Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/120

104 were two of the big men of their time in the carrying trade on the lakes, but their line has been out of business for years; both Mr. Stafford and Mr. Ramsdell were lost with the Miwaka."

"Will you tell me about it, and them, please?"

"I've told you almost all I can about Stafford and Ramsdell, I'm afraid; I've just heard father say that they were men who could have amounted to a great deal on the lakes, if they had lived—especially Mr. Stafford, who was very young. The Miwaka was a great new steel ship—built the year after I was born; it was the first of nearly a dozen that Stafford and Ramsdell had planned to build. There was some doubt among lake men about steel boats at that time; they had begun to be built very largely quite a few years before, but recently there had been some serious losses with them. Whether it was because they were built on models not fitted for the lakes, no one knew; but several of them had broken in two and sunk, and a good many men were talking about going back to wood. But Stafford and Ramsdell believed in steel and had finished this first one of their new boats.

"She left Duluth for Chicago, loaded with ore, on the first day of December, with both owners and part of their families on board. She passed the Soo on the third and went through the Straits of Mackinac on the fourth into Lake Michigan. After that, nothing was ever heard of her."

"So probably she broke in two like the others?"

"Mr. Spearman and your father both thought so; but nobody ever knew—no wreckage came ashore—no message of any sort from any one on board. A very sudden winter storm had come up and was at its