Mackinac Miracle

Last week a battered old hulk was towed into Sturgeon Bay, Wis., to the din of saluting tugboat whistles and cheering throngs along the shore. The ugly hulk was the 600-ft. ore freighter George M. Humphrey, rusty red from 15 months under water. Her pilothouse had been crushed and her funnel twisted by the winter ice; the ripping current had torn off layers of paint, left her rail in tatters and smashed in the bulkheads. But to all of Sturgeon Bay (pop. 5,439) and especially to stocky, blue-eyed Captain John Roen, she was as worthy of a rousing welcome as any transatlantic superliner. For the arrival of the Humphrey in port marked the end of the biggest salvage operation in Great Lakes history, and one of the most complicated of all time.

Rammed by another ship during a fog, June 15, 1943, the Humphrey, loaded with 22,000 tons of iron ore, had gone down in the swift, treacherous current of the Straits of Mackinac, connecting Lakes Michigan and Huron. Lying in 80 feet of water, with her pilothouse only 15 feet below the surface, she was a menace to navigation in the heavily traveled, four-mile-wide channel. Marine experts said nothing could be done; the depth and current made her salvage impossible. Even the Normandie* they pointed out, had flopped over in only 40 feet, and well away from a bad current.

Million-Dollar Gamble. But tough, Norwegian-born Captain Roen, 56, a seafarer since he was 14, disagreed. If someone wanted the ship badly enough to pay a good price for the job, he would show that the biggest freighter that ever sank in the Great Lakes could be salvaged. No private concern was interested. The War Department, anxious to get the channel cleared, made a deal with Roen. The deal: if he could raise the ship, he could have her; if not, he must chop her off at his own expense to allow 35 feet of clear water over her. Roen took the gamble: by spending $300,000 he might get a hulk that could be rebuilt into a $1,000,000 ship.

Roen spent all summer of 1943 in the first part of his salvage--getting 14,000 tons of the ore out of the boat (the rest was left for ballast). Under water pressure the ore had coalesced into a solid mass; four divers had to fight the current to blast it into chunks with compressed air.

Roen spent the winter sinking and raising a 30-in. model of the Humphrey in a tank of water over & over again. Finally he knew every detail of the job. In the Straits this summer Roen sank a salvage barge over the freighter, attached cables and filled the barge with air, thus lifting the freighter six feet off the bottom. Then he towed the Humphrey along until she dragged on the bottom again. In a series of eight of these operations, he moved the Humphrey a mile and a half under water. When she reached shoal water, Captain John began pumping air directly into her double bottom. On Aug. 13 the pilothouse appeared.

In the Balance. A week later Roen and his crew of 50 had a bad scare. An airline kinked; air began to flow unevenly. The starboard decks burst out of the water, and the hulk listed dangerously. Months of body-breaking labor hung in the balance. A fast-thinking crew member picked up a shotgun, blasted the air hose. Gently the ship settled back into the water, to be brought up again slowly and on an even keel.

Besides his salvage business, Captain John Roen owns the Roen Steamship Co. and its six ships (tugs and barges). He also owns half the stock and is president of the Sturgeon Bay Shipbuilding and Drydock Co., which is now building $10,000,000 worth of retrievers and refrigerator ships a year for the Army & Navy. Salvaging grosses Roen $500,000 a year.

He is not sure whether he will lease or sell the Humphrey (which he plans to rechristen the Captain John Roen), or make her the flagship of his own fleet. But one thing is sure: when the Captain John Roen clears port next spring on her maiden voyage, Captain John Roen will be at the helm.

*Navy plans to reconvert the French liner Normandie (now the U.S.S. Lafayette) into a military vessel were abandoned last spring. She is now lying idle in an unnamed U.S. port. Best guess: the hulk will be turned back to the French after the war, possibly to be rebuilt as a peacetime luxury liner.

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