in time, just split in two.

The old man asked Tim and Tim’s brother-in-law, Marcus, to go down into the ship to fill any remaining ballast tanks, as the Hobson had been traveling light on their way to get a load of ore. The ship was really dancing, and the two sailors watched their footing as they made their descent. With the undamaged ballast tanks now completely filled, the Hobson settled deeper in the water. But the damage had already been done.

The breakwall had punched a gaping 150-foot hole into the side of the Hobson. Winds remained at 70 miles per hour, with blinding snow adding another complication to the storm. The Coast Guard came out with a jeep and a little boat, but they could not help. The Hobson was taking on water, but the damage had been confined to just one hold.

By 10 o’clock the next morning, Lake Superior calmed. The storm was over.
Welders began working on welding up the side of the Hobson while mattresses and anything else available was used to stuff into the hole. Tugs arrived to pull the Hobson loose from the breakwall, however the tugs didn’t have enough power, so the ice breaker, Mackinaw, came to assist.

With the damage the Hobson sustained, there was no going back down the lake, so the following day, the crew began to lay up the freighter at a nearby shipyard, close to the ore docks.

During the course of the storm, the captain, indeed, had the opportunity to see just how tough his crew was. Because he had been negligent and endangered his ship and crew, the captain lost his license over the ordeal.
At the season’s end and with this incident behind him, Tim figured he had seen quite enough of the lakes. He thought he’d take his chances back on land.

Special thanks to Tim O’Neil for sharing his memories during the 1948 sailing season.

© 2010 Stein Expressions, LLC