THE DEARLY BELOVED ATTENDS THE FUNERAL — Winter 1993
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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
Author: James Elliott
The Hamilton Spectator
The scene is a modest brick cottage in Hamilton’s working-class North End in the fall of 1913. In the dimly lit front parlor, two candles rest on the end of a black-draped coffin spread with somber wreaths and bouquets.
Ruddy faces and red eyes fill the small room. Dark forms flank both sides of the coffin. A slow stream of family and friends threads through the room stopping briefly to comfort the parents. For Annie and Tom Thompson, it’s going to be a long night’s journey; burying a son in the prime of his manhood is almost more than they can bear.
Tomorrow morning, Father F. J. Hinchey will say mass. Then the funeral procession will wind slowly around the bay to Holy Sepulchre cemetery to plant him in the newly purchased plot. Annie has been up since dawn preparing for the wake. It helps to ease the pain that’s tormented her since the telegram arrived.
It was winter 80 years ago, when the worst storm ever on the Great Lakes howled and crashed its way from Cleveland to Fort William, leaving dozens of smashed ships and hundreds of broken bodies in its wake. Among the many gales of November, none before or after has matched the fury of the Gale of 1913. The tragedy touched families in ports all over the Great Lakes, but none in a more bizarre or incredible manner than the Thompson family of John Street North in Hamilton.
The late fall of 1913 was a busy time on the Great Lakes. Shipowners with an eye to the gathering war clouds in Europe were anxious to move as much cargo as possible to the lower lakes before freeze-up. As a result, there were hundreds of vessels, ranging from 19th century sailing ships to modern steamers, out on the lakes.
It began just after Halloween, down in the Gulf of Mexico with a mass of warm, moist air that moved up the Mississippi to meet a mass of Arctic air over Minnesota. On Lake Superior, sailors watched the sky turn an ominous, dirty yellow as west winds stiffened.
The U.S. Weather Bureau ordered storm warning flags flown in every Great Lakes port. As it turned out, it didn’t have a flag to match what was coming. What followed was a full-blown, four-day hurricane the likes of which commercial lakes navigation has never seen.
By the time it was over, five-story waves, 145-km/h (90-mph) winds and a record snow and rain had damaged or wrecked 71 ships. A dozen, including some of the most modern vessels on the lakes, disappeared without a trace. Nearly every port on the lakes got clobbered. Property damage – on sea and land-topped $100 million. A total of 251 sailors lost their lives.
With the slower communications of the day, the extent of the disaster was not immediately apparent. But in the following days, debris and bodies began to wash ashore all over the lakes, particularly along the western shore of the Bruce Peninsula, which suffered the brunt of the storm.
One of the vessels wrecked on the Lake Huron shore was the six- month-old James Carruthers. At 165 metres and nearly 8,000 tons, this Canadian bulk carrier was the largest ship of her type in the British Commonwealth. With a double bottom and screen bulkheads, she was widely regarded as the last word in seaworthiness. She was also one of the few ships equipped with wireless.
James Carruthers
But on Nov. 12th, six life preservers, two oars, and a lifeboat rudder, all marked “Jas. Carruthers” were picked up just outside Goderich harbor. The owners, stunned by the news, confirmed the loss and released a list of 25 crew members. It included two Hamiltonians: Mary Agnes Reary, 39, the ship’s cook, and John Thompson, a 27-year-old engine room stoker.
On Nov. 16th, Thomas Thompson, a 54-year old Hamilton laborer received the telegram he’d been dreading for days. Authorities in Goderich had recovered a body they believed was his son, John. Tom caught the afternoon train and by midnight was being escorted into a temporary morgue near Port Clark, just south of Kincardine, to view the nine bodies believed to have come from the Carruthers.
Despite the hour, Tom made a positive identification. The initials J T tattooed on the right forearm were those of his son, as were the two slightly deformed toes, the scar on the left shin carried since childhood and even the peculiar mark on the nose. Tom thought maybe his son’s hair wasn’t as dark as he remembered, but it was explained to him that it had been lightened by the long lake immersion.
The body was shipped back to Hamilton the following day and delivered to James Dwyer’s Funeral Home on Cannon Street, where it was prepared by manager Charlie Staunton, who had known John Thompson as a lad. With $176 in life insurance money, Annie had purchased a burial plot and outfitted the six children still at home in new mourning clothes.
The evening of the wake was unseasonably mild. Just as the family was beginning to receive visitors, a young man was alighting from the Toronto train at the Stuart Street station. He headed down to James Street North and stopped for a drink at the Northern Hotel before traveling the last few blocks to the 1-1/2 story brick house on John North.
John Thompson would later tell The Spec: “When I arrived home I was almost afraid to go in. ”My people were all dressed in black when I walked in, and there in the parlor, was a coffin covered with flowers and with candles burning at the end of it. “For a moment, I wondered if I was really alive. Everyone looked at me strangely. I had to pinch myself to find out whether I was alive or not.”
His father, however, may have had something more severe than pinching in mind for his errant son, who had failed to let his family know his whereabouts. “It’s just like you to come back and attend your own wake,” dad said.
John explained that while his name was listed as crew, he had not shipped out on the James Carruthers. Instead, he had gone to Montreal on another ship and only after returning to Toronto, had learned he was counted among the dead. ”You could have knocked me over with a feather. That was the first I knew that I was supposed to be dead and I immediately decided to come on to Hamilton. I never thought of telegraphing.”
As to the body that nearly got buried in his place, John was as mystified as his parents. “It is all very strange. I have not the least idea who the dead man is.”
Indeed, and thus it remains. The body of the unknown sailor was returned to Goderich to join four other unidentified sailors who drowned in the Great Storm. On a raw Nov. 27th, a procession of horse-drawn hearses led by a band playing the slow funeral march wound its way to Maitland Cemetery. The bodies were laid to rest under a red granite marker bearing the legend, “In Memory Of The Unidentified Seamen Whose Lives Were Lost In The Great Lakes Disaster Of Nov 1913.”
Epilogue:
In the wake of the mystery mariner affair, there were red faces all over Hamilton. Near tears in an interview with The Spec the following day, Thomas Thompson insisted he had acted in good faith.
”I really thought it was John and I cannot understand how such a mistake was made. Why even his mother and sisters were deceived.”
Annie and her daughters, for their part, spent the following day making the rounds to various merchants convincing them to take back the mourning clothes they had sold the family. The cemetery returned the money paid for the plot, and Prudential Life Insurance Company got its $176 back. Charlie Staunton, manager of Dwyer’s Funeral Home, apparently cancelled any charges connected with the incident.
The local press reported that Thomas was less than thrilled with his son’s conduct and actually ordered him out of the family house. The next day, John reportedly “calmly said goodbye and took the train to Toronto, and sailed on board the Midland Queen for the upper lakes.”
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