| Captain Sather and the Tennie and Laura were loaded with a $500 cargo of slab wood in Muskegon, Michigan, consigned to Milwaukee. The Tennie and Laura usually carried a crew of three, but Captain Sather’s son, John, who usually shipped as cook, asked for leave of the Milwaukee trip and was granted it by his father.
That left the vessel shorthanded, but the fall gales were still two months away, and the weather was especially pleasant that late summer day. Captain Sather, with only mate Charles Nordbach aboard, decided to sail for Milwaukee. They departed Muskegon at 10:00 that morning.
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Tennie and Laura, date and location unknown. Courtesy Wisconsin Maritime Museum. |
Around 6:00 that evening, the sky began darkening. An hour later the seas were building under gale-force winds. The Tennie and Laura took a beating in the heavy seas, and she soon began leaking. Sather and Nordback took turns between the pumps and the wheel, but the water in the hold kept increasing. As the night grew on, so too did the seas and heavy rains.
Sather and Nordbach were blinded in the downpour, making it nearly impossible to keep the waves on the Tennie and Laura’s port quarter as they ran before the storm. If the vessel turned broadside to the seas, they would quickly swamp. They continued taking turns throughout the night, but the men grew weary. The water in the hold continued rising.
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